I generally always try to be on guard against getting ripped off, and perhaps too much sometimes, but it's not just because I grew up in New York. I think many people share somewhat the feeling that somebody out there is, sooner or later, going to try to take advantage of us.
One time when we were visiting our nephew and niece and their family in a Boston suburb, we bought two inexpensive watches at a flea market for their two young daughters. I jokingly asked the vendor if the watches came with a warranty, and he replied smiling: "Yes, five minutes or 50 yards – whichever comes first."
All in all, I guess I haven't done too badly over the years, sometimes getting taken and sometimes finding a true bargain – but who knows? Our system not only includes P.T. Barnum's old adage that there's a sucker born every minute, but much more subtle forms exist in the marketplace. Have you ever found an ad to be deceptive, for example?
After all, the object is profit and the goal is to make as much profit as you can or as much as the market and competitors will bear. So, sometimes it may be difficult to determine when you've been had and when you've had a fair deal (FDR's term) or a square deal (Truman's). The word "sale" may raise some questions. Are prices sometimes inflated so that the sale cost seems appealing, but it was the price originally wanted?
Legend has it that newly arrived immigrants to this country were offered New York's Brooklyn Bridge at an unbelievable price, and unfortunately, too many of them "bought" it.
When I was an aspiring reporter in New York, the Queens County District Attorney's Rackets Bureau was investigating an auto transmission company for which they had received a number of complaints. It seemed the mechanics were telling some customers that they needed substantial repairs, when in actuality they didn't. An undercover detective told me that he took his car that was in fine shape to the transmission shop that was under investigation. At the shop, the mechanic poked around under the hood for a few minutes, and then said with a straight face: "You're lucky that you came in on time and that your engine didn't explode."
There are countless stories out there and too many of us may have one or more to tell, but on balance it doesn't mean everybody and his brother is out to rip you off. Most of the time you just don't experience a problem, and by now, most of us have the common sense or buyer-beware sense to know that something that looks too good to be true usually may not be. We keep on walking past those super-sales of those going-out-of-business stores, particularly if they have been going out of business for several months now.
Despite our heritage of carnival barkers and con artists and loaded dice and shaved cards in the frontier saloons of the Old West – which sometimes provoked deadly gunfire from six-shooters – we have been primarily a nation that has trust in our economic system and the way we do business, even when we occasionally hear about a scandal.
Nevertheless, we sometimes still have that funny feeling in our stomach when it's time to buy a new car or when looking to rent or buy a home or when planning to buy an appliance or electronic equipment. or even clothes -- as the word "SALE" sometimes attracts us and sometimes makes us a little cautious.
There are other aspects of shopping. When I was graduating from high school, my oldest brother George bought me my first typewriter, a portable, as a gift at Macy's in Manhattan. When I opened the box at home, it turned out that it was a box that contained two typewriters, although my brother had only paid for one.
My brother had to go to work the next day, so he told me to take the Long Island Railroad and return one of the typewriters to Macy's in Manhattan. Those were the days before Macy's spread out nationally to the suburbs and the shopping malls.
Some of my friends thought I was foolish to be taking the typewriter back, but I told them that I was going to listen to my brother. In any event, the clerk at Macy's thanked me very much for returning the extra typewriter. He added that they never would have known.
"Say you're not satisfied...say you want more for your money...tell ya what I'm gonna do..."
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