I ran across this article on Wisebread (a great read, by the way) titled “Frugal Things My Mom Does“, which talks about this ketchup story:
Our kitchen has drawers stocked with drive-thru napkins, straws, plastic silverware, chopsticks, and all variety of other things. But what I find the strangest is the drawer in the refrigerator filled with ketchup packets. …
.. When our ketchup bottle gets low, mom pulls out a funnel, the scissors, and the infamous ketchup drawer from the refrigerator. She then proceeds to spend an hour or more clipping the tops off 10,000 ketchup packets, and squeeze them into the bottle. When she’s finished, we have a nice, full bottle of ketchup. …
.. How, you ask, do we have a drawer filled with 10,000 ketchup packets? Because anytime Mom goes through the drive-thru, she asks for extra ketchup, of course! (And extra napkins, salt and pepper, straws, plastic silverware, and quite possibly, a roll of toilet paper from the restroom…)
I have to admit that the article was amusing to read, and it was certainly something novel. But, I had a hard time calling that “frugal”.
I really really hope that these *frugal* adventures didn’t go as far as taking toilet paper from the restroom. 
Even without the toilet paper, it doesn’t sound quite right to me.
Just imagine what will happen if thousands of families decide to go on that *frugal* path. With 10,000 packets each, we are looking at about 10,000,000 packets of extra ketchup stored in kitchen drawers. Now, those millions of packets don’t come for free, someone has to pay for them. Let me guess who pays for them… yeah right! the remaining thousands of families who don’t hoard on stuff just because it’s available without any extra cost.
Of course, one can go into the technicalities of profit margins of fast food chains, and argue that the cost of several packets of ketchup is recovered (several times over) by the amount of profit that is made with each sale. But, that still does not condone hogging on *free* resources. If you have issues with profit margins of fast food chains, just stop eating at those places - instead of trying to get the worth of your junk food expense. Just cooking at home and avoiding fast food will save you enough money for a number of store-brand ketchup bottles in time to come.
This ketchup story reminds me of another similar situation I experienced a few years ago. I was in Nevada for a conference and had shared accommodations with another graduate student. This dude used to collect all those miniature shampoo bottles and soap bars from the room everyday. Once, I remarked to him, “You know, that shampoo is not really good quality, are you sure you want to use it later?“. To which he replied, “I know the stuff is not good.. but hey, it has already been paid for, so I will take it anyways“.
Now, one could argue that the bottles would anyways be wasted if not used - so it’s a frugal thing to carry them and use them up. But that was certainly not his intention - plus, he didn’t even like the shampoo! He was just more interested in trying to squeeze the most out of that hotel stay. And by the way, he wasn’t even paying for his stay - the school was picking up the tab. I don’t know what he did with all those bottles… probably he emptied them in his regular shampoo bottle or, more likely, just threw them away.
Anyways, the point is that such attitude is often misrepresented as being *frugal*. In my opinion, that’s just hoarding - because stuff is available for hoarding. Other examples, of such hoarding attitude are:
- stuffing pockets with those free candies/mints that restaurants offer after meals.
- eating *too much* at a buffet - just because you have paid for it and now you want to make it worth every penny.
- stuffing bags and bags of office stationery at career fairs - you should really see this circus, it’s awesome. Young soon-to-be-graduates, who should be more interested in talking to prospective employers, are usually busy collecting pens and rubber-band balls.
- an extreme (hypothetical, but pretty relevant) example would be to stand near those free sampler kiosks in a SAM’s club or Costco outlet, and keep stuffing yourself with whatever they serve in those tiny cups until you are no longer hungry. You probably paid for it with your membership fee, so why not?
Frugality is making the most of *your* resources. How can people be called *frugal* if they are reducing their own expenses by grabbing someone else’s resources? Is it *frugal* to take more than your fair share - even if it is free?
Just for kicks: some quick calculations for those who are interested in nitpicking on the ketchup article. Suppose you grab 10 extra ketchup packets with each drive-thru trip, it will take you 1000 trips to gather 10,000 packets. If you spend an average of $5 per trip, that’s about $5000 right there on junk food! That’s not frugal, dude.
