Less For Your Money
When did we, as a society, get so complacent that we will take whatever the large corporations want to dish out, and take it willingly? And without so much as a kiss or dinner first! I read a great article today called Less For Your Money, That’s Inflation, Too.
I just bought groceries yesterday and some laundry detergent. Now I could go on and on about how my $100.00 dollars barely got me four bags (small ones, I might add) of groceries, but what really chapped my behind today was when I opened my laundry soap.
I bought a HUGE box of laundry soap. With five people in the family, we have a LOT of laundry to do. So anyway, I open this HUGE box of soap EXPECTING, like I’m sure most of us do, that it will be FULL. But lo and behold, not only is there a two inch ‘box top’ that is empty space, but there were five inches below the bottom of the box top and the beginning of the actual laundry soap. Yes, you heard right. FIVE INCHES of empty space IN ADDITION to the two inches of empty box top space.
And to top it all off there is this ridiculously large measuring cup in the box. The cup has markings for not one, not two, but THREE loads of laundry! Who does three loads of laundry in one cycle??? Nobody. But who doesn’t read the side of the box or the very transparent markings on the measuring cup? Most people. And most people’s kids.
It’s just a fact of nature, I suppose. You give someone a large cup that comes with a product, and naturally, we all ASSUME that the cup is the right measurement for the needed ingredient, right? Well, that’s exactly the kind of assumptions these companies are exploiting in J.Q. Public. You get a huge box for the same money you’ve always paid and you think you’re getting a deal. But you’re actually getting much less than you used to get, even in the smaller box. Now you get it home and you use one FULL scoop for every load of laundry. You just used enough soap to wash a week’s laundry at my house on a couple of shirts and three or four pairs of pants. When did this become acceptable to us?
I’d love to go to the home of the CEO’s of these corporations and make dinner for thier family. I can see it all now, John and his wife Betty and their four kids sitting at the table. I come in and set before each family member a plate the size of a large serving platter with some food spread out over the surface area.
“These aren’t our normal plates!” they cry.
To which I can reply “This new meal is NEW and IMPROVED! It’s almost the same amount of food I gave you last time (just missing a few teensy weensy ounces, for gosh sakes!). And it has twice the amount of calories, so those extra ounces won’t be missed. It reduced the overall cost and time for me of making and serving your dinner. I tested this new arrangement with consumer groups before serving you, and they all were satisfied (but uh, those studies are, uh….classified. Yeah, that’s it.)
But enough about that, isn’t that a lovely dish?!”
