Pay For What You Get

Tonight I decided that it was a great time to finally mooch off of my brother's employee discount at Target. I needed a new set of headphones, had new music to listen to, and had to pick him up from work when he got off an hour before closing. The stars were aligned, and I felt like being a sponge.

As I roll up to the front of the parking lot and approach the entrance, I meet my brother JP and shamelessly usher him to the electronics section, where I pick out a pair of decent (and dorky) headphones from Sony for $20. Cool. As I prepare to surrender my debit card and thus my life savings to my brother, I am informed that the Target Team Member (read: employee) discount is applicable only when paying with cash.

Cash? What the crap is cash? I'm fairly certain that--outside of the vending machine market--I have not paid in cash since the Clinton administration. My brother comes to the rescue, again, by loaning me the cash out of his wallet. The employee discount that I totally had no part in earning was 10% off the top and netted me a mere $2.00 in savings. At this point, I'm feeling kind of cheap. I hadn't asked, but I was guessing that the discount might be more like 25 or 30% off. Whatever, $2.00 is a coffee, right? And it totally took care of the sales tax and then some.

As I left South Easton's gorgeous shopping complex, with two saved dollars to my name, I pull into the local bank to hit up the ATM and pay JP back on the spot. While I have no issue with carting him around and shamelessly filching his discount option, I did feel a bit crummy about borrowing cash from my little brother. I opted to get a quick $20. This bank, however, is not my bank. This ATM, therefore, was not my ATM.

Vis a vis, I paid a ATM fee.

A $2.00 ATM fee.

Postscript
This is the kind of story that, if told in person, would receive sighs and stares from the few people who stuck it out til the end. I'd follow it up with a quick 'Then I found five dollars!' but it would heavily alter the math and principles involved. No, you will never get that two minutes of your life back ever again. But I felt like sharing my boring story. I feel that in some abstract way it could be a metaphor for life. Or some BS like that. Two page reflection due Thursday.