Why I hate Safeway, part II

Long time readers of this blog may remember a post from two years ago called Why I hate Safeway. Of the many reasons, one was:

I can't buy 2 bloody pounds of ground beef!! Here are my choices for ground beef: 560 grams or 1.14 kg. What the fuck?? Every recipe on the planet calls for an even pound of ground beef. ONE pound. Not 1 1/3. Not 2 1/2. Of course the beef is also packed in a giant shrink-wrapped styrofoam container to maximize the environmental destruction coefficient of the product.

Even the recipe on their own packaging calls for one pound of meat, fer Christ's sake:

Well, I was desperate for ground beef the other day and didn't have time to go anywhere else, so I ended up in the Dangerway meat department. The meat guy (I won't call him a butcher because I think the meat is actually butchered in a factory in Ontario) was out stocking the ground beef, so I had to ask him: "Why don't you package the meat in one pound increments?"

His answer: when they moved to larger containers, one pound of ground beef looked too small, so they made a decision to add more beef so the containers would look fuller.

Really? That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard (while shopping at Safeway.) Why not just buy smaller containers? I can just imagine the conversation in the Safeway board room:

Director of meat: Uh, hey ... we have a little problem with our ground beef packaging ...

VP of marketing: What do you mean?

Director of meat: You know that retarded kid that we hired to fill our "special needs" quota? Ya, well ... I thought it might be kinda fun to put him in charge of reordering our meat trays, and, uh ...

VP of marketing: You did what???

Director of meat: Well, I just though he would bang on some keys and have fun, but somehow he ended up locking us into a 30 year contract with the Giant Styrofoam Tray Company. Our 1 lb meat trays are big enough to hold 5 lbs of meat. What do we do?

VP of marketing: Jesus Christ, Ben. This is a bigger screw-up than the time you ordered grain-fed chicken from Canada instead of factory chicken from Mexico. I guess we only have one choice: put more meat in the package so it looks fuller.

Director of meat: But won't people eat more than they need and get fatter?

VP of marketing: Well yeah, but the fatter they are the more they'll eat, right? Plus we'll also sell more. It's a win-win! Boy am I smart ...

*****

I've been a little busy lately, by the way. I had the above post mostly done already and just threw it out there to let you know I'm still alive. Will be back next week. In the mean time, BBQ yourself some extra large burgers and enjoy the weekend.