When conveying your idea, illustrations are your friend. A picture can say in far less time and with far fewer words what would otherwise take many pages. In the absence of actual pictures, examples or analogies often do the trick. An example of the kind of thing I want to write about might be helpful here.
CONVENIENCE STORE LOGIC
There’s a convenience store located right next to where I work. Since I am there almost every day, I notice that some people go there almost daily as a customer. And something else I’ve noticed is that the folks who frequent this particular convenience store are all really bad at handling their money, and the people who own and operate this store know it very well.
They work in a high-crime area with clientele of people who live well below the poverty line. Why did they decide to set up shop here, where risk is high and actual money is scarce? The answer is because they know they know how to squeeze blood from a stoner. These people make out like bandits, the shop keepers anyway. The customers, on the other hand, could use a reminder that they could be spending their money more wisely, even on the items that are sucker deals to begin with.
I haven’t found much in the store that I would ever consider purchasing. The store mainly sells alcohol and soft drinks at an exorbitant price, but they also sell cigars and cigarettes, even single cigarettes, one at a time. They sell lottery tickets, energy drinks, sex pills, energy pills, and extremely overpriced cereal, and cans of soup and ramen noodles.
Any convenience store is usually an encyclopedia of bad deals. What the appeal of the convenience store is, is that it’s a convenience. Sort of like ordering pizza and a soda for delivery. As a pizza man, I know all about the appeal of convenience. Why else would you pay $3.00 for a 2 liter soda? It’s an extravagance, a luxury, intended for those days you feel like pampering yourself and you don’t want to roll off the couch and drive to the store. Certainly not an everyday thing if you live in poverty.
Which brings up the curiosity- an entire class of people living in poverty, who visit the rip-off store every single day. This is their supermarket, where they spend all their money. So this is no longer an extravagance or a luxury, it is the norm for them. Further, there is no appeal regarding convenience, because they return every day, so they aren’t saving any time, and the convenience store is directly across the street from a big box pharmacy/department store with drastically cheaper prices. So there is no actual convenience involved, other than not having to cross the street. And since this is a not very busy side street, there’s rarely any traffic to have to avoid when crossing over to the department store.
So what’s so important that it requires the extra convenience of not having to stand on the opposite sidewalk? It turns out, it’s cigars, alcohol, loosies, and big sugary drinks. Everything the convenience store sells, except for the bread which always just sits on the shelf. The only actually cheap, actual food in the entire store.
You can tell that the entire philosophy of this establishment is to sell at an exorbitant price items of little actual value which appeal greatly to people who have very poor judgment, and who cannot handle their money very well, and are willing to get bled completely dry as long as they can avoid crossing any street once.
Let’s take a look at the cigarettes. An item that is already a gloriously massive rip-off no matter where you purchase them, that provides no nutritional value and a whole massive load of health problems, with a truckload of extra taxes parked right on top of it, and is chemically addictive. Now, on the shelves of a convenience store, is further inflated in price, and when sold as single cigarettes (illegally, but sold all the same) is further inflated in price once more. Of course, otherwise why would the store take the risk of being fined? This is a gold mine.
A pack will cost you 6 dollars at a reputable store, which is 20 cigarettes. But this store, directly across the street from the more reputable store, will sell them to you individually for only 50 cents apiece, and that’s the whole price, no tax! What a bargain.
Except if you can do math. 20 cigarettes for six dollars is about 30 cents a cigarette. This store is willing to do you the favor of selling you that same cigarette for only almost double the price. And of course there’s no additional taxes, because this sale is illegal. But you’re already paying the taxes on it, at the 30 cent per cigarette price. So the taxes are still in there.
But all you needed was one or two cigarettes, right? Why spend 6 dollars when you can spend just one dollar per day?
I could almost buy that argument, even if it is such a stupid one, if all you came with in your pocket was a dollar and you needed your cigarette fix really badly. I might cut you some slack for being addicted to a drug, and that’s all you’re buying. But no, you came to the store with enough money to also buy three lotto tickets, a dollar cigar, and some whiskey, and made an impulse purchase of pork rinds, and a pack of GUM for a buck fifty.
Did you really need the gum that badly? So you just spent fifteen dollars getting absolutely nothing. None of that was actually food, and none of it will satisfy you in any way 24 hours from now.
That’s why you’re back the next day, with another five or ten dollars, buying another item that will last you a few hours. When you get hungry, you’re already there… and you might as well pay 3 times for a box of cereal what a box of cereal is actually worth. Or how about Doritos for twice the ordinary price. Smart purchases.
