Gambling for money is a bad career choice for me

Doing some quick snacky shopping tonight (pint of milk, pint of strawberry milk, reduced price quart of chocolate milk, bismark filled donut, and a roast beef sandwich from the deli case) I discovered again why I need to stay away from gambling.

I just don't learn!

In the past 6 or 8 months, I have been beguiled to buy a carton of chocolate milk that had a hugely reduced price sticker on it because it was its very "sell by" date. The first time, it was a half-gallon in Safeway, and when I got it home, it was weirdly sour. I mean it was foul and I severely regretted putting it in my mouth.

A while later, I saw another half-gallon of chocolate greatly reduced at Safeway. I picked it up, but this time I asked at the checkout if I could try it right there because the last one I had bought like this was foully sour. The checker said yes, and Yechh!!! It was foul again!! At least that time I got my money back because it was still there in the store.

So tonight, months later in a completely different store, a completely different brand of chocolate milk, and even a different size: 1 quart instead of 1 half-gallon; still, you know what happened: it was foul!!! I just threw it away again.

But I've got to remember: don't buy chocolate milk after the sell by date. It goes foul. Maybe it's just me picking it up just then, but whatever the proximate cause, the result is foul, foul, foul after the sell by date.

Fortunately, not everything works that way. Many products at least taste wholesome at their sell by date and immediately afters.

But not chocolate milk, not for me.