Stylist: How’s that?

Trumwill: Could you take a little more off the back?

Stylist: Taper it a little more, you mean?

Trumwill: Yeah. For some reason my hair seems to grow fastest in the back. When I’m not careful I am the king of the unintentional mullet.

Stylist: Hey, be glad that it’s growing at all.

Trumwill: No joke. Someday I may need it to grow super fast back there so I can cut it and plug it in up front.

This is an item from a couple months ago, but it nonetheless demonstrates a sense of entitlement on the part of iPhone users.

Their anger revolves around the fast-evolving iPhone. To get one, most consumers committed to a two-year contract. But over that two-year period, since its introduction in 2007, the iPhone has undergone technology enhancements and, like many electronic devices, the price has fallen.

This week Apple introduced its new souped-up iPhone 3GS, with a price of $199 for the 16G version and $299 for the 32G version. However, that’s only for new AT&T subscribers.

If you bought one of the earlier versions of the iPhone and want to upgrade before your contract is up, it will cost you an extra $200. The upgrade price is $399 for the 16G version and $499 for the 32G model. Without a contract, consumers pay $599 and $699, respectively.

“If you are a loyal iPhone user like me, contact them through e-mail, phone, whatever — let your voice be heard,” wrote one upset iPhone user on the AT&T forum. “Let them know you will not be quiet. Do whatever it takes.”

The husband of a coworker/friend of my wife with whom I have struck up a friendship like to talk gadgets. He commented that one Apple guy he knows was complaining about the people complaining about how people who buy early-releases of products pay more than those who wait just a few months or a year. And not a little bit more. The Applehead said that that’s the way it works for all Apple products and people should expect it. My friend replied that if Apple is going to penetrate the market beyond Apple’s enthusiastic base, they’re going to have to get used to people pushing back against Apple the same way that they push back against anyone else.

It actually puts me in the rare position of agreeing with Apple. Early adopters do pay a premium and that should be expected. That Apple makes this premium so steep may be a little aggravating, but the solution is that people need to just wait six months or a year or a couple years. That happens to be what I do all the time!

In this case, though, they’re not just complaining about the price drops and the early-adopter premium. The complaints now center on cell phone contracts and how it’s the new customers that get the cool price breaks. I have no proof beyond my biases, but I suspect that the complainants are not the people that are new to Apple’s business model but people who know it full well, accept it, but then get on their high horse when it seems like it’s coming from someone other than the hallowed Bay Area gizmo giant. On a sidenote, I suppose I should lay off Appleheads a little bit. I’m seeing more of people aiming their barrels at Apple in addition to AT&T and this is a positive development.

Whatever the case, iPhone users are not asking to be treated like everyone else. They’re asking to be treated special. When you sign a two year contract, the words on that paper actually mean something. They mean that in return for the price break that you get on the phone, you agree to be their customer for a two year period. This is the case whether you buy a Motorola dumbphone or an eggheaded iPhone. Once you’ve done this, you have punched your ticket. Their failure to give you anything above and beyond that is not taking you for granted. That is the agreement that both sides signed on to. You’re not giving them your business anymore. They’ve bought it.

Now, when it comes to most cell phone users, you can simply leave after the contract has expired. You may have to buy a new phone, but that’s not as big of a deal because you can get a price break on the new phone. The iPhone is a little bit different because you can’t get an iPhone on any US network except the AT&T one. That’s a decision you made when you sold your soul to Apple because Apple contracted your soul out to AT&T. There are three people to blame here and AT&T is only one of them. So to the extent that iPhone users are being treated differently, it’s because AT&T is merely getting compensation for the rights that Apple sold to them.

But generally, the contract system affects all of us and Apple users have no right to be exempt from it. Anyone that is under a contract with a provider is not in a position to demand generosity on the part of AT&T. As a non-iPhone AT&T customer, I don’t expect AT&T to give me a price break on a phone without getting something in return. Since I’m not under contract (more on that in a minute), I could get a new phone (at a discount) for a new contract. They get something and I get something. What the iPhone people are asking for is to get something without giving anything that they are not already contractually obliged to give.

