Regular/ELD Classes
People generally feel pretty
pleased with themselves when they’ve paid less for something. You’ve seen that smug expression on people’s faces when they tell you they paid less
that you did: “Well, I only paid $19.99
for that same shirt.” You’ve paid twice
that, so you might resent them a
little. Nevertheless, you feign admiration. “That’s a great price,” you admit.
“You got yourself some deal there.”
You walk
away muttering to yourself, “What’s
wrong with people? Are we obsessed with
this unending quest for bargains?”
There’s
nothing wrong with keeping a little extra change in your pocket instead of the pockets
of the merchants. But sometimes you have to wonder if we don’t
overdo it.
Here’s a
situation you might be familiar with: it’s the “time-is-money” dilemma. Let’s say some potential patron (those are two separate words) is looking for an
alarm clock, a common, everyday item. In
his search for the best price for that clock, this customer visits three stores
in three different shopping malls in three different neighborhoods. Yes, in the end, he might end up saving a few
dollars, but what about fuel costs and the parking fees and the expensive lunch
he consumed in the second mall? What about the three hours that are now
lost? Can a price be put on those? Think of it this way: a truly industrious person might have lost
three hours of salary.
Then
there’s the case of buying more than you need.
This actually falls within two categories. Have you ever seen those sales where you have
to buy a large quantity of, say, cans of tuna in order to get the sale
price? Well, the problem there is that
you might not use all of those cans before their expiration date. Or you might not wish to allocate an entire shelf to storing all those cans. The second category involves purchasing an
enormous portion in order to get the sale price. You might have to buy a huge box of cereal,
enough to feed your family for six months.
That’s not necessarily such a bad idea, but you know what happens. Your family gets tired of eating the same cereal
day after day, and this huge cereal box just sits forever on the shelf. Eventually you get sick of looking at it, and
you discard it. Or the cereal grows stale, a distinct possibility.
Merchants
offer sales in order to convince you to buy more than you really need. Someone once said to Mr. Heinz, “I bet you’ve
made a lot of money from the ketchup people have eaten.” Mr. Heinz corrected his questioner:
“Actually, I’ve made a lot of money from the ketchup people have left on their
plates.”
If you’ve
ever poured ketchup on your fries, you know there’s nothing subtle about Mr. Heinz’s point. Next time you go shopping, try to remember
the old saying you might have heard from your parents: “Your eyes are bigger
than your stomach.”
1. Feign
2. Allocate
3. Subtle
4. Patron
5. Smug
6. Rancor
7. Commemorative
8. Blasphemy
9. Billow
10. Copious
11. Emended
12. Innumerable
13. Vague
14. Statuesque
15. Aliases
No comments:
Post a Comment