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Lefty tax
(thelemmy.club)
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this post was submitted on 25 May 2026
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I’ve been watching a lot of “gen alpha can’t do basic maths, spelling etc) and I have no doubt they’d buy the right handed pencils because it’s a “much better deal”
Be like me and use the calculator in your phone.
Look at how many more uave been taken from the right, and entire container is empty.
What a sad sad world we live in :/
It's not just new generations, these are basic marketing strategies that have existed forever. It's manipulative, people see a smaller number and think it's better, without even considering the value for a moment. Preying on the spur of the moment decision.
Walmart has been crazy about this over the years. Things like a big box of 45 ziplock bags cost $3.50, but 15 packs are $1.00.
People just assume that pricing will make sense and bulk purchasing is a better value, but sometimes Walmart is like "nah".
The first time I noticed the bigger box of the same cereal at the grocery store was twice as much per weight, I felt so betrayed and pissed off. I thought we had a deal, buy bulk get discount. The prices all fluctuate, and now I have to read the prices and do the math every time I shop forever? This is bullshit.
It's not always a purposeful grift when that happens.
When dealing with an actual different sku like that, they don't necessarily get the products at the same time, and they don't sell through them at the same rate. It could be that the smaller boxes have been sitting around longer and the price was lowered to sell through before their expiry dates.
They don't always put sales tags on everything that's discounted a small amount, especially if it's expected to be longer than a few days.
Especially if it's a large company that likely has automated basic things like that to update pricing for stagnant inventory in a specified way.
They also do price tags to account for weight vs price in an inconsistent way, so one will be x ounces for y price, but the next will be z units per other price, and I'm always in a hurry so it's impossible to stand there and compare. Only retirees can do that.
Just don't take it extreme like my ex roommate. He would buy bread by picking every brand and type in the bread aisle, count how many slices were in the loaf, cheapest bread in price per slice he would buy.
Should move to a country where the price per gram/mL/unit is displayed on the price tag. Makes this trivial.
I live in Texas and this is already standard here, do other states not put unit prices?
I've lived in a few states now and it's been standard in all of them I've lived in. Though it's mostly been Kroger owned stores
Dunno, I don't live in a (US) state
Fair, I guess it was more of a question to the assembled commenters.
Idk about Walmart, haven't been there in awhile, but grocery/retail stores around here have per-unit prices beneath the advertised price. Of course they're tiny and hard to find, but still super helpful when comparison shopping.
Wal Mart has it, but I saw it with incorrect info once, so I always math it out in my head to verify.
My state mandated that shops must include unit pricing. It’s so much better. I use it every time I shop
Kroger typically has a price per unit on the shelf tags. Sometimes the larger bulk item is higher. I think they do this to clear inventory on the smaller item. Of course you still see packages redesigned to sell less at the same price over time.
I wish i was rich enough to fall for shit like this.
I understand it doesn't make you rich, but still. Seems like exactly the level of wealth I could be trusted with
It's manipulative, but if any of them stop doing it their customers punish them for it.
It’s 5 for whatever as well. That’s a sure ”great value deal” indicator
Ok story time from the Fireworks stores.
First some background: My wife's dad owns a couple fireworks stores. One sells items individually, the other sells everything as buy one get one free because it is right next to a competitor that uses that model. Fun fact about stores that sell everything as BOGO all the time... the prices are just double. You're just paying for two. That's the whole model. My father in law hates it too and wishes we didnt need to do it to compete with the other store. It's not only not a deal, it's arguably worse because you have* to buy two of the same visual display, meaning you're just watching the same thing twice for no good reason.
*We don't actually make anyone buy two of anything. We also tell them they can mix-and-match, i.e. buy one item and get a different item with the same price free. And we don't really advertise it, because it actually pisses some people off, but if you just want one of the item, you can get it for "half price". No problem at all. It makes no difference at all to me. I don't even have to do anything fancy with the registers. We just ring up every item individually. They're all priced exactly the same as they are at the other store. It's all an illusion.
But there is a certain percentage of shoppers that absolutely, positively, will not buy a product unless they are "getting a deal", and those people are univerally bad at math. We sell a select set of items as BOGO or mix and match at the other store too and those people will only buy those items. My father in law will even tell them that no one needs to watch the same thing twice. We actually use the stupidity of the BOGO model as a selling point at the other store. But that's all that some people want. The people that shop at the BOGO store will come in saying they went to our other store (not knowing they're related) and everything was so expensive compared to them and they didnt have any good deals, then buy a cart full of shit at THE EXACT SAME PRICE PER PIECE. It's absurd.
