I shop at Rainbow Foods because it’s close by and the only other grocery stores around are either super expensive Lunds and Kowalski’s or hippy natural organic Co-Ops. Every few months Rainbow has some promotions contest where you get little scratch off tickets to win free groceries or whatever and this time around they’re doing a Monopoly game. Awesome! I enjoy games and winning stuff and I shop at Rainbow anyway.
There’s just one problem. It’s not Monopoly. It’s not a game. It’s hell.
First off. The board isn’t a Monopoly board. It’s not a square, no passing go, collecting yada yada. I know they’re not going to be an exact replica of the Monopoly board but even the McDonalds game makes the pieces look like the property squares. On the Rainbow game you get a ticket –
you get one for shopping there an extras if you buy specially marked items.
Tear off perforations on both sides and open it up and you get four slips –
Right side: Four “game pieces” that have some grocery item on them. Left side: Shitty $0.25 coupon for some thing you’ll never buy like single serving frozen french fries.
Each game piece has a letter (A-Z) and a number. You find where each of your tickets goes on the 107 possible spots on the board, lick the back of the piece and place it there.
The back side of the board is covered in places to put game pieces, too. You have to look all over both sides and usually you just find that you’ve already filled the spot that piece goes to.
The only thing that even relates this game to Monopoly is that the Monopoly guy is on the board, you’ll spend hours “playing” it and you’ll end the game frustrated and angry. Honestly, though they could have as easily just called it Jenga or Twister.
There’s plenty of great prizes to win, though. A $250,000 “dream home”. 25 grand in cash, 5 grand in groceries. There’s also plenty of shitty prizes available, too, like $5.
They had the Monopoly game last summer, too and I played. I got the board, a bunch of tickets and put them all in. I usually just waited until I had like 50 of them because I was lazy and spent the better part of an hour finding the right place for the 200 game pieces. I won two dollars. When I brought it in to get my sweet reward the cashier said that I was like the third person to ever come in with a winning board and the other two people were two dollar winners as well.
What’s even worse is that I’m playing again. Of course I am. I’ve got a pile of tickets just waiting to be licked –
Looks like I know what I’m doing all afternoon.
That’s not even all of them. I usually shove them in my pockets when I leave the store an forget about them. Find them 2 hours later at home and just put them on the nearest flat surface. On the bright side looking for them will give me an excuse to clean the place.
So that’s what I’ll be doing. Licking dozens of ticket backs and placing them on a game board like a goddamn factory worker thinking of ways this game could be even less fun. Here’s what I’ve come up with so far –
*Put something on the back of the tickets to make it taste bad like fish oil.
*Instead of pictures of grocery products on the tickets have pictures from concentration camp prisoners.
*All the coupons that come with the game pieces are for sardines.
Off to work! I’ll let you know if I win anything (of course I’m not going to win anything).