Elsewhere, it has been estimated that it takes about 50 small packets of ketchup to fill up a 14 oz. bottle (which costs about $2 at present). Which means, 50 packets contain $2 worth of ketchup (4 cents per packet), or 10,000 packets contain about $400 worth of ketchup! Which further means that you can fill about 200 ketchup bottles if you hoard steal 10,000 packets. Man, shrewd people can start an eBay business with this kind of thing.
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I travel for work, and my team always gathers up the hotel extras like soap and shampoo and donates them to a local charity. It might drive up the room prices at the hotel, but not by much - hotels pay less than a dollar for each day’s supply of those little bottles.
Call me silly, but why did she spend an hour emptying them into the bottle? Why didn’t she just give people the packets when they needed them?
Or the mom could have just used the ketchup packets when needed and tossed out the bigger bottle when it was empty and thus saved herself the hour. I suppose it was therapeutic or something for the mom to do this.
Sometimes I take the little bottles of shampoo, but if I don’t like the product, I will empty it and fill it with my own brand for my next trip (the small bottles are nice for traveling). The ketchup packets is a little too much for my taste. (I know, I should have left that joke to Nick from Punny Money).
I do gather small amounts of napkins, salt, and pepper from the cafeteria on occasion to use at my work desk when I bring my lunch. And sometimes I take a few extra napkins from a fast food restaurant to keep in my car. But, I don’t think either of these is wrong, and these are things most people do. These establishments add a little extra into the cost for everyone. I don’t make it a game though, and do it for convenience rather than saving money.
Plus, imagine all the waste that 10,000,000 small packets of ketchup would cause. It’s a free rider type problem.
On the other hand, I do the same thing as BD: take the small shampoos and soaps from hotels with me and donate them to a homeless shelter where even small things like that make a big difference to individuals.
$400 for a bottle of ketchup sure is frugal! It would be cheaper to buy a big can at the local Sams or Costco and refill it.
You call it “hoarding,” some of us call it stealing. Have you noticed anymore that most fast food restaurants only give you those little paper cups to pump ketchup into, and that McDonalds charges you for extra sauces? That’s what the ketchup thieves have caused.
I generally do take the bottles of shampoo and soap at the hotels; a lot of the time they replace them even if you don’t use them, so you might as well. Stealing toilet paper though is just plain reprehensible.
Promotional items, on the other hand, are AOK. In fact, that’s what they’re there for. Ballpoint pens are some of the cheapest and most widespread forms of advertising around. However, it’s not OK to take 20 from the same company.
Thanks for the link to the “How much is inside ketchup” story on Cockeyed.com!
Along with what the other commenter dimes was saying, I’ve noticed lately that everytime I order chicken nuggets for my kids I have to ask for the sauce. They don’t even give you the one or two containers that they used to. Unless you ask them for it. This is through the drive thru, I’m not sure about the counter.
I agree that this isn’t frugal but first stealing and then hoarding the goods. I’ve know people like that but fail to see what it is that drives them.
But just think of how much fun and mischief the ketchup lady’s kids must have had each time she preoccupied herself for hours with those packets. lol
I call it stealing too. In some countries they charge for these little packets. If many people were stealing them in the US, they’ll start charging for them here as well eliminating the convenience of having them right there for most people.
I had one guy visiting me once who left me a dubious “present” of several little bottles of shampoo from a hotel. I told him I don’t need or like the stuff. He told he didn’t need it either. Why did he take it if he didn’t need it?
As a constant traveler for work, I’ve got to say that I’ve taken my fair share of those little shampoos and soaps from hotels. My wife loves having them, not for ourselves, but for when guests stay over and need them. Those little bottles serve the same purpose in my house as they do in the hotels, but better yet, they don’t cost me anything at all, since my hotel stays are paid for by the companies that hire me to travel. Even better(er), I usually stay at 5 star hotels so the shampoo I take home is better than the bulk bought shampoo we usually use.
However, ketchup packets? That’s just miserly.
I don’t bring home ketchup packets from fast food restaurants any more, but I still save the paper napkins. I use those for cleaning up the kitchen and bathroom, and buying paper towels for that kind of thing is a waste.
