Today I was wandering around, as is often my want, with no real goal or destination in mind, though I did hope for an open place for a haircut. (I think that shows my tonsorial level of sophistication—look for a place that cuts hair on Sunday…) I found a suitable place to stop, a strip mall with a SuperMasterBudgetSharpClipperShort Cuts. Next to it was a Trader Joes, and right across the street was a “Just Deals” store. What I found in all three places and with my own life was really an econ lesson, so with apologies to Professors Oyen and Young, my college Econ profs, here is what I learned.
Just Deals is a remainder shop, a scratch and dent store of unimaginable and chaotic variety. Coffee is next to Crispettes, a store-brand knock-off of Rice Crispies. Cat food and treats are in the same aisle as the cooking and cleaning supplies, and the Motrin is well, next to everything and anything else you might imagine. Almost all of it is out of date. The soda has a sell date of 2007, but is only $4.50 for 24 20oz bottles. Big boxes of cereal were 2/$2.99. That Motrin mentioned above? An early 2008 “use-by” date and $1.99 for 24 tablets. Who knew cat and dog food had sell by dates? There was nothing fresh in the store—I was surprised that I didn’t find a box of Twinkies from before the turn of century, though to be fair, that would still make the Twinkies edible. Additionally, 80% of the store was made up of brands that I have never heard of. Think of it—go in a grocery store and imagine seeing all these things that you recognize, like cereal, health and beauty supplies or you name it, and noticing that you could only recognize the brand name 20% of the time. Madison Avenue would be devastated.
Across the street was Trader Joes, a store that I once thought only sold the infamous “two buck Chuck” wine. They do sell that, though it is now 2.99 to buy a bottle of Charles Shaw wine. The store is really a cult high-end grocery store. Much of the store is “Trader Joe” branded goods, but most would say that brand is pretty gourmet. For example, they have rice crispie treats, but they are made out of organic brown rice. I wonder if they use organic marshmallows? It is meticulously organized—the coffee is next to, well, the coffee. Anyone with previous grocery store experience would find it easy to navigate—there is no serendipity here, no hope of finding taco-mix just down from the t-shirts. If you want to find crackers, all you really need to know is if you want ones that are made from hand ground wheat, touched and blessed by scarce monks from somewhere, and lightly salted with sea salt from the Bothnian Sea. Bonus points to those who might know where that sea is…
What a contrast between the two stores. Both were equally busy, but with predictably different shoppers. But more evident was the simple difference in the things for sale—the quality, the freshness, the selection, the organization all went to Trader Joe’s. I don’t know—does it matter if your cookies or condoms or shampoo or cans of soup or mystery meat for your beast are out of date? Maybe not. $20 would go a whole lot further in the Just Deals store than in Trader Joes. And that is the point, I guess. People are increasingly looking to make that $20 go further. Even my upscale salon visit (and I use the term “salon” rather loosely, and the term upscale incorrectly) was less than $15 with a tip, and my “stylist” noted that they were busy with more clients who used to spend more on their hair. I think, (as limited by my failing memory from my econ classes, that is termed substitution—I need a hair cut, so I go to stylist in the strip mall rather than the mall. I need food, so I go to Just Deals instead of to a name-brand grocery. And I think that this is the economic slow down that many are missing. It isn’t always doing with less, but doing it with other things to meet a need. It isn’t just going to Just Deals rather than Trader Joes. It’s a used car rather than a new car, or to make it even closer to home, going to Whatcom instead of Western. I see a huge trend in this part of the economic slowdown.
This has all been brought home to me, and I now do realize even more so that no one is immune from the incredible economic mess that we are in. On Friday afternoon, I received official notice that I have been selected to play the exciting game of, “You Have Been Let Go Because of the Economy.” It’s a new game that that 651,001 people got to play last week and it’s caught on so fast that now 8.1% of the workforce now play this increasingly desperate game. I am afraid that it will only get more popular. I am hard pressed to complain. I received six months notice—far too may receive six minutes notice or even less. And it was done kindly, or as kindly as one can ever have this done to them.
I am not or did not shop out of necessity at the Just Deals store—that was more of a sociological field trip. All I bought was a set of water color paints—how could they go bad? I won’t have to shop there out of need, I hope. Before my contract ends in September, I will make more in wages than the average wage of many if not most single people in Whatcom County during an entire year. I have little to complain about. I will be able to buy at least name-brand cans of soup for the foreseeable future. It will be an adventure again, as I weigh my options and start looking. It is a bit different in the market—more than 30% of the states are cutting higher ed by more than 5%, so the market for jobs is a bit ugly out there.
As I wrote in one of my earliest blogs, “Man plans, and God laughs.” I can hear the laughter now… I have to admit that it may be a bit before I am laughing along with her/him. But, as they say, I am safe and warm and know where my next meal is coming from and I bet I can predict that I will be able to find the one after that, too. That is two out of five “needs” met, so Maslow is happy. And so am I. The other levels, well, they will come again.
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