a/k!
Damn good to hear from you! My PM is open here - drop me a line when you get the chance.
And tell the bunny - tough nuts, kiddo. I’m hidin’ my herb in the freezer from now on…
Personally, I’ve liked my cherries a tad more bulky, say about 120 lbs or so. But I’m not too picky; blondes, brunettes or redheads are fine.
I bought about three pounds of cherries last week. All but about two cups worth I ate in four days.
Two pound bags would not be a problem at all.
Goes without saying, I would have thought. 
Well, most of them don’t, you know? It’s just the grocery equivalent of “shirt dead, go watch TV”: it’s “fruit pretty, $2.99, good price, grab bag, next?” Failure to pick up on details when you’re in your usual grocery store hurry is a bit different from stupidity.
Plus, at least in most stores I’ve been in, the ‘$2.99’ will be big and bold, and the ‘/lb.’ will frequently be in dainty filigree, easily overlooked.
And yeah, it’s a pretty natural assumption that when stuff is sold in packages of some sort, the package is the unit for purposes of pricing.
The grocery store probably comes out ahead on this. You’re going to get a lot more people not even noticing that they paid a lot more than they intended for their cherries or grapes until they get home (if then), than you will get people getting sticker shock at the checkout and deciding not to buy. If you’re the grocer, don’t complain about the latter group; they’re just part of the cost of making out like gangbusters on the first group.
I still have no cherries. The local ShopRite was still out again this morning. This sucks. Could you send all your cherries to NJ? I have two cherry trees in the backyard but the damned squirrels always eat them five seconds after they show up. I will eat them for you, I promise.
Zing!
I am so sorry. I have Rainier cherries right now, and I’m threatening to toss cats at Bill if he even thinks about touching them. 
Big poofy wedding or Rainier cherries…you make the choice! 
Another vote for just sitting down and eating all the cherries. Heck, even if it kills you, you’ll go out with a bing!
Bunch of showoffs. I have to wait until bloody December before the cherries are edible and affordable.
Problem solved: Send them to Oz!
What’s with cherries anyway, why so damned expensive? I know nothing about fruit farming, is it that they are truly rare, or are they just so popular that they go for such a high price? We’ve figured out how to procure a year-round and relatively cheap supply of almost every other fruit and berry, why not cherries, the queen of all fruits?
Expensive? I’ve always been impressed by how cheap produce is. From the land that is used, to the labor used for harvest, and the various pesticides, etc it is really amazing. Throw in cost to transport a perishable commodity and the vagaries of weather, and wow!
Then there is supply and demand. If the price of cherries tripled tomorrow I don’t think I would consume less each year.
I bought a pineapple for $2.99 the other day. In western Pennsylvania. And it was delicious.
Back in my grocery days, we called this the “produce paradox.”
If you leave out a trash can, you tend to encourage grazing, which is “shrink,” which is a big no-no because, obviously, that’s product, i.e. profit, going up in smoke.
OTOH, people are still going to graze, and if you don’t have an obvious receptacle for their garbage, yeah, they’re just going to leave it anywhere. And I mean anywhere, like the display they took it from, in the corner of the potato bin, in the dairy case, on a random shelf, or just right on the floor which, interestingly, is actually the least offensive place for it because I can just sweep that up.
Does anyone other than little children actually graze in the produce section? Some people have no manners…
We find toothpicks everywhere. It’s disgusting. In the coolers, between wine bottles, stuck into fruit, tossed behind boxes. Normally, when someone grabs a sample, I seem them briefly look around and I’ll (nicely) say “There’s a garbage right there” otherwise I’ll see them toss it. Honestly, I’m a proponent of not using toothpicks in the samples. Kinda gross for the sample taker, but, trust me, it won’t slow them down. They’ll still grab handfuls of the cheese cubes.
And as you said, yeah, if they toss it on the floor, it can be swept up, but seeing 9 toothpicks under the Jelly Belly bins means someone has to move a 60 pound bin and then pick up the toothpicks and get rid of them. (And it means someone took 9 samples of cheese).
I think it’s like littering. If you open your car door and ‘nicely’ set the soda can on the asphalt, standing up, you don’t feel as bad about it as if you toss it out the window while you’re driving. Either way, someone still has to pick it up.
It’s a sample, you’re allowed to take it, just say ‘is there a garbage for the toothpicks?’
Yes. What’s more, when little kids can’t get to the produce, the adults often help them.
It’s not just the produce section, either. I’ve seen people open up a box of cookies and eat them, or hand the open box to the kids. So that’s part of where they learn it. My local Target no longer has self serve bins of Jelly Bellies and other candies, and I’m sure it’s because there was too much shrinkage and unsanitary habits.
People will steal ANYTHING if they think they can get away with it. And they’ll damage stuff if they can’t steal it. This includes people who are more than old enough to vote and buy alcohol. This isn’t just in retail stores…ask any restaurant owner about how much silverware and things like plates and salt and pepper shakers go missing all the time. Sure, there’s some breakage, and you have to expect that every now and then the busser accidentally throws something away, but things will grow legs and walk off when the general public has access to them.
Oh my God, the stealing that goes on in grocery stores around the produce and bulk bins - last week I saw some kids just helping themselves to the bulk bins, and I told them, “You kids know that’s stealing, right?” then I looked over and saw the father that had sent them over to get themselves a treat. :mad: Two minutes later I saw another adult helping himself to another bulk bin. I love bulk bins, but this store seriously has to change over to the kinds of bins that can’t get hands of all sizes in them.
Noooo! Don’t do that. Scarcity is part of their attractiveness. Strawberries used to be divine until some idiot figured out a way to make them available year round. Nothing special about strawberries any more.
WAG, it’s because they need cold as part of their growing process, but, unlike apples, they don’t store well. Half the time you’re eating apples, they were picked months ago. That wouldn’t work with cherries.
“Summer fruit” OTOH, just goes from Southern North America to Northern South America in winter, but even that just started happening in the last 5-10 years. If you think back more then a few years, you couldn’t get a peach in fall or an Apricot in Spring, now you can get them nearly year round.
It may only be a matter of time before we’re shipping in cherries from all over the world just depending on where they’re harvesting them during that month. The problem will be supply and demand at that point, at least for the first few years. However, I predict, people will gladly pay $15-$20+/lb for fresh, red, ripe cherries in the middle of December, at least the first year or two that it happens. Most people will just buy a few, but some will buy a few pounds so they can tell people that they made home made cherry pie, from scratch, with fresh cherries. And all we’ll hear, over and over, is that in Australia Christmas is cherry season and…“What? You didn’t know that. I mean, I know they’ve been saying it on the news every 15 minutes since we have cherries now, but I totally knew that already, duh.”
but I have a time stamped post to prove that I knew it