Being a disorganised spontaneous sort, I only tend to make it to the local supermarket (Waitrose - there's posh!) just before it shuts. They have a reduced corner for produce close to the sell-by date and pop stuff in there about half an hour before closing time. I love a bargain but the section seems increasingly to be dominated by those I call 'hoggers'.
I was in there on Sunday to be confronted by a married couple poised like Olympic athletes on the starting block for the 100m final. She was wielding a large trolley, which she was using to fend off any other hungry bargain hunters (think lion tamer with chair and whip). He - hands like Nosferatu - had a poor supermarket worker trapped in the corner of the chiller cabinet. She was ineffectually trying to repel him with her sticker gun. Every time she reduced something he literally snatched it out of her hands and threw it into his wife's trolley before it could be placed on the shelf and anyone else have the opportunity to take it. They cleaned out everything in the section (15 packs of pomegranate seeds, 8 pots of watercress, several litres of custard, 35 sausage rolls, soggy lettuce, a year's supply of coleslaw etc etc).
The staff member, eventually freed from their clutches, later returned with one item she'd forgotten to put in the reduced section. The husband jogged across the supermarket floor, grabbed it, and then triumphantly returned to his queen, carrying aloft with both hands a slightly manky head of reduced price broccoli muttering 'ha ha haaaaaaa bwahhhhhhhh bwahhhhhhhhh!' Seriously, he did. It's on CCTV.
Now either sausage roll with pomegranate reduction is Heston's current 'bizarre recipe of the week' at Waitrose, and Mr and Mrs Nosferatu have 15 starving children at home, or they are being greedy buggers who are willing to purchase a bizarre combination of food they won't be able to finish because it's got a reduced sticker on it and is therefore a bargain. Either they are addicted to mini quorn scotch eggs which for some unknown reason never sell at full price, or they are delighted because the hungry and resentful vegans behind them are too weak to wrestle the little orange marbles away from them.
AIBU in thinking it's not a bargain unless it's something you actually want and can form the basis of a balanced and nutritious meal?