Saturday, February 14, 2009

Free Refills

Yesterday while I was spending hours in the IKEA in Atlanta, I witnessed something interesting.  It was lunchtime so I got in line for the $2 lunch special.  I took my drink to the soft drink station.  There was a woman there ahead of me, so I stood next to her waiting my turn to fill my cup.  She put ice in her cup and filled it up.  Then she took a drink and dumped the whole thing out.  She refilled with ice, a different kind of pop, took one drink and dumped it all out.  On the third filling of the cup, I walked away.

When I was done eating, I went to a different drink station for a refill.  A different woman was there at the machine ahead of me and she did the very same thing!  Do no Mothers in Atlanta ever teach "waste not want not"?  IKEA must go broke at the soft drink station.

What if we applied that principle to all consumer goods?  

I buy a new SUV, drive it for one day, I am not sure I like it so I push it into a lake, and go back for a convertible.  We would have to institute the Department of Consumer Waste and they would clean up the streets and lakes all day long.   They would need to hire a lot of people to get the job done.  THe economy would be fixed!  Except for the price of cars going to $987,234,783,628,343.23

Normal (fixing the economy one step at a time) Girl