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.
I went to KFC the other day and got a 3-piece box. The leg was the size of a wing-drum. Each thigh was about the size of a hockey puck. And the little round container of mashed potatoes that's smaller than the old cup they used to use? The bottom is concave, further reducing the size.
I went to the freezer to get some ice cream. We had a package about the size of the old half-gallon containers. Now, instead of 2 quarts of ice cream, there's only 1.44 quarts. And do you know how they do it? The packages have rounded ends rather than the old cubic rectangles. When they round off the corners, they reduce capacity. When was the last time anyone wanted less ice cream? The shrinkflation is out of hand!
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.
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