One smoked cheese

For a bit of fun, my partner and I decided to add a cheese selection box to our food shop. A dissection on what I regard to be fun is outside the scope of this blogpost, but nevertheless I was looking forward to having a selection of cheeses to enjoy over the next week or so. Behold, as I describe the contents of the cheese selection:

• Six edam slices
• Three camambert wedges
• Two mature cheddar sticks
• Two soft cheese tubs
• One austrian smoked cheese

I have a couple of things to say about this selection. Firstly, my astute readers will note that this adds up to a total of 14 individually wrapped cheese. I am not normally one to complain about 16.7% increase in my expected cheese yield, and I'd rather not give off the opinion that I am an ungrateful bastard, but this clear lack of a prescribed amount of cheeses in the box clearly feeds into the second glaring issue with this picture.

Finally, onto the point which I am sure even the most disinterested of you have picked up on. One smoked cheese. If the title of this post did not give it away, this has gotten me quite miffed. I don't take it personally, of course, I am sure whatever machine or underpaid worker they have sorting these cheeses held no malice for me. In fact, I am quite certain that it is with a great amount of disinterest they managed to place one smoked cheese into this selection box and, as if to pad the figures, threw in six edam slices for good measure. Edam is a fine cheese, but if I had been given one edam slice and six smoked cheeses this post would have a wildly different tone. It would likely have no tone at all in fact, I would be too busy enjoying my smoked cheeses to even consider writing anything at all.

The problem with this runs much deeper than cheese. Everywhere I look, I see gambling becoming more and more baked into daily life. In India, they are turning train tickets into lottery tickets to combat fare evasion, and in Canada a paper from the University of British Columbia explores how probabilstic rewards for recycling are more effective than flat rewards. Clearly, humans have a clear draw towards a gamble. But I don't want a gamble on my cheeses. Furthermore, why do I have to buy these little cheeses in a gacha box? They're all individually wrapped anyway, so why can't I just buy the cheeses I want in a pick-and-mix style selection. The answer, of course, is that it would make it harder for these companies to slap their big branding on the box and charge a premium for 'fun'.

In future when I want a smoked cheese, I'll just buy a whole one.