Now, there are two caveats to this.

First, the article itself is not entirely clear on what AT&Ts policy is towards people like me. It says on one hand that the special, special low rate is only available to “new subscribers” but then on the other it talks about what would happen if you wanted to upgrade “before your contract is up”. I am mostly addressing the case of the latter. If AT&T’s position is that existing subscribers that are not under a contract should not receive the full discount, well, that’s pretty aggravating. Periodicals do that sort of thing all the time, but it’s a bigger problem here because it’s less problematic to stop service then re-start service a month later (which is what Mom used to do with magazines). I know that there are ways that you can keep your phone numbers, though, so maybe it’s less big of a deal. Regardless, it’s an uncool business practice if that’s what they’re doing analogous to an old apartment complex I lived in which raised the rent on existing tenants but kept it the same for move-ins because they figured that they could take advantage of the hassle of moving. However, that does not appear to be what the iPhone users are complaining about. They’re still under contract.

The second caveat is that unlike some carriers, AT&T is different in that they are not as flexible about extending a contract when you’re in the middle of a previous one. With some other carriers, if you’re a year in to a two-year contract, you can get a two year extension along with a phone discount (thus leaving you with three years on the contract). AT&T, to my knowledge, does not let you do that. That doesn’t strike me as fundamentally unfair, though. If they have a flat-rate for cancellations, they have a lot to lose by letting people dig in deep with multiyear contracts that they have no intention of living up to. This is particularly true for iPhone users, many of whom have every intention to leave. And notably, the discount they’re asking for is actually greater than the cost of cancellation. In any event, they’re not even asking for preemptive contract extensions. They’re asking for something for nothing.

Don’t misinterpret me entirely. I hate the contract system that they’re complaining about. In fact, I spent extra money to avoid it. The last time I needed a cell phone, I went on eBay and paid a hundred or two more than I otherwise might have specifically so that I would not have a contract and so that I could take the phone and use it on T-Mobile (or any other GSM carrier) if I wanted. iPhone users are quite free to do the same. Of course, if they do, they will have to pay more than the price they are complaining about. In other words, despite everything above, AT&T is subsidizing iPhone upgrades.

AT&T and other carriers often sell these things at a loss in return for assured business. Think the iPhone is too expensive? Apple is the one that sets the price. Don’t like the way that prices start sky-high and fall just after you bought one? That’s Apple’s, not AT&T’s, business model. By subsidizing upgrades, AT&T is actually doing more than they could be. And for all the complaints about it (including my own), there is something to be said for the subsidized/contract model, it can be good for the consumer who doesn’t want to have to drop a few hundred dollars on a phone from one paycheck and it can be good for the companies because they can more comfortably rely on that income. Win-win. I wish it were not so prevalent, but it is not without its upside. But the deal is what it is. Those words in that contract actually mean something.

In The World According To William, whenever possible people will know how much they are paying for something when they decide to buy, rent, or gain a service. Companies will not rely of costumer error for their profit margins.

Fuel tanks and rental cars are a tricky business. If a person refills his tank, everybody is (theoretically) happy. If a customer does not refill his tank, that can be a real pain for the rental agency because they not only have to refill the tank but also (theoretically) have to pay someone to go refill it. Of course, they’re not going to take that hit. So customers that forget to fill up are charged exorbitant per-gallon rates. Or, if they’re so inclined, they are spared the inconvenience of filling up by agreeing to purchase a full tank at a reduced price. And I guess we learn to accept this as the way things are. Then they throw out a curveball and I suddenly find myself in the role of Angry Consumer. A role I am generally not accustomed to.

Budget Rent-a-Car has a policy (which apparently has been done elsewhere, though I’ve never seen it) where if you drive less than 75 miles, you have to provide a receipt that you refilled the gas tank or you face a $16 surcharge. The reason for this, presumably, is because sometimes a gas tank will read as full even if a person has driven 60 miles. Thus, unless they’re provided with a receipt they just have to send a guy to the gas station and refill it and that costs them (all things considered) $16. Or something like that.

