Not every offer has a catch

A shopper in a supermarket in Kuwait City stops at the end of an aisle where washing powder is stacked in a pyramid. Two large boxes, taped together, for less than the price of one and a half. She picks up the bundle, turns it over, reads every line of the small print, checks the date on the bottom, compares the weight with the single box on the shelf behind. Ten minutes later she puts it back. Something must be wrong with it.

Nothing was. The design on the box changes next month and the shop wants the old stock gone.

Asking what the catch is makes sense with any offer. Plenty of deals hide something, and asking early saves trouble later. But it can turn into a habit that costs more than it protects. Some good offers are simply good. Treating every one of them as a trap means spending time and attention suspecting things that never needed suspicion, and leaving with less than was on offer.

Three aisles along, the same shopper meets a different display: a bright stand promising a free kitchen gadget with any three packs of a cereal she has never bought. The gadget is shiny, there is a countdown sign, and a few other people are already filling their trolleys. She adds three packs without picking one up to read it. The packs are smaller than the ones she normally buys, and the gadget will live in a drawer.

The question was right both times. She asked it where it was not needed and forgot it where it was.

Suspicion and excitement are both ways of not looking clearly. The useful habit is to ask the question every time, with the same steady attention, and then believe the answer.