Oh, Four The Love Of Beer!

(I have been planning to restart my old hobby of beer-making. One commercial beer brand uses a type of mechanical top that eliminates the need for the common bottle cap. For this reason, it’s popular with home-brewers. It’s not a common beer, so I’m delighted to find that a local liquor store carries it. I buy two four-packs of it and a few weeks later return for more. This time, though, I can’t find any four-packs on the shelf.)

Me: “Where are the four-packs of [brand]? I’d like to get a pack of them.”

Clerk: “Hmm.” *hunts around* “Sometimes we have packs of it over here, but apparently, we are just selling singles. No packs.”

Me: “You don’t have the boxes they come in?”

Clerk: “No.”

Me: “Strange. Just a couple of weeks ago I got some four-packs of it.”

Clerk: “Oh, yeah, the guy who did that got in a lot of trouble for that.”

(I’m doubting this a lot. He used a barcode scanner on what I bought just like everything else.)

Me: “Well, okay. I don’t mind paying for them individually.”

(I grab four from the shelf and return to the counter and put them down one at a time for her to scan.)

Clerk: *realizing that four single large beers are awkward to carry without a container* “I can give you a carrier for those. Do you want it to be the same brand as the beer?”

Me: “Yes, that would be nice.”

(I have been a reader of this site for years, so I just knew what was about to happen. The clerk crossed the room, moved four cases of beer from a stack to get to the case at the bottom which was my preferred beer brand. She opened it, pulled out a four-pack, walked over to the singles shelf, transferred the contents to the shelf and returned triumphantly to the counter and put my four singles into it. We were right back to square one, with the four-pack I wanted to buy.)