Price Blind Customers
Author: Ganz | Posted on March 1, 2008
Filed Under Ripoffs | Leave a Comment
From the department of we-know-how-to-rip-you-off.
Coffeehouses love price blind customers. It’s not that they are willing to pay more for their coffees I am too. But the reason is that they confess to them and willing to pay whatever they ask. The instrument the coffeehouses use to extract that information is the menu board.
The choice you make on menu board sends a clear signal to the coffee houses. The menu board isn’t merely seeking to offer a variety of alternatives to customers. It’s also trying to give the customer every opportunity to signal that they are not looking at the prices.
It doesn’t cost much more to make a larger cup, use a flavored syrup or to add chocolate powder or a squirt of whipped cream. Every single product on the menu costs the coffeehouses almost the same to produce, down to the few cents or so.
Does this mean that coffeehouses are overcharging all of its customers? No. If so, a regular cappuccino or mocha would cost $4.50 and you could have all the frills you wanted for 50cents. Perhaps coffeehouses would like to do that, but they can’t force price-sensitive customers to pay those prices.
By charging wildly different prices for products that have largely the same cost, coffeehouses are able to smoke out customers who are less sensitive about the price.
Coffeehouses doesn’t have a way to identify lavish customers perfectly, so it invites them to hang themselves with a choice of lavish ropes.
Hardbacks and Paperbacks
Author: Ganz | Posted on February 27, 2008
Filed Under Scams | Leave a Comment
From the department of we-can-get-away-with-it.
Once an author becomes famous or has written a best seller, his or her next book will be eagerly anticipated. When this new book arrives onto our bookstores’ shelves you find that it’s in hardback. Anyone can tell you that hardbacks cost a lot more than paperbacks. And if you want to wait for the paperback you could wait up to a year.
The more you think about it, the stranger it becomes. That’s two separate print runs, two separate sets of distribution and two separate marketing campaigns.
Doesn’t it seem odd that even though hardbacks are more expensive and makes the paperback product look less appealing to our everyday consumer it’s actually a way of squeezing more money out of people who just can’t wait to read these new books and that usually means more money for the book sellers, publishing houses and the authors.
Freedom!
Author: Latiff | Posted on February 15, 2008
Filed Under Culture | Leave a Comment
Hurray democracy!
Aye to capitalism!
Yippee! The Berlin Wall collapsed!
Those guys who demolished our World Trade Center are having a fine time in Gitmo & Abu Ghraib if they’re not being baked by the Devil in Hell, already!
Only Communists and Totalitarian States censor the media, thank God Almighty that we, the God-chosen West, are free to say and do whatever we want, as long as Laissez-Faire Capitalism and the Free Market Economy and Freedom of Speech and our ‘National Interests‘ and ‘the Truth about 9/11 (i.e. it was them freedom-haters)’ are sacrosanct!
Yeehaa! God wants us to develop and prosper as a Nation, and to grow, we need oil, lots and lots of oil. Who cares Mr Bush, Cheney and Powell lied? They lied white lies! Our old friend turned traitor Saddam is now dead.
Our right to bear arms is preserved (School shooting? Them students don’t know they also have a right to bear bulletproof vests? God, what is happening to our Darwinism-poisoned educational system?) and our genius economists are doing their best (God bless ‘em… all of ‘em) in manipulating the interest rates so that we have enough money to pay our good old friend Halliburton to take even more oil from Iran (C’mon! They don’t need oil to make nukes! Why not give it to us? Everyone will be happy!).
Global warming? Our former Vice President won the Nobel Prize (the stinkin’ No Bell Prize, for God’s sakes!) for trying his very best to fight it, right? World hunger and poverty? Haven’t we been fighting a war against that with our celebrities as soldiers for as long as the sanctions-caused starvation of Iraqi children (which I’m sure was ‘worth it’!)?
We are virtually the center of the universe! The sun orbits around us while the Earth orbits around the sun! Everybody in the whole world cares about us (thanks to CNN, Fox News and the sometimes naughty YouTube) such that a 24-year old fool from Singapore with nothing to do cares to write about us!
So what’s the problem now? Everything’s gooooood!
How to Create Abundant Wealth with the Amazing Untapped Power of Your Mind!
Author: Latiff | Posted on January 24, 2008
Filed Under Reasons To Sell | 4 Comments
Mohamad Latiff here with my 1st ever post on LifePoke.com.
Being the personal development ‘guru’ amongst the 2 of us (myself and the one and only Ganz), I wisely decided that my maiden, virginal post be a comic strip I drew some years ago to reflect a rising trend in the self help industry.
Enjoy…
I Go To Work So That I Can Gain Experience
Author: Ganz | Posted on January 15, 2008
Filed Under Culture | Leave a Comment
From the department of good-for-them
Most people I have talked to tell me that I need a get a job to gain work experience. To me that’s like saying I should play soccer to get the experience of playing soccer. We gain experience from the act of living, regardless of whether we are employed or not. Take for an example while I was in the army I only gain experience at that job. But we gain experience doing just about anything in our lives.
