Category: Musings

Save money?

Yes, please!

Everyone loves a bargain. Otherwise, there would be no Dollar General or Walmart or Target or Jersey Shore Premium Outlets.

There’d be no Costco or BJ’s, or highway mega-dealerships assuring us that there’s never a worry when you hurry to them for your next car.

The American economy — at least, post-World War II amid the flight to the suburbs — has been based on conspicuous consumption fueled by discounts and haggling.

The aforementioned car purchase always has been a competition between the buyer and the salesperson, with the invisible hand of I’ll Have To Ask My Manager determining the final price, regardless of what the sticker says. It’s a competition designed to make everyone feel as if they won. The only losers, as history has shown, have been those car companies — Saturn is the prime example — that chose to go with no-haggle pricing.

Saturn, we hardly knew ye.

So when the values go up, up, up, and the prices go down, down, down, what actually could be happening?

Sellers may cut prices on “loss leaders,” items they can take little or no profit on, or even lose a little money, to bring in crowds who’ll buy more than the super-cheap advertised special.

Buyers may settle for a cheaply made item — tires designed to last a week, just long enough to pass inspection. A one-season overcoat, which will be out of style next year anyway.

Ah, disposability.

Not every money-saver has to be Cheap Crap from Canton, China.

House brands are a great way to save money, especially when it’s evident that the products are equal to or even better than their name-brand equivalents. House brands from warehouse-y sellers don’t have flashy packaging, and you may have to root through massive stacks to find your size or flavor, but those can be legit bargains.

And then there are coupons.

Major manufacturers have offered discounts via coupons for time immemorial. First, they had to be scissor-cut from newspapers and circulars. Then the circulars came perforated. Now, coupons are electronic. The Lorax is pleased.

One reason for coupons is new-product introduction. Yeah, I’ll try your new flavor of gruel if it’s half-price.

Usually, though, coupons for foodstuffs help the maker even out the seasons, keeping sales at a consistent level at times of the year when people might not buy that product. Look for Swiss Miss coupons in July. Coupons help makers unload excess inventory.

Then there are coupons to make you cringe.

The last time I looked, I have two eyes that I got from my parents and, as far as I know, they are the only two I’m going to have until Judgment Day. So I’m not thrilled by the notion of discount laser surgery.

I may pay less for brake pads, but I never skimp on technicians’ fees. The same goes for surgery. The AT&T ad about pretty good not being good enough is dead-on accurate.

Then there’s the Groupon for sildenafil, the ingredient in that “magic blue pill” sort-of named for the honeymooners’ favorite waterfall.

Generic drugs are a godsend in most cases — even this most intimate one — but a 40 percent-off offer on an intrusive medication with no specifics is dodgy. Something is just not right about bypassing a prescribing physician to save a buck.

Save money? Yes, please.

House brands and legit coupons.

Timing purchases to clearance periods.

And a counter-intuitive method: Spend more.

Buy quality and maintain it. Purchase products that last. Take care of your tires and shoes and mackintosh and vehicles, and you won’t need replacements quickly.

Take care of yourself, too. Spare parts for your body are hard to find, extremely costly, and never accompanied by coupons.

“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson, in “Self Reliance”

In every quote, in every piece of advice, in every snippet of wisdom is a zinger word or phrase. A qualifier. Sometimes it’s context; sometimes it’s CYA for the author or speaker. An escape hatch, like the button-bottom flap on a union suit of underwear.

Buttoned up, the aphorism can be taken at face (or hiney) value, added to a bumper sticker or political button or a red trucker hat, and accepted as gospel.

But once the zinger is identified, we’re challenged to do a deeper dive into the kernel of the observation.

Parsing Emerson’s quote, we select “foolish” as the zinger here, and ponder what a wise consistency might mean.

Skilled laborers — in manufacturing, in handicrafts, in what we call “the trades” — demonstrate their talents by consistently delivering quality work.

Apprentice.

Journeyman.

Master.

Workers climb the ladder by learning, but mostly by producing at a consistently high level.

That sounds pretty wise.

At its core, though, a well-lived life is about relationships, ranging from soul- and flesh-baring intimacy to strangers passing on a street who casually-casually-casually acknowledge each other’s presence.

The thread is a consistent kindness born of respect.

No relationship can survive without consistency. In a relationship, consistency is not sameness, nor is it foolish. In a relationship, consistency is reliability.

