Ridiculous things: comparison shopping

It’s a tight economy for almost everyone out there, so it’s time to shop like we were taught in Home Economics.

In Home Ec– oh yes, I’m old, some of you didn’t take Home Ec. Some of you did, but the other half of the year was Shop. I’m sorry, Technology Education. Look, I’m old. Deal.

Anyway, in the first semester of 7th grade, we had to go grocery shopping for a family of 4 for the week with something like $20 [1]That was just meals, I’m not so old that $20 would also cover toilet paper, cleaning supplies, etc.. A key part of making sure that your family could eat for a week was learning about unit pricing — the “comparison price” that some states make mandatory for shopping.

Now that I’ve gotten the context squared away, let’s look at some unit pricing.

Two rows of towels, with five colors in each row, representing the colors you can buy and when they would be delivered. each color also includes the unit price, which is usually by count, i.e. if it's a pack of 8 towels, they cost $2/count. But some of them are using the unit price of ounces, as in 8 towels will cost you $66 per ounce.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t usually buy my towels by the ounce. “Oh salesman, can you please cut me eleven ounces of wash cloths?” No. Never been done.
Two products from a supermarket: a cortland apple and sweet cherries. The cortland apple shows a mostly red attractive looking apple and says that cortland apples average 0.42lb. they are being sold for $0.96 each -- and it notes 1 each ($2.29/lb) so that you can estimate how many apples you need and their price. The sweet cherries aren't actually sold by the pound, a fact that is not noted in the image but which me must assume based on the rest of the information. The picture shows two perfect ripe red cherries with stems still attached. The sweet cherries average 2.33lb per unit purchased. But the things get weird. They are listed as $26.31/each or $11.29/lb.
Either those cherries are the size of basketballs or someone is playing fast and loose with what comparable units are.
Screenshot of a grocery shopping site. Heading is cherries (view all). Three images of products are shown with descriptions below. Each photo is a clear plastic bag containing cherries. We can buy Golden Cherries, sold by the Each at $11.49 each, Sweet Cherries, Sold by the Each, at $7.86 each, or Organic Cherries, at $12.14 each so presumably also sold by the each.
I just love the way “sold by the each” rolls off the tongue and I predict that a salesperson actually trying to pitch these (which doesn’t happen in supermarkets) would be slurring it into “these are by theeeach” by the end of the week.

This is your reminder that the content of your website is only as good as what you’ve got coming in the door from the people providing the stock — and whoever was given the job of doing the data entry.

I did plenty of temp work in my time where I was asked to enter data for a set of products, but nobody told me what they look liked or how they were packaged. With the minimal supervision often given to college students on temp work jobs, it’s easy for mistakes to be made. Is that what happened in these circumstances? I haven’t a clue.

I do enjoy believing that there’s somene out there preferring their towels be cut by the ounce and their cherries be the size of watermelons, however, so I’m holding to the concept that if it’s in print on the internet, it must be true. [2]Offer only available for shopping interfaces. Your local laws may vary.

Notes

Notes
↑1 That was just meals, I’m not so old that $20 would also cover toilet paper, cleaning supplies, etc.
↑2 Offer only available for shopping interfaces. Your local laws may vary.

Author: Anne Gibson

anne gibson is a freelance UX Designer, Content Strategist, and General Troublemaker from outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She's an editor and writer at The Interconnected. She is also published at A List Apart and The Pastry Box, and publishes short fiction when she's not persuading the terriers to stop wrecking things. (The terriers are winning.)