Go shopping for cheese at the Ballard Fred Myer in Seattle, and you’ll learn an interesting new fact about your food:
The check-er-outer lady looked at it a while and said (without the slightest trace of irony),
“I don’t think cheese is a dairy product.”
Oh. Um. Well. Yes. Um. WHAT?
“No, they don’t consider cheese a dairy product.”
With that newly created fact, the cashier refused to apply a store coupon for dairy products to a package of cheddar slices. When the columnist for The Stranger asked her who “they” are, she replied, “Fred Meyer Corporation.”
The columnist and his coupon-wielding friend saved the coupon for another day and purchased the cheese at full price, but we have a feeling a lot of our readers would not have let Fred Meyer off so easily.
“Cheese: The Totally Other Food Group. Apparently. Maybe From Space!” [The Stranger] (Thanks to everyone who sent this in!)
(Photo of tomato plant: Aine D)
More From Consumerist
-
Washington Residents Have More Booze-Buying Options, But Are Paying More For It
-
Canadians Apparently So Desperate For Cheap Cheese They’re Smuggling It In From U.S.
-
Scientists Discover World’s Oldest Cheese-Making Operation, Turophiles Rejoice
-
Washington Costco Customers Want Canadians To Shop On Their Own Side Of The Border
-
We Live In A World Where This Towering Feat Of Meat, Cheese & Bloody Mary Only Costs $5
There’s a Fred Meyer Corporation?
so what IS it classified as?
Sportage
No, Fred Meyer is now owned by Kroger.
I think TheGoodReverend has it right. I think the coupon is for items sold in the dairy section, not the deli. I have the same coupon, so I know how they work. The cashier scans it, they don’t determine whether it is valid or not. It probably wasn’t accepted in the register/computer as valid for the deli cheese.
Nevertheless the coupon is vague – it says “Save __ on ANY DAIRY PURCHASE.” The cashier should have overriden it and given the discount anyways.
I would have taken the cheese and coupon to the customer service desk and gotten the money there. I’ve had to do that a few times with coupons.
@satoru:
Fred Meyers in Ballard has many things, but none of them are “high end.” This is particularly true for food products. Think k-mart with a grocery store level quality. Remember, this is just a few blocks from where the city of Seattle’s latest city architectural landmark stood- an old abandoned Denny’s restaurant.
Hey guys,
I was a cashier at Publix in my freshmen year of college, and they always distinguished certain types of cheese to be “processed food products,” and not “dairy foods.” Whenever someone would come in with a WIC check (a government-sponsored check) with an order of cheese, I would often have to go back to the aisle with the customer and choose a correct brand of cheese.
Maybe the coupon could only be honored for dairy products, but not processed foods.
Or maybe the cashier isn’t educated, and if that’s the case, it’s sad to make such a big case about it.
I’ve heard of cashiers refusing coupons on “any brand of milk” because the package didn’t say Any Brand milk.
No, you’re right I think the average Consumerist reader would have asked for a manager, raised a stink, refused to buy any groceries or would have stood there waiting and patiently refusing to pay until the coupon was applied.
At least those would be some of the options I would have considered.
Maybe they were talking about Kraft cheese which is mainly made of plastic.
You know you spelled Meyer two different ways in this article?
@Front_Towards_Enemy: Strangely, this reminded me of The Fifth Element:
“Are you classified as Human?”
“Negative: I am a meat popcicle.”
I like that Fred Meyer. As people have said, probably just a dumb cashier.
What about Vegan cheese, made from “Soy Milk” — That is DEFINITELY not dairy in any WHEY, shape or form (Sorry, that pun was too easy)
Well I’ve never seen cheese coming from an utter….
Part of me gives the checker some sympathy, and even admiration, for working a $10 per hour job and still caring enough to try to enforce a rule. The other part of me is a bit amazed that she does not know much about where certain food products come from.
This can be VERY dangerous. If someone who is allergic to dairy actually buys their cheese and suffers a reaction, all they have to say is that it’s not a dairy product.
This would be an interesting social test. Go back and ask. Unwrap the cheese and say, right before you eat it, that you’re highly allergic to dairy and you’re glad to have found a product that isn’t dairy.
Let’s see how they respond.
@NYGal81: Tomatoes are fruit by definition. Because of exporting laws and the like, the government says their vegetables…probably to get more money or something like that.
