Less is Still Less

When I was a kid, I heard this “educational” story; I don’t know if it was part of school or just something that went around. But the gist of it was:

A struggling olive company was trying to figure out a way to save money. No one could come up with anything actionable until they asked an old hand from around the factory. He said, “Just put one less olive in each jar. It’s not enough that anyone will miss it, but over time it will add up to a lot of extra jars to see from the same amount of produce.” They did and the idea saved the company.

At the time, this seemed like some good old folksy wisdom. Unfortunately, the modern business culture has put that story on steroids and turned that into a core business principle: Always provide less than what people expect.

Earlier today, I looked at a bag of potato chips Sweetpea brought home from the store. It struck me that the bags used to be so much bigger. This was a standard bag, not the big “family-sized” version. I checked the net weight and it was about 7 ounces. I don’t remember the actual net weight from years gone by but I know it was a lot more than 7 ounces… 12 at least, maybe even a pound. But here we are, paying the same price (or higher) for half as much.

I also remember from my childhood when they first introduced “Fun-Sized” candy bars. I don’t know which evil executive at Nestle thought a tiny, two-bite version of what used to be a quality candy bar would be considered “fun.” As a kid, my idea of “fun-sized” would be a Snickers the size of my head. And they still shrunk the size of the regular candy bars to about half of what they were. I used to be able to get a righteous candy bar for a quarter and even then I thought it was a rip-off. (I preferred the 15-cent boxes of Spree, Lemonheads, or Sweet Tarts. You could really make those stretch for a while.) All the candy bars now are punier versions of their former selves and go for about a buck or more. They’ve taken so much value out of candy that Almond Joy might as well be called Almond Ennui.

It’s like that with everything now. The Powers That Be look at us as walking dollar signs; just one more commodity to be used up for every bit of currency they can wring out. They track our whereabouts and spending habits with internet browsers, phones, apps, credit cards, and reward cards; monetizing our very existence.

They’ve turned air travel into an ordeal of finding out just how much discomfort and inconvenience we are willing to accept and still go through with it. Leg room and seat width are decreased until we’re jammed into the fuselage, cheek to cheek, without decent food and with minimal drinks. I think the only reason most airlines even offer beverage service is to distract us from how uncomfortable it is. Everything we used to get as a courtesy, food, blankets, pillows, are gone. If you’re lucky, some airlines offer to sell you these things. And then they want to complain that people are rude and cranky.

And we just lap it all up. We’re the proverbial “frog in the slowly heating pot of water,” too unconcerned with the big picture to change the trajectory of our doomed existence. They feed us celebrity bullshit listicles, and news factoids while we slowly become frog soup.

We’ve been dumbed down as a culture to the point where we just elected a president as a response to high prices, yet his only announced policies are guaranteed to make prices soar. And won’t these same people be surprised when 95% of the much-hyped next round of tax cuts goes to the super-rich and once again, the rest of us get the scraps?

It makes me want to go out and have some business cards made that say, “I fucking told you so.” I’ll give them out to anyone who voted for the new regime and then wonders whose fault it is when they can’t afford a cold 4-pack of beer. Or are in shock when the price of gas they see up on the sign is calibrated for quarts. Or someone turns BOGO into BOG0.

Yep, right after I post this I’m gonna order me a new 425-count box of cards. I heard they’re on sale for the holidays.

This has nothing to do with anything. It just makes me laugh and I need one.