:rolleyes:
I’m sorry that your personal finances are so tight that you think this is a likely outcome. Please don’t project your problems onto everyone else.
God damn. Some of this shit is just downright insane. I’ve never heard people so vociferously and venomously defend their God-given right to pay more for less and love every second. I can’t believe that not one person has responded something to the effect of “yeah, I know I really shouldn’t be so lazy and wasteful with my money.”
Quick tip: “I’m not stupid, just stupefyingly lazy, and damn fucking proud of it” is not a compelling argument.
Every time I buy a snack from the vending machine at work, I feel a little bit guilty for wasting my money by not planning ahead, and deservedly so.
I’m sorry that those dollar bills you evidently use for toilet paper must be so uncomfortable against your ass.
I’m not lazy, but I have much better things I can do with my time, like go to the gym or go out with my friends, or have sex with my boyfriend, whatever. I would rather pay a little more money to be able to do those things and not look or feel like a cow at the end of the week. Its not like I’m spending a significant portion of my grocery budget on stuff like this. Not to mention that the packs are not actually the same as putting two cookies in a bag. I’d rather buy my groceries in bulk when it is convenient for me, not because some dick on the internet tried to make me feel bad.
I HAVE FRIENDS AND SEX WITH MY BOYFRIEND. ALSO, I AM SO BUSY WITH MY HECTIC LIFE (not a loser! really! please believe me!) THAT I BARELY HAVE TIME TO POST ON THE INTERNET AT 2:30 AM.
Gotta love that old Internet chestnut.
Eh, whatever. It’s your money.
What I like is how she can apparently fit in an episode of sex in the five minutes she’s saving by buying convenience foods 
not to speak of going to the gym… this is the stuff commercials are made of! “Buy oreo smartpaks, FINALLY have time to go to the gym!”
I refuse to believe people’s lives are so busy- if not buying convenience food makes such an impact on your day, then there’s something wrong with your time management skills. “I’m too busy to manually select my cookies!”
It’s like the idiocy of those frozen, crustless peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for parents too lazy to construct a sandwich for their child. How about, if you’re too busy to make your kid a sandwich, you probably don’t deserve to be a parent?
I may buy the “I have a hard time not eating the whole bag” excuse. But the “I’m too busy?” There aren’t enough rolling-eyes smileys for that one.
Excellent points all. Good grief people! Whats it to ya if someone decides that the time saved is worth the higher price? Sheesh, there are some very petty, childish and judgmental attitudes being displayed here.
I buy some convenience items, I also spend at least one day a week cooking in bulk and freezing for the workweek ahead. I buy fruits and veggies to chop and place in snack bags (OH shame on ME!!! I could rinse and re-use those, but I’m lazy, irresponsible, selfish and stupid, I just buy new ones!). And I buy frozen lean cuisines too. So sue me. And while you’re at it, get enough of a life that you’re not so all-fired worried about what other people are buying and eating.
As to the “lazy” part. Hmmm, I work one full time job, volunteer for Habitat, work a part time job as a PE instructor at a local college, and work out at the gym on my own. Then there are the family members and friends that I socialize with and sometimes help (for instance, my sister owns horses, I frequently find myself unloading hay, or worse). Yeah, I’m bone lazy.
Actually, I work hard. At my normal job I go out into the cold and investigate contaminated sites, or sample monitoring wells, or travel to remote sites to assist in various environmental clean-ups. At the university, I sweat it out teaching a 2 hour dance class at the university, or doing aqua aerobics. It’s MY sweat (or freezing cold ass) on the line, so why do some of you care what I do, or what others do, with our money regarding our snacks? I have earned, by the literal sweat of my brow, the right to rest, treat myself, take a break, sit down five minute earlier, or so on if I feel like it. And if that break comes in the form of a convenience meal, so what?
It’s not costing you anything. In fact, none of what others choose to do with their own hard-earned money affects you. If it did, then I might then agree, but otherwise I find this need to insult and control others’ grocery shopping habits mind-boggling.
Seriously, to re-package what one of you said "…I’ve never heard people so vociferously and venomously defend their God-given right to pay more for less and love every second. I can’t believe that not one person has responded something to the effect of “yeah, I know I really shouldn’t be so lazy and wasteful with my money.”
To that, I have this to say " I’ve never heard people so vociferously and venomously defend their God-given right to decide for someone else what is lazy and what is wasteful. I can’t believe that not one person has responded something to the effect of "yeah, I know I really shouldn’t be telling others what they should do with their money, or what constitutes “being lazy and wasteful”.
The only way paying two extra dollars to save yourself a minute’s worth of work is not stupid is if you make $120 an hour.
I really like the way you made the exact same point six times in the space of seven paragraphs. Kudos!
ETA: if any of this sounds angry, it’s not. I’m actually trying hard not to laugh and make the people at work look at me funny.
Wow.
As someone who is frequently an asshole with extreme prejudice, this thread is really full of super-assholery. Carry on.
-Joe
The Oreo 100 calorie packs are teh awesome!
Last night I ate, like, about twelve of them after having sex with hawksgirl’s boyfriend. I’m not sure of the exact number because it was so dark… the bank cut off my power when they foreclosed my house. Why, I could barely even read Wansink and Cheney’s article in the copy of the Journal of the American Medical Association I had curled up with.
Anyone else as turned on as I am right now?
