You Get What You Pay For

Once in another lifetime I sold office furniture. All kinds of furniture, file cabinets, chairs, desks, new pieces, used pieces, whatever you needed in order to sit on, work at, or catalog your office.

I had a rule of thumb, a deal I would make with nearly all the people I sold to. I told them there were three things that were available in any deal. Being the nice guy, generous soul I was, I told them they could have any two of the three.

But the third was for me.

The three things available to them were the following:

1) The item can be exactly what you are looking for. The right color, the right style, the perfect fit for your decor.

2) The item can be exactly the quality you are looking for. High end leather, heavy duty steel or in the case of used furniture a perfect condition.

3) The item can be exactly the price you want to pay for it.

Like I said, I told my customer they could have any two of the three. Thus if they wanted it to be exactly what they were looking for and in exactly the quality they wanted, they would have to pay my price for it. And if they wanted exactly the product they were looking for and in a low price, then they had to take it in a lower quality. You get the picture.

This kept everybody happy. My customer got a fair deal, I got to make money, and we both walked away from the experience with a certain amount of satisfaction.

I mention this because more and more consumers aren't satisfied with their purchasing experiences. The United Airline fiasco of last Sunday was merely the latest example, but it's been in the cultural trade winds for several years now. Baseball teams use "flex pricing" to sell at scalper prices tickets to the most popular games. Electronics stores advertise ridiculously low prices on a particular item and only in the small print mention that only one or two are available per location. Cell phone companies have so many pricing plans and change them so often that's it's quite possible two users with the exactly the same plan can be paying wildly different rates. And of course airlines have so many up charge extras that once were givens such as more leg room, the bulk head seats, checked luggage, food and drink, and coming soon overhead storage space.

When people aren't satisfied with something as simple as buying a product or service there is a grumble in their stomachs, an ache that isn't soothed until they lash out in some way. United executives can't figure out why so many people are so upset about that video? How about it's because every one of us knows that guy could have been us. Heck, it WAS me on one occasion, albeit I wasn't dragged off the plane, but I was escorted off by security after being told my seat was needed for someone who paid more for that flight (he had paid the outrageous walk up/day of the flight price).

The ache isn't helped by the multitude of ways now available to search for pricing and the subtle admonishments given to continue to search for better pricing even after making a purchase. Ever wonder why for days after you bought that pair of tennis shoes from Sears an ad for those shoes keeps appearing on your Facebook wall? It's their way of saying somebody else might have gotten a better deal. You shouldn't rest until you know you have gotten the best deal possible. There's a rumor somebody somewhere in that other place over there got it for FREE!

What happened to just buying something and moving on? This constant litany of being told to never be satisfied is driving all of us just a little bit off our collective gourd. The reality is it's not in some people's interest for us to be satisfied. There are those out in the big bad world who want to keep us dissatisfied with everything, to make us think that the deck is constantly being stacked against us because, well, they are the ones who are stacking the deck. It's a beautiful bit of fraud. Make people dissatisfied by taking from them that which once satisfied them (a pleasant economic exchange) and then tell them that they are right to be dissatisfied so they need to keep searching for that mythical something better. Whatever you do keep picking at the scab of any transaction be it economic or personal or political, there must be something better. No, nothing is good enough...

And that's how you wind up with Donald Trump as president.

I suggest we as consumers turn my old three point deal program around and start telling people we are spending our money with that THEY can have any two of the three. That if they want to get their price and sell what they want to sell then it has to be at the quality you want. And if they want to sell the item or service at the quality they have then we get to pay the price we want.  And if they want to sell the quality at the price then we get to get exactly what we want. And both of us will walk away from the transaction happy and we'll all be satisfied.

And we might just save democracy.

United Flight 3411...or Tiananmen square?

Sterling and Silver

Why is no one asking how or why over the last few days we are being bombarded with the tape recorded racist rantings of a billionaire asshole?