You can count on me.*

To be sure, there are degrees of kindness, each appropriate to the relationship. Also, to be doubly sure, we are in relationship with every other human, every other fellow traveler, even those we’ve never met, and will never meet. The world is too small for us to think otherwise.

I believe that butterfly sneezes can cause hurricanes.

I believe that consistent kindness makes our elbows less sharp.

I believe that, if you know you can count on me* — and you can — then we all can sleep soundly.

Mention rituals — capital R Rituals — and most folks think of chants, robes, candles and scented smoke. Dead languages, maybe, or at least peculiar usages, phrasing and vocabulary.

Beads, rattles, drums, chimes and bells. Shamans, healers, mystics, seers … or some sort of clergy, anyway.

Ancient history that may or may not be relevant today.

Capital R stuff.

And it’s easy to see how, in a super-interconnected electronified world, the buzzy repetition of a mantra might not compare well with flossing in Fortnite.

What’s eluding notice, though, is how many small-R rituals we’ve begun to develop over and above the ones we’ve always had.

Let’s start with those, the ones we’ve always had.

Rituals, which give our lives their rhythm and organization, stop being noticed as we integrate them, the same way we stop thinking about pedals and merely drive our cars. The rituals are automatic, or damned near.

Yes, if we get overly ritualized, we can be judged obsessive, but as long as we can defy rituals’ control from time to time, we’re fine.

Sock-sock-shoe-shoe or sock-shoe-sock-shoe? Left first, or right? Shirt then pants, or pants first? Floss-brush or brush-floss-gargle?

The correct answer is always whatever’s right for us.

The list goes on for each of us. On and on and on. Mundane things, though important in themselves.

The lists comprise our unique comfort zones.

And all would be well if hypno-technology hadn’t started interfering.

For longer than I can calculate, my daily routine, my morning and evening and nighttime rituals included checking my email and other related posts and missives. Desktop, laptop and mobile. If there were fewer than 100 messages in a batch, I felt cheated. More than 400 — not often but far from rare — and I stressed.

Like Capital R Rituals, these rituals took on mythic proportions, assumed significance that, viewed objectively, they did not deserve the way true Capital Rs do.

Thus, when I lost two company email accounts and access to a myriad of networks, and surrendered my second phone, I went through withdrawal. Fellow travelers in the land of unexpected retirement told me similar stories. And all of us confess to seeking some sort of replacement activity.

Like the frog being boiled in water that was slowly heated around it, we’ve been surrendering to this for decades. Asimov and Heinlein hinted at it in short stories and novels. Rod Serling routinely used the tool that was addicting us to warn us about the tool that was addicting us. Marie Winn wrote “The Plug-In Drug” in 1977 and could document then how electrons and phosphors and scanning lines on snowy screens could hold us in thrall.

Our screens are not going away. Our need for rituals is hard-wired into our human psyches, so that’s definitely not going away.

What is fading? Our ability to control the rhythms of our days, the places where we use rituals to regulate and comfort, and not to be controlled by a stressful overlord.

I guess sometimes you do have to think about what pedals to step on.

It’s been a few months since the media giant decided it could succeed without me in its ranks, and since then there have been buyouts, layoffs, talks of mergers, hints of hostile takeover attempts, and now a suggestion that the takeover attempt may instead have been a surrendering of assets.

Agatha Christie must be writing this. Kenneth Branagh, please direct the cinema version.

From a corporate standpoint, the biggest wrinkle was the announced retirement of the CEO, a man just into his 60s who’s leaving with a slightly larger buyout than other employees in their 60s who left (or were thanked for their hard work and loyalty).

The Egon Zehnder executive recruiting firm is conducting a worldwide search for RD’s successor. They say their marching orders are to find somebody outside the newspaper industry.

As of Oct. 23, 2018, I’ve been outside the newspaper industry. That’s why, last week, I added my CV to the Ghostbusters’ … um, scratch that; it’s Zehnder and not Spengler … to the headhunter’s database.

The whole CEO thing needs serious re-examination these days, which is why I (a) applied, even though I likely won’t be considered or even taken seriously, and (b) know that, without an MBA or PhD or Brooks Brothers suit, I’m the best candidate.

I’m not going to get into income inequality or golden parachutes or the like here. Let’s just think about what makes a good leader.

