I know that it may sound a little bit trite and overdone, but sometimes you really do only get what you pay for.  I usually don't happen to have thought cross my mind for important purchases or payments, but sometimes when I least expect it, I realize that when I thought I was getting a deal, it really going to turn out for the worse.  Case in point was just the other day when I went into the store on my day off to go grocery shopping.  There are the usual groceries things that I usually get once a week when I go shopping, you know...milk, bread, breakfast cereal bars, etc.  There are other things like spices, things for baking, condiments, etc. that I keep a little list of next to my cookbooks in the kitchen so I can jot things down as they get low.  It's a good way to remind myself to just grab the list and bring it with me the next time I'm at the store so I make sure I have what I need when I need it.  Last week I made someone homemade spaghetti sauce and a few other things that ended up depleting my supply of extra virgin olive oil, so that was one of the things on my list for groceries for this week.  As I made it to the baking aisle at the grocery store, I was pleased to see that the store brand of olive oil was advertised on sale this week.  That lower price added to the discount I get for purchasing store brand items, and I thought that I was making out like a bandit on this particular item.  When I ended up preparing my dinner later on, I ended up using a little bit of the olive oil, along with some butter in the bottom of my sautee pan.  I didn't notice it at the time, but when I took that first bite of my dinner, all I could taste was the unmistakable flavor of olive oil.  In the right context, this wouldn't be such a bad thing, but it was definitely not what I would have expected.  Any other olive oil that I use has always been just fine.  Thinking that I maybe had made a mistake and put too much olive oil in the pan right off the bat, I decided to hold off and see what happened the next time that I made dinner.  The following night I made it a point to make something that would necessitate me using some olive oil, and once again I had the same outcome to the situation.  I was so irritated.  Not only did I not have olive oil once again, I was going to have to go and spend more money (not to mention a trip to the store) on more oil.  The deal that I thought I was getting actually cost me more than it would have if I had purchased the regular brand on sale in the first place, because I obviously could not return a bottle of partially-used olive oil to the store.  It was on my way back to the store to buy more olive oil that I really got to thinking about this whole "you get what you pay for" thing.  Situations like this whole olive oil thing really help me to support the fact that I refuse to shop at discount stores, closeout stores, and thrift stores.  You never know where things have been, who has used them or owned them, and their individual history.  I like to know that whatever I'm going to spend my money on at a store has not been owned by someone else and has not been tampered with extensively.  I don't mind paying a little bit of extra money just for the confidence that I get in the fact that I purchased something of some level of quality.  You all have heard me complain about how I can't hardly stand even stepping foot into a WalMart, and this is just another reason.  The majority of the products that WalMart sells, outside of the grocery divison I suppose, are really not reliable.  Sure, they have some brand name merchandise that seems to be allright, but some of the no-name brands strike me as a little bit scary altogether.  So I guess that the point of this whole post is to give all of you retail consumers a big heads up to keep your eyes open for deals that are probably too good to be true.  I always tend to be skeptical of seemingly amazing sales for commonplace items, because at that price, someone has got to be cutting corners on labor, production, or quality somewhere along the way.  Be careful!