Value System

I believe that you get what you pay for.   If you want to have good things, you need to pay more to get them.    I don’t like Walmart.   I once bought an Ace bandage at Walmart, and amazingly, it seemed to be a poorly made version of the product.  It was like Ace had a special Walmart extra cheap version.   To be honest, I hadn’t bought one in a long time and maybe they’re all that way now.   In any case though, I blamed the store.   I could rail against Walmart and all of the ways I dislike them for a couple of paragraphs, but that’s not really want to I want to write about today.   Instead, I’m going to talk about value, or more particularly, what I value.

I went to the grocery store 3 times yesterday.   I know that’s weird, but I like to shop by meal and I did make two meals at home yesterday.   My third trip was because my primary grocery store didn’t have endive and so I had to go to another store for that.   I couldn’t live without endive.   (Actually, it was for a recipe for a Superbowl party today.)    I also went into a carpet store and two furniture stores.     I was a little bit tipsy after all of that and so I had to go home.    I usually have one drink for every store that I don’t want to go to, and that’s 3 if you’re counting.   I like the grocery store so no additional lubrication was required for that.

                This all means that I had lots of opportunity yesterday to study what I really value.   My first grocery store trip was around 8:30am.   I wandered into Lamb’s Palisades Market with no idea what I wanted for breakfast.   I love going to the grocery store hungry and with no idea what I’m going to buy.   It’s like having a giant breakfast menu with almost any conceivable thing you want.   I could have eggs, or I could have lobster.   I could get 6 different kinds of bacon; 20 if you count the Italian cured meats.   I could get bell peppers or cucumbers or lemons or celery root or chives or tomatoes or radishes.   No Goddamn endive though.  

With the vast array of options before me, I decided I would get stuff to make pizza.    For me, this means flour tortillas, mozzarella cheese, and something for sauce.  (I already had other stuff for toppings.)   I use the flour tortillas for crust because I like crust really thin.   These actually work great for me, but unless you like cracker thin crust they may not work so well for you.   For sauce, I really like to use tomato paste and add my own seasonings in.  It needs to sit for 3 or 4 hours though so that the flavors can meld together.   I knew I wasn’t going to want to wait for that, so I decided on premade sauce.    I found 5 different pizza sauces to choose from.  I also looked at bruschetta topping.   I wanted to get the thickest sauce I could find.   I decided on Contadina Pizza Squeeze.   There were two different options for Contadina Pizza sauce.  One was a can for $1.69.  The other was the “Pizza Squeeze” at $2.05.   I choose Contadina sauce because it seemed to be the thickest, but I had to make a value judgment on what type of container.   I choose the squeeze bottle, because it was worth $.36 for me to have the plastic bottle that I could just throw into the refrigerator.     If I had bought the can, I would have to supply my own container for the left over sauce and then ultimately I would have to wash that container.  I next moved over to cheese.   There I found a similar situation.    There are lots of options for mozzarella cheese.  I first looked at the 16 oz package of Tillamook shredded mozzarella.   Holy crap!  $6.29?   You’ve got to be kidding me!  When did cheese get so expensive?    I went over and grabbed the 16 oz Precious mozzarella ball.   It was $5.49, but had a coupon attached for $.50 off, making it $4.99.   Okay, so I’ve got a $1.30 delta on my cheese options.   That Tillamook shredded would be much more convenient.   I could just take out what I need and throw the container with the leftovers in the ‘fridge.   With the ball, I have to dirty up my cheese grater and I have to rewrap the leftover cheese to put it away.   Can you guess what I choose?   That’s right, the ball!   I’m not paying an extra $1.30 just so I don’t have to grate my own cheese.  

After breakfast I went to a carpet store.  Actually, to be more precise it was a rug store.  I’m in the market for some area rugs right now.   I haven’t actually priced rugs for a while. (okay maybe ever)  What I found was a little shocking.   I’m pretty much looking at the 9 x 12 size.    I probably need two of these.   There are machine made rugs hanging up and you can sort through them pretty easy.   They’re fine.  They’re pretty enough and they seem okay, quality wise.   The prices are higher than I hoped, mostly ranging from about $800 up to $1200.   Of course the salesman also mentioned the rugs that were stacked on the floor 30 deep or so.   These are handmade rugs from India.   He does mention that they are somewhat more expensive.   The prices are not clearly marked.   I peel up a few corners of the stacked rugs and find one that matches my color scheme.   This is nice.   I can’t see the whole rug though because it’s got 10 heavy rugs stacked on top of it.   The ever watchful salesman comes over with another guy and they begin pulling off the rugs on top of it as quickly as possible. 

“Oh you don’t have to…”, my voice trails off under the sound of moving rugs.   As quick as it started they had them moved and he began extolling the virtues of this handmade rug.   I must admit, it was beautiful.   He showed me how the light reflects differently when you look from different directions.   The colors were astounding.   I’m not kidding you; this was one really nice rug.  It was $7000.   Seven thousand dollars!  One thousand dollars, seven times!  Here’s the funny thing.   I really want that rug.  I’m actually afraid that I will buy that rug.   Will the extra $6000 ($12000 for two) be worth it in the end?  I don’t know.   It really is a beautiful rug though!

What do you value and how much do you value it?   For me, it’s a lot of things.   I’ll grate my own cheese to save $1.30, but I paid $90 for the bottle of wine I had with dinner last night.   I’ll be just as comfortable on a machine made rug, but I won’t get the enjoyment of looking at the light reflect differently from different directions.   Our value systems are uniquely our own.   I think many people would argue that mine is a little screwed up.   I don’t know though.   It doesn’t seem screwed up to me.