For some reason, this is sort of a last straw for me. I guess the reason is that it feels like people like me are being targeted. People that are pretty conscientious about refilling gas tanks but not always about collecting receipts. It’s sort of like how a big reason behind the whole “mail-in rebate” are because people like me forget to mail in the dang thing so that’s free money for them. I’m not saying that they don’t have the right to do business that way or that such things should be illegal, but… no… any time I have the choice of whether or not to do business with a company that does this sort of thing, I will choose not to.

If someone drives 25 miles and gas gauge still reads as being full, are they really going to refill it? Seriously? I am supremely skeptical. Or are they going to pocket the $16 and let the next guy take care of it? There’s no accountability here. Nobody is looking. The next guy is not going to notice that his gauge went down just a little faster than it should have. First, he’s driving a car that is not his own. Second, if he raises that suspicion, the agency can and will say “Well, there’s no accounting for gas gauges, you know.”

The entire notion that they have to refill it is in fact questionable. I’ve rented cars before that were 3/4 full and in at least one case that was 1/4 full. All I had to do was return it more than 1/4 full. I ended up leaving it probably 3/8 full. I did their work for them… but was not reimbursed for my trouble. Heck, if it costs them that much, they should just offer customers with half-full tanks a rebate if they full the tank to the top. If gas costs $2.50 a gallon, give me $2.75 and I’ll fill it right up. Heck, just give me my money back and we’ll be square as far as I’m concerned. I’d take my chances on losing a receipt for that and would probably prefer it to the opaque manner now in which “full” is determined.

Or if there is this absolute necessity that the tank be full at all times, don’t charge $5 a gallon but charge an upfront fee plus market rates for gasoline. A sign saying “Hey, if we have to refill your tank it will cost you $10 plus the cost of gasoline. That way, people would realize that they’re looking at least at $10 plus whatever the cost of the fill-up is. They won’t have to read the fine print to find out how much they’re going to be dinged. It’s a large enough number that they won’t put the rental agency through the inconvenience of having to fill up nearly as often. Of course, if they did that then they wouldn’t have the poor schmo that forgets to fill up a half-empty tank that they get to bilk for twice the market price.

And that, ultimately, is what this is all about. Hiding costs. Yes, Budget puts up a nice little sign letting you know that you will be charged if you lose your receipt. But a lot of people are going to forget that and when they do… free money for Budget! Or they will lose track of mileage and… free money for Budget! Some schmo forgets to refill his gas tank, they leave it for the next person and if they’re like me they will overdo it a bit because it’s impossible to get right and they’ve collected free money from the schmo! It’s enough to recall the wisdom of Charlie Belcher.

Some people like this business model. My friend Rick and I used to go back and forth on Best Buy’s old mail-in rebate model. From his perspective, provided that you sent the rebate in, you got your money. What’s unfair about that? From my perspective, they’re making money off people paying $100 for a VCR they thought they were only going to pay $80. Or how Blockbuster’s profit margin depended primarily on people forgetting to return videos on time so a video that they expected to pay $3 for instead became $15. When the business model relies on customers screwing themselves over, I find that rather aggravating even in those cases where I come out ahead on the deal.

I don’t like doing business with sneaks.

I don’t know that there’s a single article of clothing that I don’t have to compromise on. I think every part of me doesn’t fit into the clothes on the rack. I don’t really fit into anything. And often for different reasons.

The biggest thing against me is my height. Particularly that I’m long in the torso. That makes it so I have a lot of difficulty finding shirts that fit. sometimes I have to wear XXL just so that I can tuck my shirts in comfortably. It’s an inconvenience beyond clothes, though. I have to seek out tall cars so that I don’t have to slouch in. While my wife is big on making sure that she has enough leg room, my legs (a little longer than hers) have gotten used to being folded up.

