Liq Me The Wrong Way

Just down the street from the house is a little neighborhood liquor store. It’s the second outpost of one of my longtime favorite liquor stores (yup, I drink a lot. Sue me.). The odd thing is, the two stores are only located about 9 blocks apart.

Today, I was searching for several bottles of a local vodka (Tito’s—delicious) to put in some gift bags for visiting dignitaries. The original location of the liquor store was out of the small ones, but said the other location (on my way home—but then, isn’t a liquor store always on my way home?) had some in stock.

Ninety seconds later I’m standing in the vodka aisle of the second store, grabbing the aforementioned bottles. Then I noticed that the price was $1.50 higher per bottle than at the first store.

Now, normally, I’m not cheap. In fact, I’m probably a little irrational when it comes to that. I actually take issue with people who penny nitpick.

But this struck me as quite odd, so I inquired.

“The rent is higher in this location,” said the Asian surfer-dude in his best SoCal accent. “But I can give ‘em to you at the same price as the other location.”

“Cool, bra!” I said (not really, but I wanted to), “Thanks.”

Now, I’ve shopped in a lot of places. I’ve shopped at a lot of chains. And generally, in my experience, the cost of an item is consistent between locations of the same store. So WTF? Now what am I supposed to do?

Do I stop going to this “chain” altogether? Do I drive the extra nine blocks to the original store to take advantage of their lower rent? Or should I just get really drunk on the gift vodka and black the whole thing out?

Surely it’s five o’clock somewhere.