Unaware Customers at Supermarkets

Beware!!!

Last night I went to the (expensive, ex-pat) grocery store right next to school to get a few things to make dinner on Friday night. When I buy cheese, mayonnaise, or anything else non-Asian, I have to go to one of these stores, as I usually do all other shopping at our local wet market.

I chose some ricotta, some mozzarella, some wine and other ingredients. When I paid, it was S$156. That was about $50 more than I had expected, so I stood there checking the receipt for a few minutes. While a sign next to the ricotta said $8 (which I thought was outrageous), they charged me $16.95. The mayonnaise that I thought was $6.25 was $11.40. The wine that I thought was $21.95 (I'm cheap - wine here is EXPENSIVE!) was actually $40.30. There were others. I called the manager over, and I walked him through the store with me to see all of the price inconsistencies. Some were mismarked, but most of them actually were products placed RIGHT behind another product's price. I complained like an entitled American. I did get a better price for the ricotta, but the rest I just returned. Had I not checked my bill, I would have been charged WAY more! So unethical (and I told them that!).

In other news, before the negative shopping experience, I had a great night at INSEAD. We had the Minister of Industry and Trade come to speak to us about what's going on in Singapore. Smart guy. Then we did a case study of Alstom, where the President/CEO turned the entire company around in three years. While we do stuff like this all the time, this time was unique, because the guy who headed the changes (the Pres/CEO) was THERE and gave us his perspective/experiences. It was really neat.

I am currently IN my most horrible (and really only horrible) class at INSEAD. I have not learned anything new - as we have covered the same topics in other classes, and in all other classes we have gone more deep into them. I should not be blogging in class, but I give myself permission since it's such a horrible class. I could go on forever about how horrible this class is and why, but I will not. Just one example. Today we have three groups present our final projects for the class. We received an email at 12:30 am that our group will be presenting FIRST at 8:30 this morning. I think that is totally ridiculous. I just heard that the prof even asked one of the groups to change some things in their presentation - between 12:30 am and 8:30 am. What a joke.