Paying Yourself: The Practice of Bribing You With Your Own Money

Summary

The website content discusses the trend of consumers doing self-service tasks in supermarkets for a discount, reflecting on the broader implications of consumer capitalism, particularly during shopping events like Black Friday, and questions the alignment of these practices with the spirit of generosity traditionally associated with Christmas.

Abstract

The article "Paying Yourself: The Practice of Bribing You With Your Own Money" explores the shift in supermarket shopping dynamics in the UK, where customers are incentivized to self-scan items for a lower price, effectively doing the work of checkout assistants. This practice, while initially met with resistance, becomes more appealing as the price difference grows, leading to a sense of being bribed with one's own money. The author extends this observation to the broader context of consumer capitalism, especially during Black Friday sales, which have become a global phenomenon. The article critiques the dissonance between the consumer frenzy of Christmas shopping and the message of Jesus, advocating for a form of generosity that is not solely centered around purchasing gifts. It also touches on the historical perspective of Christmas, where the focus was on kindness and fasting rather than indulgence. The author admits to a growing cynicism fueled by the constant barrage of marketing emails offering time-sensitive deals, which are seen as a form of bribery that subsidizes consumption with volume, ultimately raising concerns about the corrupting influence of these practices.

Opinions

The author initially resents having to perform the work of checkout assistants in exchange for a discount but eventually succumbs to the financial incentive.
There is a sense of unfairness that the discounted prices available to app users should be accessible to all customers, not just those who participate in self-

Paying Yourself: The Practice of Bribing You With Your Own Money

At various supermarkets across the UK, you can now get a lower price if you self-scan the goods as you choose them and put them in your trolley. There is the price for ordinary mortals and a price for those who have the app. Once you have concluded your shopping, you then checkout on screen and your shopping is done.

My initial reaction to this was resentment. They were making me do the work of the checkout assistants and implicitly, if most of us signed up, the checkout assistants would be no longer needed. But soon the gap between the normal price and the checkout price grew so large that I was prepared to bribed with my own money.

All that remains is my sense that if the supermarket can afford the price it offers, it should be available to everyone.

Of course, then came Black Friday. This is a particularly odd phenomenon in the UK since we don’t have Thanksgiving and so the Friday after this US holiday is just another Friday. If you want to measure the extent of globalization, check out the nations with Black Friday deals.

But here again, one can’t help reflecting on the dynamics of consumer capitalism. Why should the price be lower? Black Friday took off when online purchasing sites like Amazon realized that it was not just a way to tap into the holiday shopping surge that happens in the US over the Thanksgiving long weekend, it was also a good way of shifting inventory ahead of the peak demand season that is Christmas.

You don’t have to be an un-redeemed Ebenezer Scrooge to recognize that the consumer frenzy that is Christmas is a rather strange application of the message of Jesus. Few of us can enliven the festive season with a ‘wedding feast at Cana’-style trick or ‘a feeding of the 5,000 via sundry loaves and fishes,’ but even those less familiar with his repertoire may know that the essence of Jesus’s message was NOT: ‘go shop.’

Indeed, the historically minded will immediately point out that puritanical Christians even sanctioned the idea that you had to fast prior to the Christmas event itself and mark the day itself with kindness to strangers rather than indulgence to one’s own circle.

At this point, to reassure friends and family alike, I should admit that I have no aspirations towards the puritanical. Nonetheless, there is a part of me that wishes that the generosity expressed at Christmas was not so enmeshed in buying gifts.

Sadly, my incipient cynicism is well-fuelled these days.

I know I am not alone when I open my email box and discover that ninety percent of it consists of invitations to spend. And with almost equal frequency, it includes a ‘don’t miss out’ offer that warns you implicitly that the price will be higher if you don’t buy now. Again, the subtext is we are using volume to subsidize your consumption; in other words, bribing you with your own money. Bribery is associated with corruption, and somehow I feel myself tainted on a daily basis. Maybe if we don’t take the bribe, the world won’t burn.