Welcome to Circle K, eh.

Friday you may recall I was heading out of town to go to my parents for Spring break. There was family business to attend to and I may recap that later, but perhaps not. One of the things I have been tinkering with of late is my recent acquisition of a car GPS to assist me in my travels. Being excessively cheap, I bought a refurbished, discontinued Garmin from TigerDirect.com. I have named her "Sally" and turned it to speak with an English accent. Currently, Sally's maps are 2 years out of date, but an updated set is due to arrive in the next 3-5 days. On Friday I head out early on my way to my parents' and Sally is cheerfully navigating for me. As I near my parents house, i decided to put Sally to the test. Can Sally find a Circle K? You may recall from my January post titled Circle K or Circle Gay? that there's a Circle K on the way to my parents. I leaned over and nudged Sally to tell her to take me to Circle K. Sadly, the Circle K she found is not the same one, so I confused her a little bit. I also confused her when I drove on the new Jacksonville Bypass. Sally began screaming as I appeared to drive off the highway and into the ocean. I went into Circle K and got a wimpy 32 ouch "thirst buster." (I use that term sarcastically.) Then it was back on the road and on to my parents. My beverage was bone dry as I pulled into the driveway. While I was at Circle K I noticed they also sell a large insulated Mug. I know that the deal is that you can refill most anything for 79 cents, so that mug might be a good deal if it is big enough. On closer inspection I saw that the mug was 34 ounces, only 2 ounces larger than the Styrofoam cups you get "free." I asked how much the mug was and I believe she said it was $5 or so. By the time I had arrived at my parents, I had done the math in my head and realized I had either misread or misheard something of Circle K was ripping off a lot of people. If the 32 ounce cup is 79 cents, then your sodas are basically 2 cents an ounce. Since the "thirst buster" mug is only 2 ounces larger than the Styrofoam cups, you basically save 4 cents per fill up of the big mug. The bottom line is you'll have to refill the mug over 100 times to break even. That's 3400 ounces of soda and $79. Something was seriously wrong. On the trip home yesterday I decided I had to stop by again and double check the numbers. I was wrong, but shockingly, I was off in the wrong direction. The mug is actually over $6 with taxes. And refills are 84 cents with taxes. When you add in the fact you have to wash the mug yourself, I really fail to see the benefit. Besides, it won't fit in any cup holder in any car made today. You can't really even hold it between your knees while you drive. While I am laughing to myself as I step to the counter my eyes wander off to the side of the register. I am always amused at the stuff they sell near the registers at grocery stores and convenience stores. This is valuable real estate as customers MUST go by there and they are most likely to make an impulse purchase. Had the guy in front of me not taken 5 minutes to decide which of 9 different brands of smokes he wanted I wouldn't have been lured into an impulse purchase. But the sheer irony forced me to do it.Yes, my friends, standing in a Circle K I was able to land a copy of Bob & Doug McKenzie's Great White North Album. If you'll go back to the previous post I linked to at the top of this post, the irony will slap you across the face. I haven't heard the full album in almost 10 years, and even that was a poor cassette copy of another cassette. And the cassette version didn't have any liner notes like the album did. Thus I was never able to play along with "You are our guest." This CD version has the full liner notes including The Daily Hoser. So Circle K does still gets one major thumbs down for their lack of a manly sized Thirstbuster, and another major thumbs down for trying to rip people off with their "bargain" insulated mug. But if I could borrow someone else's thumb, I would give Circle K a thumbs up for their excellent selection of vintage CD's beside the counter. Or, in Canadian, that would be:I got hosed at Circle K on the drinks, but their music selection is a beauty, eh!