So anyway, back to the fun story. I had to cover as a salesman and cashier at the BOGO store once. A couple came in, he wanted a bunch of fire crackers, bottle rockets, Roman candles, etc. The typical play stuff. His wife wasnt into all that, she just wanted to see something inexpensive and pretty. I showed her videos of a few smaller items that I thought she'd like and she really liked one in particular. It was the only one I had left on the shelf though. I tried to look around and see if there was a good mix and match to go with it, but it was at a less common price point, and I couldn't find anything. So I told her that since I couldn't find her another or a mix and match, I'd give it to her for half of the tag price (again, that's also just... the normal price). She was very happy with that. She just wanted the one pretty thing anyway.
So we get up to the register and I started to scan out their cart... two rolls of firecrackers, 8 roman candles, 2 packs of bottle rockets, etc. Then I scanned her item. He asked where the second one was. I explained that that was the last one and we couldn't find a mix and match so I was just going to charge her half of the tag price for it. He said, dead serious, "if I don't get anything free with it, I'm not buying it." He told me just to set it aside and put it back. They only thing she wanted. Becuase half price wasnt as good as buy one get one free... I ended up just handing it to her and telling her to take it. She has an ass for a husband, a stupid one at that. She deserved to see something pretty.
About 15 years ago JCPenney's new CEO had a radical idea: pricing transparency. They were going to do right by their customers by reducing the sticker price to the "sale" price. The company lost billions of dollars because consumers valued the feeling of getting a deal over being charged a fair price.
Looking back, this may have been the point when I realized that I no longer had confidence in the average American.
I would buy the right-handed pencils, because I'm right handed. You shouldn't buy mismatched pencils, below is a story showing what happens.
the story
My friend Paul bought a pencil at this exact store. He's left-handed, but the store had somehow ran out of left-handed pencils. So, being the smart-ass he is, Paul thought:
— Golly! I'll just buy a right-handed one. It's a great deal, even! 5 whole pencils, all for one dollar!
That was his gravest mistake.
He picked up the pencil with his left hand, as usual. It beeped thrice, rang a bit, then exploded. He lost his left arm, and only survived because he received immediate medical attention.
This is what happens when you use a mismatched pencil. It may not look like it at first, but which hand you use them with matters. Spread this message.
People in general, but Americans specifically, can't do basic math. Hence the infamous 1/3 pound burger: https://www.snopes.com/news/2022/06/17/third-pound-burger-fractions/
I love how your defense of over generalizing one group instantly devolved into over generalizing a different group.
Yeah. People on Lemmy always do that
Fuckin' Lemmers...
Fair point, but Americans score lower than several comparable countries, despite a higher GDP which one would hope would correlate to education. There are several reasons for this, but as an American, I'm just mentioning that it's not a generational thing as much as a countrywide thing. https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=1
I think it's nice to realize that people aren't hardwired to understand math. There's been no evolutionary selection for an understanding of the distributive property or knowledge of a dot product. Math can be difficult and we need to devote more resources to teaching it. Gen Alpha isn't inherently less intelligent. Math is just hard and this person is probably seeing American Gen Alphas that have grown up in a society that does not value or invest in education the way it should. I don't think that's over generalizing as much as it's drawing conclusions from available data.
Gdp is stupid metric. If I give you 100 usd the gdp is now 100 usd but if you give it back now thr gdp is 200 usd even though no services were exchanged. It is what bubbles are made of.
If that group is Americans, it’s pretty on brand for Lemmy.
you say that, but i always see europeans whine so much whenever imperial units are used anywhere because they can't figure out how to multiply by .3048
The other side to this line of logic is that Americans can’t divide by 10
that's not how you convert from metric to imperial though. again the europeans failing at mathematics (then you divide by .3048)
edit also someone please tell me i got it wrong here i hadn't had coffee yet and i don't want to check that would be so funny
You got it wrong there.
(Just because you asked me to, I didn't do the math)
i really couldn't think of a more lemmyppropriate award to give you
I've never bean more flattered
Lol
they are in this very thread