My legs, of course, are a different matter. They’re thick. Really thick. Even when I was thin, they were thick. so I have to get relaxed-fit jeans just so that I can get jeans that fit. I don’t know that they make jeans relaxed enough to relax on my legs. Then there’s the size of pants I wear, which some markets entirely exclude. I don’t know why. They have pants taller and wider in the waist than I am, but the taller ones are invariably slimmer and the wider ones are shorter. I want to throttle whoever the accountant is that figures out what sizes sell well because they leave me out in the cold. I’m not the only one. My friends Tony and Kelvin wear the same size. Both, incidentally, are taller than I am. I never asked them where they got their shirts, though we talk about shoes regularly.

Ahhh, shoes. My damnable size-15 feet. Thank goodness for Zappos. Clancy and I just ordered some shoes from there, which is what actually inspired this post.

Socks are also an issue. They don’t make socks above size-15. At least they don’t make them nearly as available as they make size-15 shoes, which themselves are usually unavailable. I guess they figure that with socks a size-15 guy can get away with size-13 (or 10-13, actually) socks. I guess we can. Except for a couple things. First, I like calf-socks. Goes back to when I was young. Calf-socks themselves are tough to find. Size 13 calf socks do not make it to my calfs. Add that to the pants I wear that are often too short for me and you end up with bare leg showing. A bane of my existence.

The last thing I guess is hats. I have to special order them. Size 8. They don’t even make college caps my size, as far as I have been able to see. When I played football in junior high, my head was far too big for the biggest helmet. Do you know how painful it is to wear a football helmet that’s too small? Do you know the headaches that quite literally come with that? My coach was sympathetic and took me to the equipment room to see if there was anything my size. Glory be, we found a helmet! Only to find out that it fit because the front pad was missing. If we have a kid that has my head and plays football, I am totally going to buy his helment. My wife, meanwhile, is preparing for a C-section if we have any sons.

Abel has an interesting post up about his return to XXL shirts. He used to wear them when he was a touch flabby, lost the weight and went down a size or two, but is now bulking up (in the good way) and finds himself back to square one (albeit with a better physique).

I’ve been having fitting problems, too, due to my weight. My jeans size hasn’t really budged all that much since my leg-size holds me back from getting smaller pants than my waist requires (one of the reasons that I wear belts, though even without this reason everybody should wear belts… ahem… moving on…). Some of my shirts are a bit large, but having large shirts isn’t a problem because I’m long-bodied (my legs are about the same length as Clancy’s). It’s still a bit of an inconvenience, which I’ll get to later.

But undershirts have posed a real problem. It used to be that I got Large even though they were too small. They girdled some of my more uncomfortable shape and they were tight enough that they didn’t conflict with the shirt I wore over it. I’d tuck it into my underpants to add constriction. For instance, If I was positioning my shirt, I could grab the shirt and straighten it out without having to worry that I was also grabbing the undershirt.

But as I’ve lost weight, the undershirts aren’t so small anymore. The girdling is thankfully less necessary, but I’ve gotten used to the undershirts as sweat-catchers. They also give me more versatility in that I can have my shirt tucked or untucked when wearing an undershirt because the undershirt would guard against the discomfort of the beltline (and, as we know, everyone should wear belts). But now since they no longer wrap around my body tightly, it’s more difficult for my fingers to grab the shirt without also grabbing the undershirt. Now it feels less like I’m wearing a second (cloth) skin and a shirt and more like I’m wearing two shirts. I thought about downgrading to medium-sized undershirts, but they’re not long enough. I’m a fairly tall guy with a long torso. So that’s proven to be an inconvenience.