First, a leader must embrace the credo that everyone in the organization has the same job — to ensure the success and continued viability of the enterprise. What differentiates custodians from publishers are their tasks. A good leader knows the value of each, knows where those tasks fit in the overall machine (sorry, but let’s be real), knows the scope and ideally the mechanics of every one of those tasks, could perform any and all (or most) of those tasks, and makes sure enough of the right people are performing those tasks.

Second, a leader must know the people performing those tasks. Not in a “That was Eric Stratton, pledge chairman, and he was damned glad to meet ya” way, but the way classmates at a small residential college get to know each other. Shared experiences: work, play, joy, heartache, hangovers and indigestion. A leader accompanies an ad rep on a sales call. A leader takes a police report and bangs out three paragraphs for the website, app and in-print briefs column. A leader knows where the coffee grounds are stored and brews a fresh pot. Not as a fake show of solidarity but as a matter of simple humility.

Third, a leader listens to the people doing the heavy lifting. A leader learns from the efficiencies discovered and honed by the staff in the trenches, and then evangelizes them, giving credit where it’s due. Years ago, when Ford built Escorts in Central Jersey, the upholstery fabric snagged as it was pulled over the foam rubber on the seat frames, slowing the assembly line and/or leading to recalls and warranty work. A creative genius on the line brought in a few cents’ worth of angel hair — the Christmas decoration — and draped it over the foam. The upholstery slid on quickly and fit without wrinkles. Ford adopted it as SOP.

CBS TV made a big show out of a company president or CEO supposedly getting on-the-job training at the bottom of the food chain. “Undercover Boss”; yeah, right. All true leaders already do this, because their sleeves are rolled up. Maybe only figuratively, but always.

A leader makes decisions based on the good of the company but with a human face, because s/he knows those people any decision most affects. Jenn in Texas, Scott in Wisconsin, Steve in California, Nina in New York. People whose loyalty and hard work are for the good of the company and for the benefit of the customers, the readers.

A leader follows that Scout camping maxim: Leave it better than you found it.

Egon Zehnder, I am that leader. My application is a serious one. No one will work harder or care more. No one.

Too bad you almost assuredly won’t consider me.

The chatty young phlebotomist was polite but curious as she made small talk to calm her patient. “So, what do you do?”

“I’m a journalist.”

“Oh, how cool! Me too! I write in my journal every day. I’ve been journaling for years.”

I looked at the fire hose and nozzle she was about to plunge into my skinny vein and thought better about disabusing her of the notion that we were true colleagues.

“Do you get paid to journal?” she continued.

“A bit, when it’s published in the newspaper or on the website.”

“Wow. I’ll have to send you mine to get it published.”

I’ve since learned that she wasn’t totally wrong. Historians say the terms “journalist” and “journalism” were coined in the 1800s to reflect daily — du jour — reporting, newsgathering, dissemination. Tools that included the telegraph and news organizations that banded together into cooperatives and wire services made immediacy possible.

Now, as we know, immediacy means real time. Any event can be streamed. And if not streamed, podcast. ASMR (creepy!). Intentionally boring (zzZZZzZZzz).

Virality is a goal. Lack of it means failure.

But the Covington students incident is a stark reminder that the totality of a story may take a while to report. The old saw went “UPI gets it first; AP gets it right.” Santayana was correct: We’ve forgotten that being first can bite us.

My vampiric friend made the error about journalism that too many people — especially (choose your expletive) shareholders and hedge funds — all make. A trained journalist is not a stenographer, not a journaler. A trained journalist analyzes, assesses, adds perspective, checks all the angles. What looks like a crowd of 10,000 from the back can turn out to be 1,000 strategically scattered partisans when seen from above or from the front.

Stenographers and journalers are valuable in their own spheres, but not downstage center in newsgathering.

A trained journalist has embraced a calling. “I am a journalist” is what we say, not “I do journalism” or “I report the news.” At least, not as a first answer. It’s who we are (which is why we don’t often get along with people outside the profession. Sorry…).

Many great journalists saw their jobs taken from them today, as did I three months ago. That means far fewer people are left to get the perspectives needed to tell the whole story, to get all the facts, to get to the truth of the matter.

Ah, truth. The real victim.

Most, if not all, of those who were laid off will continue to describe themselves as journalists in perpetuity. It’s who we are, and that won’t change.

The way we make our living may.