If it looks like a fruit, tastes like a fruit, and acts like a fruit, it’s still a vegetable.
@GMFish:
The emulsifiers are what make them so useful. Mix in like 1/3 Cheez Whiz or Velveeta with GOOD cheese, and the good cheese will melt and mix almost as well as the Pasteurized Processed Cheese Food Product. And you’ll taste the real cheese, not the Cheez Whiz.
That crap isn’t for use on its own. It is a tool to increase the versatility of other cheeses.
Clearly he was trying to use the coupon to buy fromunda cheese, not a dairy product at all
The cashier some be on the same train of thought as Pringles. Cheese is not a dairy product just like how Pringles are not potato chips!
I used to work at Fred Meyer (in fact just quit for the 2nd time as this time it was a 2nd job and I was growing tired of it) and I also get the rewards rebates (from the store card) in the mail. This is where the “Save $3 on Any Dairy Purchase” coupon is from.
In the store’s defense (don’t get me wrong here, the cashier was stupid) the coupon doesn’t show anything but milk and sour cream, cottage cheese and yogurt in the picture. However, Fred Meyer’s “Dairy” section is 99% of the time dedicated to a WALL of the store (or a major portion of a wall). The cheese (slices, non-cottage) is actually down an aisle with beer and meat.
So what I’m saying is that the coupon may not have even scanned properly in the system with cheese in the order(knowing Fred Meyer’s point of sale system VERY well) but the cashier was retarded to just assume that and be a bitch about it.
That is all.
I’m a vegan so I get mad when they send me crap like this but it’s the same coupons for every one! 
@speedwell: Yes, according to my friend the plant scientist, that is correct.
@Trickery: Sometimes, commentors make stupid complaints about a blog detailing stupid things a cashier said.
Should we get over that as well, or did I just go over your head?
I asked the girl in the deli what kind of cheese they offered for their sub sandwiches.
Figured it was a reasonable question.
I was expecting Colby, Cheeder, Swiss, Provolone etc.
I was told White and Yellow.
Yum.
I bet the Fred Myers cashier was the sister of my deli girl.
You ought to have asked where she thought cheese comes from. You might have gotten some interesting answers!
@mamalicious: So if “dairy” means “things sold in the dairy section,” does that mean eggs could be dairy? That’d be one talented cow.
@linus: There’s no “dairy” allergy, though. There are allergies to milk proteins, and there are deficiencies in the enzyme that digests milk sugar, and there are plenty of “not dairy” products that will cause problems in both situations.
Let me take a stab at this:
Usually gourmet cheeses picked up in the DELI section have to get rung up under the DELI key…..
Us everyday folk buy ours in the dairy section.
@tom2133:
From what I’ve heard, “Government Cheese” is actually quite good. No one is pretending that it is gourmet cheese by any stretch of the imagination, but it reportedly tastes far better than Velveeta and other “pasteurized processed cheese foods”.
@RvLeshrac: “Oh, you ain’t had a grilled cheese sandwich until you’ve had one made with guh-ment cheese. No, not ‘government’ cheese; guh-ment cheese.”
– Steve Harvey
Whether or not it’s because the cheese is from the deli section the cashier saying that they don’t consider cheese a dairy product is…sad.
Yeah, you idiots, don’t you know that contrary to public knowledge, ice cubes are sugary substances, Chex is really just chocolate shavings, and cheese is actually not a real food!
/sarcasm
Hanlon’s razor:
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
@speedwell: botanically speaking all the items you mentioned are fruits: cucumbers, squash, peppers, and green beans.
fred meyer is a bit crazy sometimes… why yes I’d like my hair dye to be on the same shelf as women’s underwear WTF.
but, I really really wish they had a “freddys” in california because they seem to have a bizarrly freakish amout of variety while still not being as low quality as some stores
Cough! (target) Cough! (walmart) Cough!
Cheese at Fred Meyer is sold in the service deli, hanging deli, and natural food sections NOT the dairy section. If you try to get a discount for a coupon that says “10% off all dairy department items” you can’t use that coupon when you buy an item (cheese) from another department. Just like you can’t use a home electronics department coupon for an electronic game from the toy department. It is very simple. The cashier was correct and YOU are wrong.