I also find that the XXL shirts that I bought that used to be moderately too big (but which I nonetheless bought because of the aforementioned torso) now hang a little too large. Well, some of them do. The t-shirts, mostly. I remember back when I lost 70 pounds the last couple years of high school and I would wear shirts that were too large I felt cheated because the way that they hung on me made it look like I hadn’t lost all the weight that I had. I feel a little bit that way now, though my weight loss is half of what it was then. But I can’t for the life of me find the XL t-shirts that I packed away somewhere. I hope that they are found when we move next. If they got lost in the last move, I’ll have to go out and buy more. I’m one of the relatively few guys that enjoys buying clothes (and keep a wardrobe for four weeks stashed away).

The best part of the weight loss though is slacks. Most of the slacks I wear are Puritan (one of the Walmart brands). Several years ago they came out with these great pants that were super comfortable and good enough looking that they were a step up from casual-wear. They stopped fitting when I gained weight, I had difficulty finding slacks in my new size, and I was reluctant to pay any more than I had to because I always had the intention of losing the weight again. The good news was that they had a weird sort of elastic waist with pleats so it didn’t look awful when I wore them. I know that some (a lot) of people out there hate pleats with a passion and probably thought that it looked awful anyway. Even so, it was do-able. The thing that drove me absolutely nuts, though, was that the pulling-out of the pants meant that the white inside my pockets showed. The fashion sin of pleats didn’t bother me, but the noticeability of white pockets from particular angles was something that drove me nuts. They’re gone now and that is a beautiful thing. Particularly since Puritan doesn’t make the slacks like they used to. They don’t hide the white in the pockets nearly as much and so now they can be visible even when the pants aren’t too small. They also no longer release the gray-green color (my wife swears they’re gray, I think they’re green) that I love so much. So being able to fit back into those pants is a wonderful thing. Whenever I do go out and get new pants, it’ll probably have to be a different brand. I’m not looking forward to that day.

The Big Money:

Has there ever been an industry so relentlessly at war with its customers as the credit card industry is now? Watching new credit card legislation sail through Congress this week is the industry’s reward for giving even its most responsible customers the overwhelming sense that they are getting ripped off. Indeed they are, and there is no more compelling, incontrovertible proof than the flimflammery of “over the limit” charges.

I can actually go one better on “over the limit” charges.

Several years ago, I had a case with my Credit Card Company wherein I missed a $13 payment and had interest charged not just on the missed payment, but the amount I owed after that payment that hadn’t even been put on a statement yet. Unfortunately for me, that was a $4,500 auto repair bill. My interest in the two weeks it took me to get said statement was actually more than the missed payment. I decided then that I was not going to take any chances with credit cards under the assumption that if they can find a way to screw you, they will.

Apparently, my level of paranoia was insufficient. A couple months back I had a credit card bill for $450. I misread what was owed and paid $250. My bad. I realized this mistake a week or so later and paid the additional $200. But the way that the payment on the website was set up, it was still saying that I owed $450 despite the previous payment (which had gone through). Not sure what was going on but not wanting to get screwed, I gave them another $450. Having paid $900 on a $450 statement should put me in the clear, right?

Wrong.

At some point after the billing period, I made a $500 purchase on that same credit card. I hadn’t been billed for it, though as I learned previously that didn’t matter. I get my credit card statement and see that I owe them $50 and am being charged interest on that debt. Despite the fact that I had paid $900 on a $450 statement over a week before it was due. How can this be?

The issue described it as follows: The first payment made on any statement is applied to that statement. Any further payments are applied to the principle and not to that statement. So once my original payment ($250) was made, as far as they were concerned the remainder of what I didn’t pay off ($200) was combined with what hadn’t been billed yet ($500) for a total principle that any future payments (in my case, $200 and $450) would be directed towards. So after my original payment, I owed $700 (though only $200 had been billed to me to date) and the entirety of that amount must be paid before the interest spigot is turned off. As such, $650 I paid was applied towards that amount. And the remaining $50 was counted towards the $200 that I did not pay off with my first payment and thus was considered delinquent and interest-worthy.

