How do I loathe thee, Bill? Give me a diet pepsi and I shall not count the ways...

Today was book sell-back day for me. For those of you who are not familiar with the U.S. university policy of book buy-back, let me explain it for you.

1. At the beginning of the semester, professors give you a list of textbooks that you must purchase for their class. These textbooks usually are not used for anything but taking up backpack space and the occasional paperweight, but they are essential for answering answers 3, 17, 25, and 47 of your 50-question multiple-choice test and therefore must be had.

2. You go to the bookstore and spend an exorbitant, unfair amount on these books. Having the cheaper 6th edition of your international affairs textbook is of no use to you. Only the $150 7th edition will do.

3. At the end of the semester you are allowed to go back to the bookstore and "sell" your books back. You are basically getting the amount you would get if you sold the book to a recycling center for the paper. They buy your book back for $20 dollars and then sell it for $90. Great deal for them. But there are very few other options.

So, today I took my 3 textbooks and got a whopping total of $17 for them. That's lunch for Jenna and me at One Stirfry. At least I didn't have to pay for them in the first place. I was just thinking to myself how much I hate Bill's Bookstore when my little cashier person said, "There's candy up on the counter for you. And you get a free drink. Mountain Dew, Pepsi, or Diet Pepsi?"

Suddenly, my hatred of Bill's dissolved into nothing. How sweet are they? They're giving me a free drink. My head tried to argue.

Free drink my foot. They just made probably $75 dollars off of you. It's like someone giving you the CD player out of the new car you just gave them.

You have tootsie rolls!? And the vanilla ones. My favorite.

Go ahead. Give them your Polish history book for $1.50. You just bought $1.50 worth of bluebooks this morning. They haven't lost anything. Except their souls. Those punks.

I'll definitely be shopping at Bill's in the fall.

Somehow my italicized conscience was overcome by the diet pepsi in my hand. It's sitting in the fridge at work. That thing made my day. I can do nothing but praise Bill's marketing skills. That is until the fall when I curse them again. They'd better keep those pepsis stocked.