I’ve done that. (I grew up hearing about the starving people in China, so even though I’m 47 now… I don’t like wasting food products)
Funny, but the local Taco Bell/Long John Silvers (yes, it’s one store) and McDonald’s all have drink dispensers and free refills. Certainly if they don’t provide this, the pricing is OK, but if they’re offering free refills, why should anyone eating in buy anything other than a small drink?
Of course, the classic example of this is Miggles Emporium, which was filled with prices like “15 cents each or two for 35.”
I’ve noticed that the unit price of Tropicana orange juice is almost always higher for the 96 oz container than the 64 oz. Often it’s particularly marked, as in “get 50% more for twice the price.”
My local supermarket deli has taken to making their sale prices only $0.20 less than the normal prices. So turkey might be $6.29/lb instead of $6.49. It’s amazing how many people still buy what’s on sale. (It used to be $0.50 to a dollar off per pound for the sale items.)
I do it. I think it’s worth the extra twenty cents to not have to get up and walk across the store five times during the course of my meal. Maybe I’m lazy. Maybe I just drink too much soda. Probably both.
At work, I had to buy some small custom made parts (I think they were widgets, but they might have been doo-dads - I don’t recall), and I asked the vendor to quote for several order quantities. What I got back was something like this:
50 pcs: $4.50 ea.
150 pcs: $3.00 ea.
200 pcs: $2.20 ea
Do the math on those last 2 lines, and then explain to me why anyone would ever order 150 parts.
I do that sometimes. Usually it’s more along the lines of knowing that I wouldn’t drink that much soda and that it’s worth the twenty cents to not have to lug around the three gallon cup that won’t fit in the cup holder of my car. When prices are below a couple of bucks and the difference is within a dollar, I just plain don’t care enough to worry about what’s the best “value”. If I don’t want to have to deal with the gigantic cup, it’s worth it to me to have the smaller one even when it costs slightly more.
But I’m not. And if I buy that much, I’ll feel obligated to drink it, and then I’ll have to go pee a lot.
Twenty whole cents? A supermarket I frequent will put big yellow sale cards over the price sticker on the front of the shelf, which, when revealed by lifting the card, shows the regular price to be a dime or even a nickel higher. Apparently the bright yellow cards have a psychological impact, and apparently many people don’t check underneath them.
Ha! I can do one better! Our store puts up bright yellow cards with “Everyday low price!”
But I am not fooled! I am too crafty for them!
accidentally drops two mangos
Um . . . yeah. Nobody saw that, right?
picks up mangos and scampers off.
Here you’d be hard pressed to find any restaurant that doesn’t offer free refills. That goes for the 5-star steakhouse to the lowly TacoHell.
Even if the drink machine isn’t in the dining area (ie Chick-Fil-A), I’ve never even had an employee blink an eye when I requested a free refill.
As for stupid pricing, where I shop, the unit price is marked on the shelf tag which makes it easy to determine which size is the better value.
On Tropicana, it could be that the 96 oz. plastic jug packaging is considerably more expensive than the 64 oz. cardboard carton.
I recently bought film to take along on vacation.
The “American” brand–Kodak-- was made in China.
The “foreign” brand --Fuji-- was made in South Carolina AND was $0.60 cheaper for 5 rolls than Kodak was for 4 rolls. Naturally, I bought the Fuji.
So much for the myth that by paying slave wages overseas instead of the “exorbitant” wages we “greedy Americans” demand, American companies provide customers with cheaper prices.
Did you volunteer at this establishment? I’m guessing that those prices don’t factor in labor, rent, utilities, or any other expenses that the store has to pay to stay open long enough to sell a cup of soda.
It could also be that people are just in the habit of automatically refusing any suggestion from the order taker, on the assumption that it’s an attempt to upsell them. Hardly thinking about it, they come up with a polite excuse.
Today at the Golden Arches:
Big n Tasty + Medium Fry + Medium Coke = $3.10
Big n Tasty Value Meal, which includes:
Big n Tasty + Medium Fry + Medium Coke = $3.65
From this we must assume that the task of assembly and the lettering involved in the word “meal” is a value-added event.
Hey, look it’s one of those serendipitous user-name-post-matching things! 
Maybe his customers do realize the costs but they just don’t see anything else they like. What’s the point of taking home all that extra stuff just to have it clutter up your house?
They’ve been doing that for at least 35 years. When I was a kid, you could get the following:
5 sticks: .05 7 sticks: .10 (advertised as the “Handy Dime Pack”)
Juicy Fruit was the shiznit.
You have a particularly generous owner/operator. The Big ‘n’ Tasty was removed from the nationwide standard dollar menu almost a year and a half ago. The owner/operators are also free to set different sizes for the fries and coke. Here, this would be:
Big ‘n’ Tasty: 1.99
Medium Fry: 1.45
Medium Coke: 1.39
Also, at least here, you could never get a double cheeseburger, medium fry, and coke for less than the meal. The EVM was 2.99 until we went to small fries and small drinks on the dollar menu.
I went to buy some files this afternoon, and had the choice of 10 for $9.95, 24 for $19.95 or 30 for $19.95. They were all the same brand and identical to each other.