Welcome Part 2

Ding ding ding....We Have A Winner!!!!

The first visitor to my blog is none other then Mr. Abacus himself. I guess he did have slightly unfair advantage though (check out the names on the links over there to the right), but hey that doesn't matter much to me. So congratulations Brian, you win..... a wonderful night with my kids!!! So come on down, any night is fine, you can spend a completely uninterrupted evening with the kids while Elizabeth and I will go out to dinner or maybe just go sit in an empty field, surrounded by nothing while we listen to the deafening sound of nothing (if you have kids you know what I'm talking about). You better hurry though, only about 4 more weeks and that number of kids is going to increase yet again.

While doing my daily perusing of various web sites and blogs I was very intrigued by today's Dilbert blog by Scott Adams. At the end of his blog Scott made the following statement:

My reason for majoring in economics in college was to understand how the world works, so I would be more equipped to navigate in it. I think it was a good choice. Has your college major given you any mild super powers?

This got me to thinking about my own education and my minor in economics. Now I only minored in economics so my super power is fairly mild but it does make for a fun party trick.

True story...

When I was in college I used to work as an Asst Manager at a sporting goods store in the mall selling shoes. I had a lady who was relentless about asking for a discount on her kids shoes. Eventually after the 10th time of me saying no, she asked

Customer- Well why not?

I replied (slightly annoyed)- Because I don't want to die or end up in jail.

Customer (with an odd look on her face)- "What? How will giving me a discount get you arrested or killed?"

Me- Because tomorrow my manager is going to review today’s discounts and question me as to what I was doing. With no good reason I will get into trouble and more then likely I will get fired for ripping off the company, since I signed this code of ethics thing. If I get fired then there is no way I will be able to continue to pay for my education. At that point I will have two options 1) drop out of college and get a job as a ditch digger (Hey the world needs ditch diggers!!!) or 2) sell drugs to make enough money to keep funding my education. Now I don't mind a little hard work but ditch digging just isn't my thing (there just is not much of a career path) and not that I condone the distribution of drugs, I just don't want to be a ditch digger. So obviously I am going with option 2. Now we all now nothing good comes out of selling drugs. So somewhere down the road I am going to get busted for it which means I can never get a real job ever again or worse yet I am sure I am headed to jail. Even worse would be the day that one of my junkies decides he needs his fix but doesn't have the $20 for it. Instead of a twenty he pulls out a knife or a gun and the next thing you know I am getting bagged and tagged down at the morgue. So no ma'am I will not give you an extra 10% discount because I don't want to die!

At that point I rang up the shoes and said “Thank you for shopping at xxxx and Have a great day!”

She walked out of the store and didn't say a word and yes she came back to the store several times after that experience and never asked me or anyone for another discount.