Yesterday I stopped in at Target and Walmart to check out their post winter season sales – usually this week is the week that a lot of things go on clearance.  I wouldn’t go out of my way to do this (since staying out of stores if you don’t need something is a better strategy for saving money than being tempted by sales), but they were both on my way home from where I was, I needed to buy a new garbage can for the kitchen, I  had a gift card for Target, and so it seemed like a good time!

I was happy to find an adorable hand painted metal menorah – it’s a Noah’s ark with four  kinds of animals, two of each animal, each on a spring.  It looks exactly like this and is so cute!  And it was marked down 75%.  But there was no price on it.  When I took it to the checkout, the cashier scanned it and told me it was $30.  I said it was marked 75% off and she said that was the reduced price.  At times like these you can’t help but wonder if people have lost their ability to think.  It would have to be $120 retail to be reduced to $30, which clearly was way beyond its value.  But all I said was that I thought $30 matched its retail value and was probably the original price, so she took it to the  manager to get it marked with the reduced price.

She came back and told me it was 8.95, which was fine with me in terms of it being a good buy.  But because I thought it was supposed to be 75% off, I asked to clarify how they determined the price, and she told me that the price she told me was 75% off the original price.  I said that I believed 7.50 was seventy-five percent of thirty.  She insisted that they used a calculator to figure out the price.  I pleasantly told her again that it was 7.50.  She clearly wasn’t as confident of her math skills as I was of mine (for good reason :D), so she called the manager over and explained to him that I thought the price wasn’t figured out right.  It took him a minute to say out loud, ‘Half of thirty is fifteen, half of fifteen is 7.50 – yea, she’s right.”  I know Walmart isn’t paying people to think independently, but it’s still somewhat disturbing that two adults couldn’t work this out together just by thinking, let alone not being able to do it with the help of a calculator.

I got this since all of our kids light menorahs from the age of five and up, so I’m thinking ahead about ds3.  Maybe we’ll give it to him next year, even though he’ll only be four.  When we give a menorah, it’s the first gift we give on the first night to that child, so they can use it right away.  I showed it to all the older kids, who thought it was adorable.  It’s part of the fun for everyone that they each get their own unique menorah to light, and they all enjoy seeing the variety of menorahs when we unpack them each year.  Now they’ll get to anticipate their younger brother’s excitement next year when we give this to him.

This is the third menorah that I bought at the end of the season in the past three years for our kids – it’s an affordable way to get each child something much nicer than a cheap tin menorah!  By the way, this menorah retails online for $45 – 50, so this was really an amazing buy!

Avivah