Bargain-hunting in old-time Phoenix


Everyone loves getting a bargain, and I'm no exception. I got a senior coffee discount this morning at Jack in the Box, and it makes me happy. You do have to ask for it, because it wouldn't be very polite for some teenager at the counter to just judge you as being old enough, and besides, when I was a teenager, old people all looked the same to me, from 50 to 100. You gotta be at least 55 to get the discount. I've been over 55 for quite some time now, and all I gotta do is to remember to ask for the discount.

Ah, and there's the rub - getting this bargain requires something that I've never been very good at - memory. Nowadays with a thousand things on my mind, like wondering if I've fed the dogs, or have turned out the porch light, it's easy for me to forget. And then I wouldn't get the bargain price.

I would say that I've never been very good at getting bargains, and poor memory is part of it, but definitely my biggest drawback is lack of the correct kind of knowledge. I've known some extremely sharp people who can tell you what price is right, and what isn't. My mom was that kind of person, and she loved watching the TV show "The Price is Right", where she could hardly believe how clueless so many people were. I was a kid, so I had no idea how much a couch costs, and really I still don't. If I were going to buy a couch, I would have to do some research. As an old Marketing guy, I know that most people are actually this clueless about whether the price is right, and often all that has to been shown to them is a great big "40% off" or a price next to the price which is crossed out. Of course, that's nonsense, and real bargain hunters aren't fooled. Getting a real bargain takes effort.

As a student of human nature, I've always considered criminals to be the ultimate in bargain hunters. The effort, and risk, that they go through gets them expensive stuff like cars and TVs with no cash outlay, but it requires a lot of work, preparation, and the willingness to be beat up, or shot, or sent to prison. This is an extreme that I've never even considered. And at the other end of the scale are people who donate, and give when they really don't even have to. Those people are often considered ridiculous by the bargain hunters, and if they see me dropping a dollar into a donation box, I know that they're just puzzled. A dollar, by the way, is a fairly sizable percentage of my meager income nowadays, and if they knew that they'd be even more puzzled!

But don't get me wrong, I'm not entirely clueless. I know what the price is for a gallon of gasoline (a useless piece of knowledge for me as I haven't owned a car for years), so if someone were to tell me that the price was under two dollars I would be impressed. I noticed this morning that without my senior discount for the coffee at Jack in the Box, it would have been $1.08, instead of fifty-five cents. Otherwise, I really wouldn't know. But I know that people are paying a lot more than a dollar at the local Starbucks, so I understand that I'm getting a bargain.

I dislike it when people call me stupid, but I will accept being called ignorant. I am ignorant of so many things, which I won't put much effort into, but which other people are fascinated by (you could put me in front of a cricket match, and I'd have no idea what was going on, even if you tried to explain it to me).

So let's go to 1917 Phoenix and do some bargain hunting at Bayless grocery. I tell you what, you get to bring along the money in your 21st Century wallet, and whatever change you have in your pocket. Everything will be a bargain to our eyes! The people there will just stare in amazement at our ignorance.
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