-Joe
Read “too busy” as shorthand for “I don’t want to spend my time on that, I’m fine with the financial trade-off.” I used to drive out to a far-off Aldi to get cheap staples, then to a supermarket to get other packaged foods not available there, then to a local produce store (completely the other direction) to get cheap produce, then to Trader Joe’s to get cheaper “luxury” food items, the trips to Costco to stock up on bulk items, and so on…
Well screw that. I spend 12 hours a day at work plus in the commute and my time, especially on weekends, is more important to me than what little I’d save on food by driving all over and not to mention wasting money on gas. Even if I just spend that time sitting on my ass and posting to the SDMB or playing video games; it’s my time and I get to decide where to spend it.
There are a lot of ways that people use “convenience foods” without even thinking about it. For chicken, lots of people buy boneless skinless chicken breasts. You could say it’s cheaper to buy bone-in, skin-on chicken breasts. Or a half-chicken. Or a whole chicken - uncooked, of course. But what if you only wanted the breasts? Or what if you know that you want something convenient to throw in a pan when you get home, and that you’d rather pay a little extra per pound for someone else to do the work of separating the parts and deboning?
Buying sliced bread is buying a convenience food.
Buying bread is buying a convenience food.
Buying sliced deli meat is buying a convenience food.
Buying salad dressing is buying a convenience food.
Buying soup is buying a convenience food.
Buying sausage is buying a convenience food.
Buying a dead chicken is buying a convenience food.
Got the picture? It’s all a matter of priorities, and everyone has different ones, and often one can’t understand someone else’s.
Plus, you are often getting a different product in those 100-calorie packs. You do not get an Oreo and a half, you get several mini-cookies that are plumped up. This is a tactic that helps fool your brain into thinking you have more of a snack. The book cited by Interrobang?! (which is based on the articles cited by ForumBot) shows how everyone gets screwed up by misperceptions of food portions/healthiness/etc., even when they claim they’re too smart for that - the researcher who wrote the book even cited at least one real-life case where he was suckered in.
This statement, and the variety of other statements saying that people are stupid to buy 100 calorie packs, shows the rampant ignorance of basic economics in our society. It’s a question of opportunity costs, the things you forgo in order to do something else. With a limited amount of time, every thing someone does means that he or she cannot do something else. Since every person has different preferences, each person will make different choices about how he or she spends time. There is no “right” way to make those choices. So if someone prefers to do something else rather than bagging cookies and he or she wants to pay for someone else to do it, then that’s not a wrong decision.
In fact, almost all of us do it to some extent. Very few people actually make their own cookies, and if they do most of them probably do not make them from scratch. There is very little difference between buying a package of Chips Ahoy cookies instead of baking your own and buying a 100 calorie pack of Oreos instead of a regular package of Oreos. Both decisions are made using the same rationale – paying extra for someone else to prepare the food for you.
Your preferences are not the same as someone else’s. How you spend your money makes sense for you. How someone else spends her money makes sense for her. One is not “right” and one is not “wrong.” Thinking in those terms is idiotic.
I say this as someone who doesn’t buy 100 calorie packs and who is extremely cheap. But I know that I do this not out of some inherent sense of being correct but because, for me, this lifestyle works. If it doesn’t work for other people, it doesn’t mean they are either stupid or lazy. It just means they have different preferences.
Oh, come now, that’s not an accurate portrayal at all, and I actually am in the “yeah, it’s a waste of money, but it’s people’s own money to waste…” camp. But if you’re going to start throwing numbers around, it sure does take more than “a minute” to bag up a dozen bags of any snack, and it would even if I didn’t have toddlers wrapped around my legs begging for cookies every time they hear cellophane crinkle. It would take me around 10-15 minutes, from getting the baggies to opening the packaging of the original, counting out, opening and resealing baggies, and putting them away in an orderly fashion in the pantry. I get paid $10 an hour for babysitting. That’s almost 17 cents a minute, or $1.70 - $2.55 for a 10-15 minute job. Now add in the aforementioned stress of telling toddlers “no” eleventyhundred times (after giving them one cookie each, 'cause I’m not *that *mean) and listening to them wail…and yeah, we’ve about broken even.
Plus, of course, your reasoning breaks down if you ackowledge the fact that’s been pointed out several times in the thread: THEY’RE NOT OREOS!!! You can’t buy the Oreo cracker like things that are in the 100 calorie pack in a bulk quantity! (Or at least I’ve never seen them anywhere. If you find them, let me know!) If I’m in my right-eating mind, and you offered me 1 2/3 Oreo cookies or 20 Oreo-like cookie cracker thingies, I’d take the later, whether it came in a single serve pack or a Costco sized case.
ETA: :smack: Oh. Hey. Lookee - a second page! How’d *that *get here? 
kinky. 
The author of the book quipped that the only thing more predictable than how easily people are fooled is how adamant they will be that they’re too smart to be tricked.
I’ll pay for convenience if I choose to. I don’t spend that much on other things so if I choose to have a 75 cent snack at work, I damn well will. My income more than supports it and…you know what fuck it. I don’t need to explain myself and why I choose to spend my money the way I do.
You know why they aren’t available? Because there’s no incentive on nabisco to make them, because people are content to waste their money on small quantities. People shoot themselves in the financial foot but hey, it’s your own foot to shoot, right?
I fail to see how her comment is somehow less hyperbolic than forecasting that someone’s going to lose their house because they spent money on a cookie you don’t want to eat.
They are available in bulk. I don’t know where Mom found them (or what the price comparison would be), but she gave me a box full of those little packs. They’re not Oreos, but they’re a great snack when you just want to nibble on something.
It’s more about throwing one’s money away on unjustifiable expenses, which seems all the rage nowadays, really.