It’s not just takeout. As a teenager, I worked among the very working poor who could “never get ahead.” I’ve heard every variety of excuses, and some people really were having hard times, which I could sympathize with, but the vast majority of them would have had a financial miracle in their lives if they would just learn how to write out and follow monthly budget.
It never ceased to amaze me how many people could not find money to keep their kids in anything but ragged clothes, but could always find money to pay the cable bill, buy cigarettes and scratch-off tickets, and pay weekly Rent-A-Center payments for large TVs that end up costing them more than I paid for my car.
There is a very real attitude in this culture that every dollar you earn must be spent as quickly as possible, and I’ve never been able to figure out why this attitude is so prevalent among the working poor. Saving for the future is nearly unheard of. It’s almost as if they convince themselves its pointless even to try to be wise stewards of their money.
I consider $2.99 a pound for bologna to be a bit on the expensive side. The less expensive store near my house often has Wunderbar bologna for under $2 a pound. They had it like $1.29 a pound a few weeks ago.
Quality ranting. But why didn’t you just de-escalate the call? You could’ve been off the phone in under a minute and preserved your sanity, to boot. “We ran your card three times at your son’s request and it was declined, ma’am. You should contact your bank to figure out why the purchase was declined. I apologize for the inconvenience. Have a nice day!”
I actually DO work at a bank, and the problem could have been any number of things, many beyond an idiot’s knowledge. A hold on the card from another vendor, suspected fraud resulting in a warm block on the card, an ATM deposit made overnight/on a weekend that won’t be credited until the next business day, perhaps she was already significantly overdrawn and the deposit didn’t even cover her existing overdraft fees… yada yada.
There’s no way a vendor could possibly know which thing caused her card to be declined. Letting a proven idiot draw you into a debate over banking regulations doesn’t shine the greatest light on you, either.
What about “blowing off steam” do you not understand?
The suggestion to read the boards a bit before posting was a good one. You might think about it. So far you have sounded patronizing and rude; not a very good start. Maybe you didn’t mean to be patronizing and rude, but you sure came off that way. This is the BBQ pit. We come here to bitch and complain. Telling us we’re acting like children is not going to make you very popular.
It may even be necessary to make laws that protect people from telecommunications monopolies, narcotics, gambling and predatory lending. But what about [del]tax revenue at the expense of the vulnerable[/del] Land of the Free, rah rah?
Yes, understood. Maybe it’s a deli food thing, then, but over here we barely even buy deli meat a whole pound at a time, or expect any meat product to retail at about £2.00 a pound.
Yep. And those are pretty reasonable numbers. I can find most of those items for even cheaper just going to my local grocery, which is not even a discount store. (For example, I can get a dozen jumbo eggs for $1.99, and bread for $0.99 a loaf if on sale or $1.49 normally. $2.99/lb for bologna around here is pretty normal, though. I rarely find cold cuts much below that price. Yesterday, the cheapest deli meat was $3.49/lb, some spiced ham loaf type of thing.)
On the same street my store is located, is actual name brand Rent-A-Center, several lotto-and-cigarette stores which are *not *also gas stations (no one has a car), pawn shops, bail bondsmen, *and *the telecoms company branch.
There are zero “restaurants” of the sit-down-and-eat variety other than McDonald’s. And no one else does delivery except for rival pizza chains.
The convenience lotto located *directly *next to my store in the same strip mall sells t-shirts and shitty plastic kid’s toys and loads of beer and lots of salt and oil snacks. They also sell 5 dollar gallons of milk and 5 dollar boxes of cereal. They sell looseys for 50 cents per cig. They also actively deal drugs in every direction around my store, and there have been five shootings during my shifts within earshot of me, most resulting in the person dying at the scene. It’s that very archetype, times a thousand.
Believe me when I tell you that rational decision making and money-managing is not on these people’s priority list.
This article on Cracked.com has a pretty good explanation. I always enjoy the writer John Cheese’s lists about his life, there’s a lot of lessons to be learned there. In this one, #4 on the list, he tells you why poor people spend money so fast. Its basically a mentality that if you don’t spend it on “stuff” like TVs o shoes or whatever, it’ll be taken eventually by your normal living expenses and then you’ll have “nothing to show for it”.
And this article tells of the kind of insidious things that keeps poor people poor, often through little fault of their own. Its correct that a lot of people don’t spend for the long term by cooking their own meals or saving ahead. But its not always their fault if no good mechanism exists to let them save up to buy something cheaper later when they need it right now.
After reading this thread, I have to say ‘Thank Og for my customers.’
When we run a card, if it’s unreadable the machine will say ‘Card Reader Error’ or something like that otherwise it will be declined. I usually run it at least twice because sometimes it will work the second time. But, and here’s where I am blessed, most times if I tell the customer it is declined they will actually say they need to call the bank. No whining or bitching or anything. They might say something about having money in there or something, but it’s never directed at me and not in a bitchy manner. After working in that environment for so long, I wouldn’t want to go back to the tourist trap I worked in before where nothing was the customer’s or their bank’s fault, it was always ours.
Wow. I literally just bought a dozen jumbo eggs today for $1.59
Yes, that’s toasting/sandwich bread, and that is what’s 99 cents. But that is what we use for sandwiches around here. I don’t want the fancy pants bread for that, as much as I love real bread. But I can get a giant French-style baguette for about $2 or less at my grocery. Or I can get freshly baked taleras or bolillos for two or three to the dollar. Or I can go to the Polish bakery and get the type of rye bread I grew up with for about $2 a pound loaf. (ETA: Sorry, that’s for a two pound loaf. See: “Polish rye.”)
Well, I can find you a half loaf of that delicious Eastern European rye for a buck fifty. Maybe a buck if I look hard enough. But it’s good, real bread.
