Simplify, Simplify
21st April 2011
John Derbyshire, Patron Saint of Dyspepsia, chides modern business.
Stopped in at my local office-supplies megastore for some printer ink cartridges. Total expenditure: $47.78. Total length of printed receipt: 341/2 inches—nearly a yard.
Been there, done that. (Target, I’m looking at you.)
Having torn off and tossed the bottom 25 inches of that receipt (I need the top part to claim as a business expense; clutter-reduction has its limits), I am in theory poorer by ten dollars, or ten dollars’ worth of the relevant SKU codes, but I don’t care. If you want to boil the thing down to behavioral economics, I’ve paid ten dollars for a little simplicity in my life.
Hear, hear.