So you’re back the next day, spending on average, about 10 dollars, and after that, you still need actual food, or else you’ll starve. This amounts to a $300 dollar a month grocery bill that ends up giving you four boxes of cereal and occasionally, a quart of milk. That’s the stuff you ended up buying that lasted more than 24 hours.
For that money, you could buy a rather decent car, and drive it all the way across the street to the Walgreens that is precisely 100 feet away, and purchase some actual groceries.
But you’re already walking to the convenience store. Why not just walk to the Walgreens? An actual store with actual products that will last more than 24 actual hours from the time of purchase?
The answer is because you want to be in and out of that store in less than five minutes, and don’t feel like crossing the street. True, the convenience store does have that going for it.
That’s worth an entire car to you? All the food you could ever eat, every month? That’s how much the convenience is worth to you?
It sounds rather like a bad decision to me, and explained this way, I’m sure it seems that way to you. When you only make $1,000 per month, three hundred dollars of it being pissed away for a grand total of four boxes of cereal does seem rather like a rip-off.
Why do I go to the convenience store?
It is literally adjacent to my place of work, and I purchase precisely one item there. I buy a name brand iced tea that is way, way too sweet and contains way, way too much sugar. I purchase it for a dollar, and that includes the tax.
I then take it to work where I pour half of it into the bottle I drank yesterday, and I fill up the rest of both bottles with the same tap water they used to make the tea in the first place. Now I have two bottles of tea, that are no longer too sweet to drink, that won’t give me diabetes even if I drink both of them, for the price of 50 cents each. It’s approximately what it would cost per fluid ounce to buy that gallon of tea from Walgreen’s. And I don’t have to lug around a gallon jug.
It’s perhaps the only sane purchase I could make at this particular convenience store. I do own a vehicle, and can drive to Wal-Mart and buy an entire week’s worth of groceries for the money some other folks are spending on their daily junk purchase by the end of the week, with a hundred dollars per month left over to help pay for the car itself. 50 dollars a week in groceries is a pretty generous budget for one person, especially when your box of cereal doesn’t end up costing you $5.50
I don’t know about you, but that seems like a way better deal. Not only am I buying a lot more things, but I’m also driving in an air-conditioned car while I’m getting to the store.
So how do places like this stay in business?
Because they’re betting that you’ll use convenience store logic. I could stop by the convenience store real quick after work, that way I don’t have to go all the way to the grocery store. And they’re appealing to a whole group of people who have no car whatsoever, who are going to be walking to the store to get things for themselves, and won’t be looking to carry back a week’s worth of groceries.
So, for the price of what you would pay at an actual Applebee’s house sirloin steak, with fries and a side, and a refillable glass of soda, you can instead purchase beef jerky for 7.99, pork rinds or a bag of Chester’s Flamin’ Hot fries for 99 cents, canned vegetables for $1.20, and a bottle of Pepsi (Just $2.75, or you can get two for just five dollars! Get ripped off twice, and save 50 cents using convenience store logic!).
So let’s add it up. That’s $15.20 since we opted to “save money” by getting two sodas as an impulse purchase when we only needed one. What was Applebee’s charging for an entire meal, soda, and a steak? Oh yeah, it was $14.69.
So, we could save money at the convenience store getting a really, really inferior set of products loaded with preservatives, which we then bring home and “enjoy” (I’m using that term really loosely here. We are talking about convenience store pork rinds, after all) or we could have actually saved 50 cents eating an expensive-ass meal from Applebee’s.
Can’t afford the tip? Of course you can. You’re spending 3 bucks on lottery tickets daily. But if you want to save that 3 bucks and spend it on Lotto tickets, go get Applebee’s curbside to go service. Just get to the restaurant somehow, and pick it up. Now you’re eating an actual steak, with actual vegetables, and actual freshly cooked french fries, and drinking a big freaking huge to-go soda, and you’re doing it every single stinking day.
But you probably thought you couldn’t afford to eat a steak everyday.
Of course you can’t. You’re spending the equivalent at the convenience store instead, saving all that time and money, as long as you’re using convenience store logic. I bet you one of your friends has a car. Carpool to Applebee’s. Treat yourself to an actual steak, instead of convenience store beef jerky, for the same price.
If you wonder why you don’t have any money left over at the end of the month, it’s probably because you were eating an expensive steak every day that you couldn’t afford, and what’s worse, you didn’t actually get to eat it.
*Convenience store logic: How your own brain tricks you into staying poor.
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Feedback welcome.
