I was raised with Zesta Saltine Crackers, have eaten them all my life, and we always sold them in our country store when I was growing up. I had always thought they were the best saltine crackers I had ever eaten and nearly always bought them unless a store I was in had none of that brand. But this week, I got a serious surprise and another example of what is known as "Shrinkflation" and/or "Skimpflation" since major corporations began cutting back during and after the Covid pandemic on the goods and services they provide. What happens is that packages get smaller, less comes in a container, prices go up, and the end stage customer is always the one who loses in the long run. I have previously written about "Skimpflation" and "Shrinkflation" on this blog. But I got a real surprise this week when I bought Zesta Saltine Crackers which are owned and produced by Kellog's.
I brought home two boxes of the crackers and opened one last night to have a few as a snack before bedtime. The boxes are the same size they have always been. But when I opened the box, I was somewhere between surprised and shocked to see two and one half inches of free space between the ends of the sleeves of crackers and the end of the box. Yes, I actually got out my tape measure and measured the empty space in the box. I even opened the second box of crackers today to verify that it was also short on crackers and big on air. It is! The company didn't change the size of the box. They just stopped filling it up to capacity with crackers. The boxes are 9" x 4" x 4" for a total of 144 cubic inches of crackers. When you multiply the missing 2 1/2" of free space at the end of 4 sleeves of crackers you find that you are paying for 40 cubic inches of crackers which you are not getting. You are actually paying for 40 cubic inches of air which you can normally breath for free in most places in the world. Believe it or not, that is 27.7% of a box of crackers which does not contain any crackers.
This is, perhaps, the worst example of "Skimpflation" and "Shrinkflation" I have seen since the pandemic began. It is definitely a shining example of what those two new aspects of corporate greed are all about. Since the pandemic began, many major store chains, including Kroger, Wal Mart, Dollar General and others have decided to make their customers work for them without pay by installing self checkout lanes, getting rid of many of the employees who needed their jobs the worst, and making record profits. Gasoline companies and the store chains which sell their fuel have artificially driven up the price of gasoline products to rates never before seen in America. And, you can bet your ass, they are already working on other ways to charge you more, give you less, and induce you to work for them for nothing while trying to convince you they are doing you a favor every time they use "Skimpflation" and "Shrinkflation" to steal money out of your pockets. Anytime you see one of these things happening to you and every other customer in America, make a phone call, send an e-mail, tell your friends, confront corporate greed which is what all of this is about.
