The Rant: A Monday Morning View - Eggs

The rant for this Monday morning will be short. I mean, how much can you say about a boiled egg? So here I go.

Take a good look at the photo above. Do you see what I see?

I can't believe that we can now buy pre-boiled eggs from the dairy case in the grocery store. It's bad enough to think that we have reached the point where we don't have five minutes to boil an egg. Are we serious? We don't have five minutes?

Now, look at the price. Three dollars and thirteen cents (without an MVP card discount) for twelve pre-boiled eggs ! I laughed out loud in the store when I saw it and I'm still astounded.

By now you know me so you know I don't let go of things very easily. Of course I picked up the dozen fresh eggs that I went there to buy and I paid $1.99 for them. Okay, so the grocery chain thinks that five minutes of my time is worth $1.14, the difference in fresh eggs and pre-boiled eggs. According to my math, the grocery store chain is telling me that I could make $13.68 an hour to boil eggs. That's pretty good considering the stove does all the work. I've been looking for work since April so now I'm starting to reconsider where I should be sending my resume.

Now maybe I'm just far too jaded. I'm willing to entertain that idea. Could someone please tell me why you would spend your hard earned gas money and time to drive to a store to buy twelve pre-boiled eggs for $3.13? I would really love to know because I've tried and my imagination just isn't that great. I can't think of any reason why I would be in such a hurry that I wouldn't have time to boil a few eggs. If I'm that busy, I need to hire some domestic help, but hey, I'd expect them to boil my eggs too, not buy them in the dairy case.

I wanted to research the cost of eggs so a quick Google search said I could find it at the bls.gov website. I clicked on the link and here's another strange one - the Bureau of Labor Statistics seems to be my authority on the price of food. I'm serious. Click on the link and see for yourself. The data there tells me the average cost of a dozen Grade A eggs is $1.711 which is up 14.3% from July of 2012. That's all interesting but I'm not sure how much the Bureau of Labor knows about the cost of eggs. I've already told you a dozen fresh raw eggs cost me $1.99.

Well, I guess I've shared enough for today. You're probably thinking I've gone completely mad for even wasting time on this silly stuff. You might be right but if it's madness to think we're being ripped off and stripped of the skills we need to feed ourselves in the name of convenience, then I'm surely headed for the looney bin. But before I go, I'm going to boil me some eggs.

© 2012 Linda Crist, All rights reserved.