The Holiday Season is upon us. It only lasts two months so be prepared. Step One: hang on to your money! Let’s look at it like Jack and Jill would – you have €10 to spend and before you know it there is nothing left. The first stores that discount their glittering new products could take every one of those Euros in one dizzy minute. The Sales used to take place between Christmas and New Year but there just ain’t any Euros left by then!
The Netherlands has Sinterklaas who as I write is doing his annual tour before December 5 when the kids get their presents. Not so long ago, children left a shoe in the hall with a carrot inside (for the horse that Sinterklaas rides) like other kids do for Santa (he has reindeer to feed). The idea was the carrot was replaced by the small present. Nowadays shoes would have to be bigger than the horse or the reindeer since kids want (expect) big presents. As a parent of young children not so long ago I knew what that meant to the wallet and in those days I was earning a lot of money – God help the parents of today.
So let’s look at the word that covers all this – cynical. 1. believing that people are motivated purely by self-interest; distrustful of human sincerity or integrity. 2. concerned only with one’s own interests and typically disregarding accepted standards in order to achieve them. Yes, it’s talking about the sales machine homing in on your €10. Even before the Sales you now have pre-season discounts… Last Friday was “Black Friday” which sounds rather ominous but the “black” is the colour of the ink, meaning profit (red means debt). In China they are ahead of the game with Singles Day (11 November) which is getting bigger every year.
Black Friday used to be an American tradition – Thursday Thanksgiving and then off to the stores the day after. But Europe has caught Black Friday disease in a big way. Then someone came up with “Cyber Monday” which was yesterday – so you were meant to go on-line and snatch those heavily discounted things you do not need.That is all cynical.
Then Christmas comes and everybody (including the Dutch) is resigned to yet another great spend and the kids can expect even bigger presents. We told our kids that Sinterklaas was all they could expect and that Christmas was about Jesus and all that stuff. It worked (I think). Finally New Year’s Eve, a mega spend on booze, food and fireworks and the next year can begin. But the cynics are busy the whole year. They invented “free” WiFi, no charges for shipping or returning goods ordered online, and long after the Air Miles and Reward Schemes attached to your credit card. And we all fell for it – I certainly did! It never occurred to me that the expression “there is no such thing as a free lunch” meant a lot more than that.
It is so simple. Charge everyone more than the product should cost, give the extra profit (or some of it) to people stupid enough to sign up for the loyalty awards and laugh at the idiots who pay the high prices but fail to pick up on the pay-backs. It still has a long way to go. “Buy Two and Get One Free” has worked for years, but what is next? “All the spareribs you can eat…” never fails; Oh and those stamps you collect for months and then claim your special present/product (favourite supermarket trick).
Milton Freeman is largely credited with the Free Lunch quote so let’s end this (cynical) piece with another of his quotations: If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there’d be a shortage of sand.
dickwife 