Bargain Hunting
September 20, 2000
Cheap, cheap, cheap, go the little birds flying around in our brains. They tell us that somewhere, somewhere I don’t know about, there’s a deal, the deal of the century, just waiting for me. It might be motor oil at 50 cents a quart, or giant bags of cheetos for 10 cents. Somewhere they’re giving away diamonds and furs and buy-one-get-one-free cars, to those who say the ad and got to the store early.
We jump through all kinds of hoops to save money. We drive into the special dark and firey place that is saved for those sending in a rebate, complete with the proofs of purchase and circled receipts and stamped self-addressed stamped envelopes, all to get a quarter back in the mail six weeks later. Fastidious, well-dressed women carry around tattered files filled with coupons for diapers. People who can’t find their children at 11 o’clock at night can remember that they have a 23-cent coupon for orange juice that expires on October 30.
These aren’t prizes or lottery winnings I’m talking about; these are the deals that I, cunning bargain hunter on the constant shopping safari that is American life, can find if I can just get through the Sunday ads in the paper. There’s something about getting a bargain that is a part of the human psyche. I bet Bill Gates himself, winner of the Horatio Alger award for big time rich guys, knocks himself out getting the best deal on what? …Pocket protectors? Yachts? I bet he’s bought tons of stuff for the internet for a steal that he brags about to his nerdy friends on a Saturday afternoon around the barbeque. Like two-four-one on island countries.
We all involve ourselves in a million little ways to try and get things for less than we think we should be paying. Why do we do it? For one thing, we hate to get beat. Shopping isn’t just picking out the right size and color, it’s a game show for which you need a ten million megabyte memory filled with up-to-date prices of eight trillion items so you can compare and not be the dumb bunny deceived by the unscrupulous who has declared something to be on sale that isn’t.
We hate to look stupid, but the witty advertising slogan on the perfectly designed sign, the darling little critters scampering on the front of the package (some human in very skimpy versions of “clothing”), the attractive pile of loss leaders placed at the front of the store to lure us when we’re fresh and excited at the prospect of buying something new all conspire to catch us off guard and make us spend that extra dollar.
I’m always terrified of that horrible moment when I get home and realize what a moron I was to get my husband a lime green tank top just because the model looked cute. (Or worse, get myself one.)
We also want to make the best use of our money. It’s the same instinct that drove our cave ancestors to kill and eat dinosaurs. Why would people surrounded by all kinds of things that didn’t eat them, go after “the big one?” She said, “Look honey, if you would use your spear to just kill that triceratops over there, we would have so much more meat and we’d still have all these spears left.” (She was thinking that he wouldn’t have to make more spears and he could FINALLY paint the cave walls.)
He, like every man ever born since then, said, “You know I hate to shop.”
We also like to feel we’re in the know. Getting a bargain makes us part of a select group.
My friend Ursula calls her mom in Switzerland for seven cents a minute. The best price I’d heard before that was 17 cents a minute that someone else told me about from a company in Arizona. So now I have this piece of information I can pass on that makes me feel like I know how to handle these big phone companies, as if I’m able to really get around the world. My gosh, I hardly know how to work a self-serve gasoline pump, let alone get deals on anything. But now I think I’m pretty smart knowing this smattering info about European calls. My brother-in-law used to constantly send me e-mails about Internet deals on 4000 envelopes and trips to Burma. That was weird.
But most of us would just like to feel like we’re slightly in control of something, anything, in this extremely complex world we call home.
Cheap, cheap, cheap, go the little birds flying around in our brains. They tell us that somewhere, somewhere I don’t know about, there’s a deal, the deal of the century, just waiting for me. It might be motor oil at 50 cents a quart, or giant bags of cheetos for 10 cents. Somewhere they’re giving away diamonds and furs and buy-one-get-one-free cars, to those who say the ad and got to the store early.
We jump through all kinds of hoops to save money. We drive into the special dark and firey place that is saved for those sending in a rebate, complete with the proofs of purchase and circled receipts and stamped self-addressed stamped envelopes, all to get a quarter back in the mail six weeks later. Fastidious, well-dressed women carry around tattered files filled with coupons for diapers. People who can’t find their children at 11 o’clock at night can remember that they have a 23-cent coupon for orange juice that expires on October 30.
These aren’t prizes or lottery winnings I’m talking about; these are the deals that I, cunning bargain hunter on the constant shopping safari that is American life, can find if I can just get through the Sunday ads in the paper. There’s something about getting a bargain that is a part of the human psyche. I bet Bill Gates himself, winner of the Horatio Alger award for big time rich guys, knocks himself out getting the best deal on what? …Pocket protectors? Yachts? I bet he’s bought tons of stuff for the internet for a steal that he brags about to his nerdy friends on a Saturday afternoon around the barbeque. Like two-four-one on island countries.
We all involve ourselves in a million little ways to try and get things for less than we think we should be paying. Why do we do it? For one thing, we hate to get beat. Shopping isn’t just picking out the right size and color, it’s a game show for which you need a ten million megabyte memory filled with up-to-date prices of eight trillion items so you can compare and not be the dumb bunny deceived by the unscrupulous who has declared something to be on sale that isn’t.
We hate to look stupid, but the witty advertising slogan on the perfectly designed sign, the darling little critters scampering on the front of the package (some human in very skimpy versions of “clothing”), the attractive pile of loss leaders placed at the front of the store to lure us when we’re fresh and excited at the prospect of buying something new all conspire to catch us off guard and make us spend that extra dollar.
I’m always terrified of that horrible moment when I get home and realize what a moron I was to get my husband a lime green tank top just because the model looked cute. (Or worse, get myself one.)
We also want to make the best use of our money. It’s the same instinct that drove our cave ancestors to kill and eat dinosaurs. Why would people surrounded by all kinds of things that didn’t eat them, go after “the big one?” She said, “Look honey, if you would use your spear to just kill that triceratops over there, we would have so much more meat and we’d still have all these spears left.” (She was thinking that he wouldn’t have to make more spears and he could FINALLY paint the cave walls.)
He, like every man ever born since then, said, “You know I hate to shop.”
We also like to feel we’re in the know. Getting a bargain makes us part of a select group.
My friend Ursula calls her mom in Switzerland for seven cents a minute. The best price I’d heard before that was 17 cents a minute that someone else told me about from a company in Arizona. So now I have this piece of information I can pass on that makes me feel like I know how to handle these big phone companies, as if I’m able to really get around the world. My gosh, I hardly know how to work a self-serve gasoline pump, let alone get deals on anything. But now I think I’m pretty smart knowing this smattering info about European calls. My brother-in-law used to constantly send me e-mails about Internet deals on 4000 envelopes and trips to Burma. That was weird.
But most of us would just like to feel like we’re slightly in control of something, anything, in this extremely complex world we call home.
Comments