According to the customer service agent I talked to, most likely the problem was that the source of this was probably a computer system not set up for people to make multiple payments towards the same statement prior to the statement being due. Had I made the payment the day after it was due, it may have been applied to what I owed them. He actually wasn’t sure. In the future, he said, it would be best to pay the entire amount in one payment or save any subsequent payments until after the due date. Otherwise, if I realize that I have made a mistake, pay off everything I owe (billed or not) because all delinquency ceases when the amount owed equals 0. In truth, the interest I owed them was minimal and after walking me through this the CSA waived it regardless. I guess I can’t even complain about the fact that I spent half an hour on the phone because even after he offered to waive it I insisted that he explain it to me until I understood it.

Even so, avoiding interest payments should not require a half-hour consultation with a customer service agent who has to pepper his statements with “I think” and “I guess” and “I suspect”. Maybe crappy software is to blame, but as long as the crappy software makes it this difficult to avoid being delinquent I doubt it’s something that they’re inclined to fix on their own volition.

John Tierney recently wrote a piece in the New York Times that asks an interesting question and then gives a poor answer to it:

Why does a diploma from Harvard cost $100,000 more than a similar piece of paper from City College? Why might a BMW cost $25,000 more than a Subaru WRX with equally fast acceleration? Why do “sophisticated” consumers demand 16-gigabyte iPhones and “fair trade” coffee from Starbucks? {…}

Sometimes the message is as simple as “I’ve got resources to burn,” the classic conspicuous waste demonstrated by the energy expended to lift a peacock’s tail or the fuel guzzled by a Hummer. But brand-name products aren’t just about flaunting transient wealth. The audience for our signals — prospective mates, friends, rivals — care more about the permanent traits measured in tests of intelligence and personality, as Dr. Miller explains in his new book, “Spent: Sex, Evolution and Consumer Behavior.”

Well, sometimes it is. Sometimes the message is something else. Sometimes it’s not a message at all. Clearly, conspicuous consumption is something that does go on every day. And when people pay extra for goods for signaling, they should look into themselves and ask why it is that they are doing that and whether or not it is really worth the “resources.” Particularly if the cost is coming at the expense of economic security.

But I think that there is the tendency of a lot of people to assume that anything that they don’t personally see the value in as a conspicuous or positional purchase. It’s no surprise that I first ran across this article by way of Half Sigma, who spends significant amounts of time trying to differentiate between that which he personally values (and thus is a natural good) and that which he does not value (and thus is a social ill).

No doubt some people that buy “fair trade coffee” do so ass a signaling device. Indeed, the people most likely to point out that they buy said coffee are the people most likely to be signalling. However, a lot of people buy it because it’s something that they believe in or because it’s an easy way to feel better about themselves. It’s not all that different from “Buying American.” Both are purchases that do little on the individual level but that people that get involved in these buying strategies believe would make the world a better place if more people did the same.

I see a similar dynamic when it comes to houses. I’m told that people buy bigger houses to signal their wealth and that it’s a wasteful, positional buy. Sometimes maybe it is. But you know what? For a lot of people, having that extra space is handy. A room for each kid was actually one of the few things that my mother-in-law insisted on when they moved when Clancy was six or so. She and I are not big on conspicuous, signalling, or positional consumption (more on this in a minute), but having a bigger house is one thing that we are going to spend money on.

Of course, when we do so, no doubt people could point to it and say that it really was about positioning and signalling. They could argue that it is mostly about neighborhood (positioning), for instance. Except that where we live, we don’t expect there to be the urban/suburban divide that exists where were were raised or where we live now. But to be honest, if we did live in an urban area, neighborhood would be important. That being said, living in a nice neighborhood has value apart from how we are seen.

But ultimately there is no way that we could argue that signaling is not a factor even when it isn’t. Everything we buy can be psychoanalyzed as having been about that. When I was looking at cars recently, I was looking at cheap and small cars. Was this because I am thrifty and value good gas mileage? I would say so, but someone else could say that what I really want is simply to signal my “thriftiness” as a point of self-determined superiority. That I buy cheap clothes is conspicuous in its own way by being all authentic and crap and that has social currency all its own.

