Are Stickers on Fruit Driving You Mad?

Am I the only one who's sick and tired of having to peel off all the stickers on apples, pears, peaches, etc.? What is it with these sticker-happy produce managers? Some red delicious organic apples have three stickers on them.

The stickers do not come off easily. Usually they are pressed on so firmly that you must peel them off very, very slowly and meticulously, lest you end up getting glue and moist paper residue stuck good on the fruit. If I want to buy 10 red delicious organic apples, I must spend time peeling stickers off, sometimes two per apple. Usually, glue residue remains.

So that when I wash the apples, I must rub hard all over them, since I never know exactly where the sticker remnants and residue are located. This is a royal pain in the ass.

I was at King Soopers grocery chain store recently, selecting red delicious organic apples. They all had a sticker on them identifying the apple type, and that they were organic. But then, they all had a second, different sticker on that said organic. This second sticker was on twice, on some of the apples, bringing the total sticker count to three for some of the red delicious apples.

I pointed this out to two produce employees nearby. One of them said that the second "organic" sticker was there because the checkers were not inputting into the cash register that the apples were organic. The second type of sticker would remind them to.

I asked why not just tell the checkers to pay more attention? The man slowly shook his head and said, "That doesn't work."

Really? Are YOU a checker who doesn't pay attention to what the sticker says?

Besides, the stickers aren't necessary. I remove all of them before I bring my organic fruit up to the checkout. I tell the checker what I have. She sometimes knows by memory what to input into the cash register. Otherwise, she'll simply look it up on some list that's posted on the machine or near it, and then input the information. No big deal.