Bigger Bodies - Smaller Wallets

In 1973 I was 24 years old and living in Fort Worth, Texas.  I took a second job at a local convenience store to help pay down some bills I had accumulated.  I was working the overnight shift and weekends so I had a lot customers who came to the store early in the morning on their way to work or starting their weekends.  As I stood behind the counter to help them check out my customers and I  talk and visit back and forth.  Very often the conversation would go straight to the issue of how tough things were and how hard it was to make ends meet in the economic climate of the day.  Believe me it was rough.  Gasoline had just skyrocketed from about 70 cents a gallon to a seething $1.20 a gallon.  That, of course, was assuming you could even find a gas station that had any gas to sell.  I owned a mobile home then and in addition to the monthly payment of around $120.00 a month I also had to pay the outrageous sum of $50.00 a month for a space in a nice home park.  Many of my customers lived in regular houses and they were paying anywhere from $150.00 a month to as much as $400.00 a month for rent or mortgage payments.  Groceries?  Absolutely outrageous!  Bread that had never cost more than 35 cents a loaf suddenly jumped to around 79 cents.  Milk jumped overnight from about 89 cents a gallon to well over a dollar a gallon.  We all complained that milk cost as much as gasoline!

I mention all this because in my job at the convenience store I saw something going on that left a permanent impression on me.  As we all stood around fussing about how really awful things were, when it came time for checkout it struck me that everyone was purchasing junk.  Yes, junk!  They would get a large cup of coffee (90 cents a cup) and a greasy sausage on a grease-soaked bun ($1.50) to help them get their day started.  On weekends it was huge quantities of chips and several 24 count cases of beer and/or sodas.  Junk!  They did this day in and day out, week in and week out, month after month.  It occurred to me way back then that these people who complained about their struggles to make ends meet were spending between two hundred and three hundred dollars a month on all this junk.  In 1973 that was a princely sum of money.

Fast forward to 2011.  Want to have a little educational fun that won't cost anything?  Go to your nearest big box department store and find a bench or chair that will allow you a good view of the customers as they go through the checkouts.  Pay close attention to the kind of things people are buying.  I'll be a bit surprised if you don't see them spending their hard-earned money on - - unnecessary junk.  Chips, 24 packs of sodas, beer and other alcohol, deli-made sandwiches, and candy.  Even huge flat screen TVs to replace the not quite as huge flat screen TVs at home.

There is no question  we are a nation of consumers.  We have always been and we will always be consumers.  That is not a bad thing, but we must pay better attention to what it is we are consuming and how much of it we consume.  What I thought was a problem in 1973 has grown into a national tragedy in 2011.  Our bodies are getting bigger and our wallets are getting smaller.  Our government spends - or wastes - too much on junk.   Many of our businesses spend too much on junk. We as individuals - consumers - spend way too much on junk.  It is becoming a tragic American legacy.  The good news is that all of this spending is completely voluntary and stopping it will have no negative impact on our lives.  The question we must ask ourselves now is, simply, will we stop it?

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I'd love to get some feedback on this blog so send your response to my ramblings.  Agree?  Disagree? Let's get a conversation started.  For more information about me check out my website at http://www.global-village-workshops.org/ http://www.global-village-workshops.org/