This has absolutely nothing to do with gardening. It is a rant about how retailers sometimes feel the need to torment their customers with time-consuming nonsense such as surveys and games. Doesn’t it drive you crazy when you receive a “customer satisfaction survey” after you’ve placed an order? I’ve been getting a lot of those lately.

One particularly annoying time-waster is the current “Monopoly” game at Shaw’s supermarkets. I really like our local Shaw’s and shop there weekly, but my big mistake was getting started on Monopoly, which is a monumental time-suck and incredibly annoying.

Every time you shop at Shaw’s, they give you a little paper packet for each $10 you spend. When you first start “playing” they give you a paper game board, too (pictured above). I should have known I was headed for trouble when I opened the game board and saw all the niggly details on it.

Back to the packets. First you must fold each end and carefully tear the ends so the packet opens. Then you carefully peel open the packet. Next, you carefully separate the four tiny game pieces from the coupon or whatever is on the other half – usually a number for those who are playing the online version, or a coupon for something I would never in a million years EVER buy, like air freshener.

The real fun starts when you try to find the right place to stick your little game pieces. The pieces have numbers and each also has a letter from A to Z. But the corresponding place for each sticker is not  intuitively placed on the game board, so each placement is a search for the proper spot. You must collect and stick all game pieces in a category to win the prize in that category.

Did some MBA at corporate headquarters think that by making us search all over the board to find the spot for a game piece we would subconsciously desire the products whose names we were seeing during the course of our search? That certainly didn’t work with me.

I have been “playing” this for about three weeks, and I am now finding that after spending a half hour or more trying to place those little game pieces, the spots are almost all taken – except for the few remaining ones that I need to collect for the really good prizes like $1 million or a fabulous vacation home. I end up throwing away countless duplicate tickets.

I work full time. I have a life, with a family, a dog and hobbies. I do not have time to sit at my kitchen table looking for spots to place stickers on. WHAT ARE THEY THINKING?????