My two cents’ worth: taking things you don’t need and don’t want (and won’t use) is not frugal, it is wasteful — however, I also take home the shampoos, hand soaps and other toiletries from hotels when I travel and put them in with the scarves and hats I make for homeless people. But for every bottle or “free” item used or taken from a hotel the cost of each room goes up. If a room requires a full set of toiletries every day of a guest’s stay — even if each item could last three or four days — the room rates are calculated to include that expense. Since I have to cart along my own toiletries due to allergies anyway, I would just as soon save the $5 a night!
There is yet another cost though, and that is the resources consumed: plastics and other materials, energy, transportation costs… though it does provide work for somebody somewhere, it doesn’t really help the local economy (when was the last time you saw “Made in the USA” on a shampoo bottle?) and probably does exploit someone who works in appalling conditions. And then there is the problem of what happens to the containers (billions of them every year) when they are empty.
IMHO, if you took too many ketchup packets, napkins, plastic forks and the like you are better to keep them in your car than to throw them away, so next time you will not need extra. Or just use them for brownbagging your next meal. I always carry a set of mismatching ustensils in my car just not to need disposables when i order take out food.
The ketchup pump and the small carton cups seem better for our environment since they are not made of plastic and do not contain inks, which are often made of heavy metals that can contaminate soils, like the packets.
To me, cutting the ketchup packets to fill up a bottle is just a way to feel better with her addiction to eating out. At least she can get something from it. For the price of only one burger out and an overpriced cola, one could buy all the ingredients and cook it in like 20 minutes. Too much in a hurry to cook? that’s because you wasted 1 hour of your precious time cutting packets!!
Frugal= Good
Dishonest, Unethical, Stealing= Bad
Wow! It’s not frugal — regardless of the moral status.
If you spend an hour squeezing packets into a ketchup bottle to save a couple or three dollars you are going broke slowly. Spending an hour to save a couple of dollars is a terrible waste of your most precious resource (time).
If you really need to scrimp at that level, it’s time to add some more income via part time work or a career change.
I know I’m not going to work for $3/hour!
The whole ketchup-packets into bottles thing has always seemed silly to me, but not because it’s stealing. How can it be? The author specified that his mother ASKED for extra ketchup and then they gave it to her. Where’s the theft?
I do agree that it’s way too much effort for too little payoff, and that if she really wanted to save money she should just cut out a drive-through visit (it sounds like there were plenty, if she had that much ketchup).
Like MoneyDummy said, none of this is stealing. The merchants make it available for free in return for your patronage.
I don’t believe people are getting extra ketchup packages in protest of fast food profit margins. A decent point is made about the $2 ketchup bottle costing $5000 in fast food trips. I don’t think people eat to fast food to get ketchup packets. I bet they believe that since they are there, they might as well. In this case, they’ll spend the $5000 either way.
@ Why this may be stealing: Merchants make extra packets available for free - on a mutual understanding that you “need” it for your burger (or whatever you bought) when you ask for it extra packets. When you use it for something else, it becomes borderline stealing.
Perhaps, in literal sense, it may fall more under “cheating” or “swindling” rather than “stealing”, which doesn’t make it any less bad.
It may sound strange, but at times, it is the purpose that defines rightness of your actions. I am thinking of a good example to explain this - not found one yet, but working on it.
Some of the other examples I mentioned are definitely not *stealing* - they are more along lines of greedy hogging.
So, I keep calling it “hoarding” - until the last line where it’s a matter of hoarding goods worth $400? (more like stealing now?).
But, I can understand - “right” and “wrong” are relative concepts and our definitions are not very consistent - more like situation-specific yardsticks.
I agree with stidmama. This person’s actions are wasteful, not frugal. The first thing I thought of is: “She’s hording ketchup packets? That’s not even worth anything nutritionally. It’s just ketchup!” I can appreciate holding on to extra napkins, straws, etc. if you are going to use them. But even then, all those extra plastic forks, etc. ends up harming the environment.
Eh. Bottom line: I’m not impressed.
I definitely grab the stuff from hotels, although I haven’t travelled much lately.
As for ketchup packets, I save the extra ones if I get them. I try to use them, and have actually considered pouring them into the normal ketchup bottle, but I think it would be too time-consuming. What I have done is bought a large tub of ketchup from Sam’s Club and used it to refill a normal-sized ketchup bottle several times.