Let me say right off the  bat, of course he believes the shit he was saying. Of course he's a racist. That's been shown again and again by statements he's made in the past. And this bimbo maybe half black maybe half Latina no one is really sure girlfriend who is being sued by his wife for a couple of million dollars (let's not forget that's the real reason all of this came out) knew those were his feelings and lead him into this conversation. She probably posted the photos of Magic Johnson and Matt Kemp in order to goad him into this fight.

Which she tape recorded. Secretly.

Many Americans have been numbed to the idea that someone has to be operating a machine in order for you to see and hear what is going on. They believe reality shows magically have video and audio to show what the cast of Survivor is doing. I got news for you folks, the couples on Naked and Alone might be the former but certainly not the later. Someone is there with a camera. Another with a boom mike. Another with a clipboard and a stopwatch. Hell there's probably a catering truck just out of view. The point is that it is a deliberate act that records the so called reality of what you see on TV.

So we get to the question of how it is possible that a private conversation in a private home between consenting adults was recorded and made public fodder. Somebody had to have recorded it. Somebody had to have "leaked" it to TMZ. We are debating in the country right how far the NSA or CIA or FBI can invade our privacy and record our conversations. I don't think they should be able to without a judge signing off on a search warrant. And if the government can't do it then private parties, even private parties that are party to the conversation (that's you Richard Nixon), should not be able to do it. I don't care what such a recording would prove or not prove.

This is an age of instant and total openness about everything in our lives. Even if you're not on Facebook, a friend takes a picture you happen to be in and the world knows what your drunk face is. Michael Philips takes a puff off a joint and the whole world knows. One of those English princes pulls his pants down in Vegas and the whole world knows. Your doctor makes an inappropriate comment and the whole world knows. The concept of privacy is under attack and this episode is just another sortie in that battle.

The girlfriend knew the conversation was being recorded, either because she herself was recording it or because she had someone recording it. Was it to show the world what a horrible person her boyfriend was? Only in the sense that she was out for material gain. Forget for a moment that she slept with a guy 50 years her senior in order to get a million dollar condo, a Bentley, and other baubles. Round here we have a name for women who screw men for material gain and it's not Meg Whitman. Let's get to what her half of the conversation contained or more to the point didn't contain. You're so outraged at what he said? Where was her indignant stamp of the foot and hearty "If those are your feelings I'm out of here"? I'll tell you where it was --- in the million dollar condo and the Bentley and the other baubles.

And speaking of whores, it's pretty apparent that Sterling had no problem expressing similar feelings to any of his business associates. I don't know about his real estate business, but I do know that he has owned the Clippers since 1981. That's over 30 years. Twice a year the league holds owners meetings. That's at least 60 times that the other owners in the league sat down with this slime. And you want me to believe that in all those times he never once expressed a similar sentiment? That his racism was reserved for his home only? Just like I don't believe Penn State didn't know about John Sandusky's extracurricular activities, I don't believe that these astute business titans of the NBA didn't know what kind of a jerk Sterling was. But they didn't say anything cause it might have hurt their bottom line.

When we get down to it, the bottom line is what this is all about. The whore, er, I mean girlfriend made the recording as evidence in the lawsuit she was named in by Sterling's wife (and by extension we have to assume Sterling). Maybe evidence isn't the right word. Maybe the word is extortion. Extortion as in "dismiss this suit or I go public with this". At the very least, the phrase would be "poisoning the jury pool". The NBA is wringing it's hands and keening over how they didn't know. They've gone into damage control, which is really spin control, because unlike the sponsors who are abandoning the Clipper ship, they can't go anywhere. They are stuck with him. They can't force him to sell his franchise.

Nor should they.

Freedom of thought means you have a right to think whatever you want. I might not agree with what you think, but I'm not going to stop you from thinking it. In fact I'll defend your right to think it. You want to believe that some people are inferior to others I'll actually agree with you on that. I believe though that their inferiority doesn't have anything to do with the color of their skin. It has to do with the content of their character. I'll tell you who I think is inferior to me. The owner, the girlfriend, people who believe reality TV is real, the business associates who never said a word and anyone who is acting all surprised that a rich white billionaire who lives in the bubble of his own mendacity would think such things.