This is one of the problems I have with discussions about how “most” people spend money to impress people (when they can). It’s non-falsifiable. There is almost no purchase which won’t be considered by someone, somewhere to be a signalling mechanism. This is particularly true any time anybody chooses to spend more money than is absolutely essential.

I don’t own an iPhone, but I do own one of its less expensive competitors. Denigrating the iPhone as a wasteful purchase may make me feel better, but in the end if I had more money, less mistrust of Apple, and more exposure to the product when it came time to buy a product, it’s likely that I would own one. The “16-gigabytes” in the “16-gigabyte iPhone” mentioned in the article is not just some marketing gimmick akin to “52-speed CD-ROM” back in the day, it is something that has actual value that a lot of people may have or be able to find use for!

Of course, that is lost on someone whose main gripe with their current phone is the inability to make calls from the kitchen. And that’s fine. But that the kitchen caller does not see the need or use for a phone with a substantial OS or hard drive space does not mean that it was bought to impress them. And of course it won’t impress them. So then Miller and company get to turn it around on its head and say “A-ha! These purchases don’t work!”

I fall into this trap myself. I see a decked out car and say to myself “Oh, give me a break.” That’s because I don’t see the value in an expensive car. Not because the car has no value. Maybe there is absolutely no difference between the BMW and Subaru WRX. I suspect that there is, though. I also suspect that I would look at the differences and say “Wait, that’s not even remotely worth $25,000.” Which to me it isn’t. But my upgrade from a smartphone with QVGA graphics to one with VGA would be similarly lost on a lot of people.

But sure, sometimes (maybe usually) a BMW is a status buy. Even then, it’s far from clear that it’s inherently an unsuccessful one. I wouldn’t impress anyone if I went out and bought one, but I’m not the target audience. I don’t live in a place where such things matter. But there are certainly places where pulling up in my Ford Escort would raise some eyebrows and not in a good way.

But the bigger place of effectiveness is not in the raising of eyebrows, but rather in the realms of the unconscious. People will often say that they don’t care what kind of car a person drives, but they may be lying or they may not realize that they’re lying. It’s sort of like how when I was growing up it was a popular thing to say that we prefer girls without make-up. It was a way to establish ourselves as unsuperficial and so an easy social marker, but it was also something we thought was true. But we associated make-up with those girls that caked it on. What we didn’t realize were the fact that girls that actually knew how to apply it were grabbing our attention in ways and frequency that they might otherwise not. We will tell ourselves that we don’t care whether a person is wearing designer clothes or driving a super-file automobile, but what’s really going on is that we don’t notice the ways that we actually notice.

In any case, I’ve become increasingly suspicious about broad-stroke explanations for the behaviors of others where the moral of the story is that the world would be a better place if more people were like the person explaining how others are.

That’s absolutely not to say that the world wouldn’t totally be a better place if more people shared my priorities. It totally would.

I paid $1.69 each for two half-gallon cardboard cartons of milk.

Milk seems to be cheaper out west than it is in Delosa. I remember when I first moved to Deseret I kept reading articles about how much milk prices have risen and didn’t know what they were talking about. I’d paid the same that I’d always paid. I came to find out that milk prices had spiked right about at the time of the move and that if I’d still been in Delosa I would be paying 50c more. I don’t know how well prices in Cascadia match up, though, which is why I am asking for your input:

How much did you pay for milk last time you bought some?

Dear Fresh Step people:

Thank you SO much for eliminating your best-working product (Fresh Step Cedar) in favor of perfume-laden monstrosities that work maybe half as well, smell like butt even when not freshly used (“lavender valley” and “mountain forest”? More like “Soap” and “Really Annoying Soap”) and are highly likely to set off anyone with perfume allergies, like my roommate. Really.

Dear Makers of the Generic Cedar Stuff:

Thank you for continuing to make your product, even though I can’t find it because Petsmart refuses to stock it and it usually sells out from Kroger within 12 hours of their getting a shipment, forcing me to look for alternatives or risk a “protest pee” over a not-clean-enough litter box.