Many years ago I found out that you learn a lot in the beginning of your job and then you stagnate. This forces you to miss other experiences that would have been more valuable. And jobs don’t last forever esp. those that can and eventually be replaced technology and low cost labor and what happens next is really quite simple. We have seen it a hundred times over. You get laid off and your work experience won’t mean anything to anyone.
In fact, just ask yourself if the experience you are gaining now be any worth in say 10 to 20 years. Will your job even exist?
You have to make your own choice. What kind of experience would you rather get from life? The knowledge of how to do things well which you can only yield by spending your time and money or the knowledge on how to enjoy financial security for the rest of your life without ever needing a job again.
It’s your choice.
Praying To Trees
Author: Ganz | Posted on January 14, 2008
Filed Under Culture | Leave a Comment
From the department of good-for-them
It’s unseemly and unfortunate that after 2000 years of civilization built upon intellectual reasoning and scientific rigor, we still have people in Singapore praying to trees for 4D numbers.
How To Tame Someone Into An Employee
Author: Ganz | Posted on January 11, 2008
Filed Under Culture | Leave a Comment
From the department of put-up-or-shut-up
This is no simple task. To tame someone into an employee. The first of which is to give them a weighty policy filled with nonsensical rules and regulations that are designed to break their independent will. Once the new employee has read the policy he or she now has reasons to be fearful because they now know they can be disciplined for their mistakes as interpreted by the policy.
Thus, the new employee will simply obey the boss’s instructions without question to simply stay on the boss’s good side. Add some office gossip, backstabbing and bootlicking stories to the mix and we have a we’ve got a freshly minted mind slave.
To further reinforce their obedience to you. You can demand that they dress, talk, move and socialize they way you see fit. After all we pay for them. We just can’t have our products running all around thinking for themselves, now can we?
I know of some Singapore companies that forbid you do certain things especially during “office hours”. Answering personal phone calls or even taking a short break to watch YouTube are grave office sins.
To some bosses it’s like the end of the world because time is money. We just can’t have our employees taking a break or talking to family and friends can we? We need to discipline them at once and maybe send them for another round of sterility training.
I for one don’t give a shit about such rules and regulations because they are just plain stupid and people listening to them well… need I say more.
The Internet Is So Full Of Scripts
Author: Ganz | Posted on January 8, 2008
Filed Under Scams | Leave a Comment
From the department of we-can’t-admit-to-anything.
Some people still don’t get it.
There are literally thousands of CGI, PHP and ASP scripts available on the web today that are designed to help you build and develop a web site with functionality and appeal.
And the brutal truth is that there are many companies charging exorbitant rates are using these very same scripts. But why should they tell you? They are running a business too, and it’s in their best interests to keep their secrets in order to continue making money off you.
When Walking Your Dog
Author: Ganz | Posted on December 7, 2007
Filed Under Reasons To Sell | Leave a Comment
From the department of we-can’t-admit-to-anything.
The trouble with Singapore is that you can’t simply wander outside to walk your dog without a leash in fear your dog will maul someone or bite chunks out of your neighbor’s face.
You have to prepare. You have buy dog insurance, and put on protective clothing and all that sort of stuff.
And when the dog romps and vanishes and reappears with a piece of human flesh and you simply tromp after him, never ahead of him, singing “Majulah Singapura” to yourself and looking like an idiot to passer-bys.
And you need not worry, you are almost certain to be on the cover of Singapore’s most read newspaper with the headlines screaming “KILLER DOGS RAMPAGING THROUGH HEARTLAND. CITIZENS BEWARE! - may be linked with AL Qaeda.”
But still, everything’s bloody and wonderful, and even paying huge fines and crying like you actually feel bad for your killer dogs can be fun, esp. for the media who exactly need this sort of reasons to sell their newspapers and advertising columns.
In Which The Singapore Media Development Authority Is Mentally Disturbed Over The Fact That Polygons Kiss And Show Skin
Author: Ganz | Posted on November 16, 2007
Filed Under Censorship | Leave a Comment
From the department of we-know-what’s-good-for-you.
Reuters is reporting that the Microsoft game (Mass Effect) has been banned by Singapore’s Media Development Authority, according to The Straits Times. The ban is due to a love scene that can occur between a female human–if the player has chosen a female main character–and an alien “woman.” The gender of the alien in question is actually not quite that simple; while female in appearance, the designation has little significance for the species in question–the Asari–as it has only one gender.
Other recent games have also been banned in Singapore, includes God of War 2 (for nudity) and The Darkness (for excessive violence and religiously offensive expletives).
Oh come on Singapore. Just slap an adult rating on such games and sell it for goodness sake. Is that too much to ask MDA? And since when did we give you the authority to tell gamers what we can and cannot play? Whose Big Daddy are you? What’s next a ban on solitaire for being an office time waster?
I mean these are freaking polygons we are talking about. We must be the only country that bans video games because we find lesbian polygons kissing extremely disturbing.
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