HARD BOILED EGGS

                  I go into a grocery store about twice a year, but last week Teresa and I were running some errands and she had to pick up some things so I went in with her.  I always gravitate to the meat counter to look at industrial product, prices, and messaging.

                  I saw a most amazing thing at the egg cooler.  A molded plastic package had three hard boiled eggs cut in half.  The package had six pockets for the halves to nestle in, with a flat plastic covering across the top of the six pockets.

                  They were not deviled eggs, pickled eggs, or anything special.  Just hard boiled eggs.  The price? Nearly $8.  That’s $32 a dozen.  I could scarcely believe my eyes, and kept turning the package around to see if I’d missed something.  No, just hard boiled eggs, 3 for $8.  I wanted to park next to the counter for a couple of days and see who would buy such a thing.

                  If you’re too busy to buy eggs for $6 a dozen and hard boil them yourself, you’re too busy.  At least, that’s my impression.  Then I began envisioning what preparing these eggs for these packages must look like. Who peels them?  Is it done with robotics or is there a long line of people somewhere deep in the bowels of a factory peeling eggs? 

                  Hard boiled eggs are fairly fragile.  Is somebody cutting them in half and then placing them in these pockets?  The thought of paying someone to hard boil and peel eggs for me is incomprehensible.  I’ve done a lot of that in my lifetime.  I could almost live on hard boiled eggs; they’re delicious, nutritious, and one of the easiest things in the world to prepare.

                  Let’s see, if I bought two dozen eggs, I could throw them in a pot on the stove while eating supper.  That might take about two minutes of actual work:  put water in the pot, put the eggs in, place on the stove. After eating my supper, the eggs would be ready to peel.  I’d pour out the hot water, cover them with cold water to shock them and help loosen the shells, then peel them. 

                  As long as they aren’t too fresh, I can peel an egg way under half a minute.  Let’s be crazy slow and say we can peel one in half a minute, which means two dozen in 12 minutes.  We put them in a Tupperware keeper and eat on them for several days.  The whole process took at most 15 minutes.  Let’s see, I took $6 a dozen eggs and a dime of energy, a total of $12.10, and turned it into what someone is buying for $63, which means someone somewhere thinks it’s worth $50.90 for 15 minutes’ work:  what’s that, $203.60.

                  Who pays $203.60 per hour for hard boiled eggs?  Does anyone know someone like that?  Really?  Would you prepare hard boiled eggs for $203.60 an hour?