Just a small thought here about something small. I.e., supermarket discount cards. I usually shop at the Bloomfield Shop Rite. I have my regular night and time to be there, stocking up for the week. It’s usually a low-drama experience, as it should be. The only ripple is when the checkout clerk asks for my Shop Rite card, as most of them do. Well, I don’t have one, and I have to tell them that. Some just shut right up and go on scanning my groceries, but some push the issue and say “oh, you forgot it then, what’s your phone number?”. So then I have to repeat that no, I don’t have a card at all. Once in a while, a sympathetic one asks if I want to sign up for a card. Would you like to come in from the cold and be like the rest of us, you outcast? <\/p>\n
Well, the answer is still no (although I try to be gentle). I like being a Shop Rite outcast. I can’t understand why most every other customer has one, given the invasion of privacy that such a card entails. I mean, someone is tracking your weekly food and sundry purchases and sharing it across a variety of different corporate databases. Eating is a sacred thing for me, and I don’t want corporate America looking over my shoulder whenever I go to market, assembling a huge databank so as to “make my food shopping experience better”. <\/p>\n
I wonder if other people even think of this; I wonder if they would be so quick to whip out the card if they knew just what Big Business Brother was doing to them. And for what? How much do they give you back in exchange for selling a significant chunk of your personal privacy? <\/p>\n
They actually tell you. On the checkout slip at bottom, it usually says “you could have saved $x.xx today with the Shop Rite Card”. How much is that x.xx? I’ve never seen it go over $1.50. Usually it is about $0.50. I just found the receipt in the waste bin by my desk from my last shopping trip, and it says that I could have saved $0.33, out of a $35 bill. That’s less than 1%. <\/p>\n
C’mon, Shop Rite, I’m not for sale. Not that cheaply, anyway. You’re gonna have to up the stakes before I’d consider selling out to you. We’d need to be talking in the range of $4 to $5 off each time before I’d let you into my kitchen pantry ($35 is about my average weekly food cost). <\/p>\n