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OFF THE PAGE WITH RAYMOND ATKINS
OFF THE PAGE
A monthly column that takes us off the page and into the life of Raymond L. Atkins
I found myself saying, “That’s how they get you,” yet again the other day, and it got me to thinking about how often I get got, and about how it’s certainly not just me, and about how often you get got too. Truly, I have spoken the phrase so many times in recent years that I guess it has become my motto. Sometimes I even say it in Latin, because it’s classier that way: Id quam te. Getting got has become so common in modern life that on those rare occasions when you don’t get got, you feel like something is missing—like you’ve been shortchanged somehow—and then you walk around all day stressed out, waiting for the other shoe, the get shoe, to drop. Id quam te indeed.
This time I was at one of my neighborhood Dollar Generals—we have three. I love Dollar General because I’m a cheapskate, and they have an awesome dress code on top of that, and while I was there I bought a box of Little Debbie Jelly Cream Pies, for which I have held a lifelong weakness. Hey, don’t judge me. If you have never had one, my advice is to be very careful, because they are like heroin for old people, and once that creamy chocolatey fruity goodness crosses your palette, you will be hooked, just like me.
I took that box home and popped it into the freezer for an hour or so because they are even better when they are cold, and then I took it out, opened it, and dumped the contents onto the kitchen table. Eight pies. Not twelve like there used to be. Not twelve like the box size implied there would be. Not twelve like the price indicated that there ought to be. Eight. I looked at the picture of a cheerful Little Debbie on the side of the woefully under-utilized box, wearing her cute little farm-girl hat and smiling her winsome smile at me, and I sighed. I would have been smiling too if I had just sold eight jelly creme pies for the price of twelve. That’s how they get you.
If it were just the snack cake industry that was getting us, I wouldn’t be so worked up. But everywhere you try to do a little bit of legitimate business, the get is in. One of the major examples of this is the airline industry. When you go online to shop for tickets, don’t imagine for even a moment that the price you are seeing on the website is the price you are going to pay. What you do is you take that price and add to it the booking fee (even though you are booking it yourself), the luggage fee, the butt upgrade (yes, you can get four more inches of room if you pay for the butt upgrade), the airport fee, the travel taxes, and, I swear to God, the landing fee.
Now, and stay with me here because this next part is pretty important, what good is an airline ticket to anyone if at some point you don’t land? I mean, don’t you just assume that if you take off in one of those flying cattle cars, the implication is that they will land you too? Uh uh. Silly consumer. If you don’t pay that landing fee, they will keep you in the air forever! My brother is kind of stubborn, not like me at all, and he has been refusing to pay the landing fee since about 1986. He is up there now, circling Detroit in a DC-3, eating stale peanuts while reading the in-flight magazine for the 700th time, sweating out the airline as a matter of principle. And that’s how they get you.
My wife and I recently booked a cabin for our 48th wedding anniversary, and oh honey was the get in force on that deal. It was a picturesque little place and the price was right, so we jumped right on it. Then the gets started coming in. They were, in no particular order, the resort fee, the lodging tax, the booking fee (again, we booked it ourselves), and the cleaning fee, and once these were all tacked on, our per-night outlay went up about $200. Don’t get me wrong. We had a great time, but we would have had a greater time if they had been honest about the cost, because we would have said aw hell no and just stayed home with our money’ our television, and maybe a box of Little Debbies.
Oh, and that cleaning fee? The cleaning fee is to the vacation cabin industry what the landing fee is to the airlines. In our case it was $100, which is about par for these things. Being that I am an old guy who gets everywhere early because I want to be sure I can find where I’m going and also because it’s really annoying and that’s how I like to roll, I happened to be sitting at our cabin three hours before check-in and saw what I got for my $100. My cleaning person whipped in there, took a garbage bag and a mop into the place with her, and was in there seventeen minutes including a quick smoke break on the porch. I understand that the poor dear never sees that $100 and probably gets about $10 per cabin to clean them and must work fast, so the rest of it went to the get. And that’s how they get you.
The first time I ever got got was way back in the early Sixties at the hands of a Three Musketeers bar. I had seen a rich kid eat one once, and I yearned to have one for myself. I was a poor kid, you see, and the only other candy I had ever eaten was wax lips, those little orange circus peanut things that smelled and sort of tasted like recycled Play Doh, and licorice whips, about which I will say no more. So, I saved up my allowance for an entire year, and then I took that nickel to the store (yes, allowances have grown since the old days), put it up on the counter with a flourish, and purchased a Three Musketeers. The thing was huge, and I wondered if I was going to be able to pick it up by myself. When I got it outside I ripped it open with my teeth, and my hands were shaking with excitement as I slid that bad boy into my palm. As it turned out, and if you are of a certain age you will no doubt remember this, the Three Musketeers package was much larger than the actual Three Musketeers bar, and I had been got.
The list of gets in our lives is seemingly unending. Ice cream used to come in half-gallons, but now it is marketed in containers that look like half-gallons and cost like half-gallons but are not half-gallons. There is just about enough ice cream in there to make you mad, and if you have kids at home, you might as well forget the whole thing. The other day I had to buy a refrigerator, and during that transaction I was hit with the double-get of a delivery fee ($80) for bringing the new one to me, and a haulage fee (also $80) for taking the old one away, on the same truck, by the same two guys, using the same dolly. When I questioned my delivery crew about the redundant fees, guess what they said? “That’s how they get you.”
The list could go on and on, but Mandy just hates it when I perseverate, so I will wind it up. I feel better now, anyway, and you will too after you send me the $9.95 you owe me for reading this enjoyable essay. Hey, it was all covered in detail in the Terms and Conditions! And that’s how they get you.
