Eat Cheap

It's a funny thing that I've noticed, and I may have commented on this in the past. If you take an arbitrary trinket of some kind which is worth little or nothing, it may sell well or not. If you take that same thing, and it is in fact popular to begin with, it will go from being that to provoking utter bedlam. What ordinarily costs four dollars and draws a handful of people to the business will suddenly have people lining up around the block.

This was not exactly the case the other night when my friends and I indulged ourselves in some food from a Chinese food chain. They were giving away something if you had the coupon. I think there was a slight uptick in business, but not much. This was the case where we went and when we went, which was our neighborhood location nearly at closing. That may have led to the anecdotal report of few people showing up for the free item.

I think that's an atypical result, though. I won't call it the exception to the rule, because that has never made sense to me. How can something which does not back up your belief ultimately prove it? I never saw that it could. In any case, I think you generally find that people act irrationally to have something, anything that is free. You can believe me when I say that, because I was honest enough to admit personal findings that contradict that.

The lesson in this muddle is to stick with anything that you know is right, no matter what kind of substantial evidence points to the contrary. Anyone who quits at the first sign of being incontrovertibly discredited is a person of low character that I would want nothing to do with. That would be the first lesson. The second and maybe most important lesson is that you should never try harder to get something free than you would have to pay for it. That's one to grow on.