Dear Makers of “Feline Pine Clumping”

Thank you for trying. I tried your product on the idea that pine, being at least wood, would work somewhat similar to the cedar in combating the aromatic assault of the litterbox. Cedar does a very good job at this. Unfortunately, you advertise on your product that “Ammonia is naturally neutralized by Pine.” Ammonia is also naturally neutralized by a number of other substances used by other clay clumping litter products, products which also clump and dry far faster than your product.

I also need to inform you that “Feline Pine Clumping”, after use, does not smell like “pine.” It rather smells like “pine-scented cat pee.”

Some of you may recall that I have very large feet. Size 15, to be exact. Very inconvenient. I also have particular foot-related needs that don’t serve me when when I need to shoe-shop. For instance, I like high-tops, which were very much the style back then that aren’t now. I like the support. I need comfortable shoes. that’s on account of having spent too much of my youth in shoes that didn’t fit because my parents were too thrifty to get me new ones. And I really, really don’t like dress shoes.

I’ve said before that I would prefer a workplace that required dressing nicely. The only problem with that is shoes. I’m addicted to steel toes and ankle support. That would, unfortunately, create problems when it came to dressing for an upscale work place. In order to close the gap on my one hesitation with dressing nicely — the hesitation that has me wearing Caterpillars to church on Sundays — I’ve decided once and for all to get a pair of dress shoes that are nice enough to get by and comfortable enough to wear.

One idea that came to mind are police shoes. Those guys have to spend a lot of their day on their feet and have to be able to run, so those shoes would have to be pretty practical, no? Besides, I was willing to bet that a number of cops probably had outsized feet as well.

As fortune would have it, I have an aunt that used to sell cop supplies. I always kept track of her career because it was assumed that when I graduated from college that I might move out there and work for her. The cop-supply thing was kind of funny because she was on the liberal side of my father’s family, which is populated with Democrats to begin with. She struck me as the activist sort if she hadn’t had children young. That she would sell supplies to those fascists in uniform, as I’d always imagined her imagining them, always struck me as a little funny. Then again, her husband struck me as a real Republican sort, so maybe she moderated her views. from what I understand, they sort of stumbled into it. First designing the website for an existing company and then, when the company sold, buying it.

Given her California (rather than Dixie) demeanor, it was always a bit of a surprise to see her sometimes wearing cop gear. A SWAT jacket or some police shirts or pants that had been returned and couldn’t be resold for one reason or another. Apparently, the pants that SWAT cops were are extraordinarily comfortable. She used to complain about how there was literally more paperwork involved to sell nightsticks than there was to sell guns. No joke. Guns could be sold to anyone that wasn’t on some sort of list but cop credentials had to be established before they could buy a night stick. I wondered if she would make these comments because they were amusing or because she wanted us to know that just because she sold guns does not mean that she approved of them.

So when I decided to see about getting some police shoes, I checked in with her. Turned out that they’d sold the business. No problem, I figured. I’m sure the current owners have shoes in my size. After all, big ole cops have big ole feet!

I forgot about our Napoleonic police forces in this country. Anybody else ever notice how cops often tend to be short? Obviously, at my height most people are at least somewhat short, but in a profession where you would expect people to be big, they aren’t. At least not as far as height goes. I read recently a discussion on a conservative blog about how most female cops shouldn’t be because almost all women are too short to be cops and what a travesty it is that police departments have done away with height requirements. It was a blog that I never comment on, so I didn’t respond the way I wanted to, which was to say “I bet more male than female police officers (in pure numeric terms) are below the old 5’10” requirement.

So her old website wasn’t able to help me. The good news was that it gave me a model number to look for. So when I’m ready to buy some good cop dress shoes, I’ve got a model in mind. Maybe I’ll get one of those sweet SWAT pants, too. And if I ever want to get a gun, I know where I can go.

But if I want a nightstick, I’m SOL. Those things are dangerous.