When I eat inside a fast-food place, I do grab as many paper napkins as I can without being conspicuous (a habit I developed at the dining halls in college!). I keep them in my car, and when there’s too many I bring them into the house. I buy paper towels, but I haven’t bought napkins in years!
I personally call it being stupid
With the calculation you provided along with the time it takes to fill up the bottle, just buy ketchup.
Technically, this is stealing not being frugal. The ketchup is offered in restaurant because of the food you are eating. If you are taking away ketchup packets, you mind as well eat there and then get a free refill of soft drink once you are done (for the road you know!).
And now we wonder why some restaurant keep their ketchup under the table!
Frugal would be saving the ketchup packets you don’t use. Asking for extra ones just for home use crosses the line. I’m not sure I’d call it stealing, but it’s pretty lame. The practice isn’t defensible from a food waste perspective, because it’s not like the ketchup is going bad.
On a similar note, my favorite coffee shop no longer offers “Sugar in the Raw” packets because people kept pocketing them. Thanks, freeloaders.
Ha ha.
But you know, a lot of times restaurants give you tons of sauces. Like if you order Chinese take out, they bring you 4 soy sauces, 2 hot mustard, 2 sweet and sour, etc. And if you do go to a fast food restaurant they may give you a lot of extra ketchup.
Hoarding that stuff is just silly. But if you use the sauces only occasionally, and you want to hold on to the ones you receive anyway, more power to you.
Am I the only one who actually uses the mini shampoos and soaps they give you in hotels? Will they leave your toiletries for the next guest or do they just throw them away? I am not sure when is the last time I’ve stayed in a hotel that has given me new shampoos every day. The last couple of hotels I stayed at even took away one of our towels, so that dh and I had to share lol.
I didnt pay for a single roll of toilet paper in college…does that make me smart and frugal or a thief? Who knows, but maybe that’s why my college keeps asking me for money.
Okay you got me…I am a notorious swiper of towels, pillows, extra shampoo containers, and even extra unused toilet paper rolls from motel/hotel rooms. I figure I deserve everything since I paid for the room. Don’t report me!
~Raymond
Money Blue Book
Saving packets or samples or hotel bottles that an establishment gives you is frugal, but asking for extra with the sole intent of saving them for your use later has crossed the line.
If she is deliberately getting extra ketchup for the purpose of taking them home, that’s dishonest.
If she gets extra ketchup during the ordinary course of her meal (they give her two packets and she only uses one) and she’s taking the extra home so it isn’t wasted, that’s being thrifty and isn’t much different than asking for a “doggy bag” to take your uneaten food home.
I totally don’t see the point of emptying the packets into a regular ketchup bottle. As someone else said — why not just hand out the packets?
Because I don’t feel like passing moral judgement on some stranger’s mother, all I will say this this. Old ketchup packets should be THROWN OUT.
What this woman does is disgusting.
One time, I asked my co-worker for some ketchup because I knew she had a cache of packets in her desk. I squeezed some out and sure enough, it was not the right color. We figured it was really old stuff and threw out all of her hoarded up packets of ketchup, mustard, duck sauce, etc.
FWIW, it’s ok if you cache your extras, but taking more than you need describes the wastefulness of American culture. This is not Mt. Everest. You shouldn’t take it just because “it’s there.”
I think the woman has got it wrong! She spends a full hour and the effort of collecting the ketchup sachets to fill up a ketchup bottle; thereby saving herself, what no more than $3.00?
In principle collecting a few extra ketchup sachets might make sense under certain cirumstances…
But the real problem with such frugality is the wasting of your principle asset (time) for such a low reward!
Interesting.
I find that the American-public-opinion-as-expressed-by-blog-replyers always seems to be against taking free things. I remember the whole debate about using extra large cups and free milk at Starbucks. It seems strange, to me. Where I come from, “if it’s free, take two!” is the common view. Somehow American standards of honesty and ethics are geared more towards businesses than consumers. It’s like some of us think they ought to pay for everything they receive.
Any thoughts of why this might be?
i had a friend that saved the drink cups from each fast food place and bring them every time they go to a particular fast food place they decide to eat at…they never have to pay for drinks again after the first time!
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