The light bulbs in the safe

Shop til you don't drop the light bulb!

The small grocery store in town offers a range of products far beyond its very limited shelf space.

A wide range of garden tools, an impressive selection of home improvement products, including tools, blinds and paints. Clothing, bedding and speciality foods round out the offerings.

They achieve this by doing specials.

One week of craft tools, one week of camping equipment, a week of winter clothing, you get the idea.

This is also the time to buy speciality foodstuffs like Korean rooster sauce and peanut butter. Yes, peanut butter is a speciality food item in Germany.

The prices on the special offers are always substantially lower than in the bigger markets a town or two over. Consequently, they sell out fast.

The specials go on sale every Monday morning.

Strange enough, we noticed that some of the items advertised for two weeks prior to the sale on man-sized posters on the store wall don't show up.

When we really want one of the specials, we go early on Monday morning between 8 and 9 AM, but we are out of luck.

Is that how retailers game their sales in Germany?

That's what we thought until today.

In line at the checkout, the woman in front of us has only a couple of items and is done quickly, and then she pops a question: Can you tell me where the LED bulbs are?

The cashier looks up: "Oh, they are not out yet. The store manager decided to lock them up in the safe until Monday. When we put them out on Saturday, they are gone so fast, people come in first thing on Monday, and we are out."

The customer thanked her, took her two items and left.

There was our explanation. The store puts out the specials of the following week just before closing time the Saturday before. That's when the savvy German shoppers sneak in and help themselves to the goodies.

Resting assured that the new batch of LED bulbs is sitting safely in the store manager's safe, we'll be up early on Monday morning.

The nagging question until then will be: Should we mentally prepare ourselves to fight little old ladies for discount LED light bulbs on Monday morning, or should we give them a half hour's head start?

Questions, questions.