For Christmas I received some generous gift certificates to fabric stores that I frequent, so recently, I hit up the January sales and purchased fabric and notions.

I have a few pair of embroidery scissors (and a multitude of snips); but all of my embroidery scissors were hand-me-downs and were quite dull.  I have been using snips for the last several months, but have thought from time to time that I would like a purpose-made pair of embroidery scissors.

About a year ago I saw this pair and thought they were really lovely, but the price was more than I could (or would) justify.

But guess what was up for grabs in the January sales? You guessed it – and marked down from $89.99 to $69.99, to… $8.99!!!

I was thrilled to scoop them up, and they have such a lovely weight to them that you feel as if they are good quality. And more importantly, they're quite sharp, too!

In thinking it over later though, my nose was a bit out of joint. I imagined that if I had splurged and spent $90 (plus 13% tax) on these scissors and then saw them for $8.99, I'd be quite upset. So I had various uncharitable thoughts about "capitalism!" and "One percenters!" etc.

Butttttttt…

Well, the truth is of course, that these stores have to pay staff, and rental or mortgage payments for their properties, utilities, insurance, pest control… stock of course, and all manner of things that I probably can't even think of.

So then I began to feel quite badly for the store owner. What if they were selling them at a loss? What if it was an error and they should have been more?

Well, I wasn't going to return it and find out! Lol

There are some cases where manufacturers and purveyors of goods are clearly out to squeeze as much money as possible out of us. There is clothing store here that I used to buy a lot of my clothes at, but the quality of the fabrics they used had deteriorated so much that I couldn’t do it anymore. And it has gotten even worse since then.

And so many products at the grocery stores from orange juice to soda to soup to cereal have gotten smaller, or significantly smaller in packaging, so you end up with much less volume of product, for the same price that you were paying before. That one in particular ticks me off, because how stupid do they think we are? We NOTICE. I'd much rather that they charge us more than that they think we're so stupid that they're getting away with something!

Similarly, we went to a fast food restaurant the other day (which we almost NEVER do); and I was having a "Where's the beef?" moment. (Seriously dating myself with that one. Lol)  I literally couldn't see it, and when I flipped up the bun, the patty was paper thin and half an inch smaller in circumference than the bun.

JUST CHARGE ME MORE AND GIVE ME A DECENT SIZED BURGER. Lol

In the same vein, I read an article a year just after Christmas, about the extremely popular headphones of that year. I was trying to get a pair for a gift, and it was like finding a unicorn. They were sold out everywhere!!!

The article was on one of those tech-y sites and they were comparing this particular pair to others in the same price range, comparing not only the quality of sound, but also how they were manufactured. And they said that this particular brand was producing headphones that were made completely out of plastic – 100% except for the little copper wires inside their plastic sheaths; and that they then put metal weights in them to make them feel heavier so that that we sheeple would think they were worth the price!

They said that yes, they were an excellent headphone, but that in terms of components and quality of sound, they were exactly the same as another brand, priced $100 less.

Is that their (evil?) cunning or our stupidity? I'm not sure.

I think that there are times when was can be justifiably upset with manufacturers and purveyors of services who are setting out to deliberately rip us off, either through maleficent cost cutting, production/distribution or by assuming they can hoodwink us, and there are times when perhaps the person/entity selling to us is nearly as much a victim as we are.

This might play out for instance in the anecdote that arleebarr shared yesterday of an observer who sniffed at her prices. We all know how exorbitantly expensive most of our materials and tools are, and most of us pay ourselves minimum wage (or sometimes less) and that's how we end up with our prices – which people than sniff at and think is "overpriced".

I myself charge a certain dollar amount per square inch, which doesn't account for the fact that some 'inches" take 4 or 5 of 10 times as long to produce as others because of the technique involved; but that I don't feel comfortable asking my collectors to bear.

I sometimes think "Why not?"

However, I'm a long way away from buying scissors at a discount, aren't I?

Blah blah. Lol

I'm posting every day, but it's more a free association, and I think I'm missing the point of my posting. Shouldn't I be posting about something more on point? Hahhahahaha.

TLDR: behold the scissors I got on sale!

J

Kit