It’s that time of the year when ridiculous consumer spending seems to prevail and dominate most peoples lives. This year like others I’ve tried to avoid unnecessary spending and instead focus on spending quality time with family and friends and giving thoughtful gifts where appropriate. I thought I’d take the time to share a recent story from the office of consumerism gone mad.
I recently stumbled into a conversation at work where some colleagues were discussing the saneness of one particular gentlemen in the office. He’d just taken delivery of a bottle of water to his desk from the internal postal service. This in itself was odd I thought. Why bother to get water sent to you in the post when there is a tap 5 meters away dispensing the stuff for free. If that’s not good enough there is also a machine next to it that will filter it for you and serve it chilled, hot or even with ice. If you are feeling particularly indulgent there is a shop an additional 10m away that will sell it to you in a nice plastic bottle, direct from a natural spring.
However it turns out the delivery was of a bottle of water far more pretentious than that from a Scottish or even Alpine natural spring. The water in question was made from a Polar iceberg and cost over £60 for 0.75l of water. Yes, you did read that right….an iceberg and £60!
Now I don’t know what is worse, the distinct lack of regard for the environment the company that sells this stuff or the idiocy of the consumers that spend their hard earned cash on this stuff.
It’s worth noting the hypocrisy of this company when they state that they aim to ‘mitigate the impact of global warming’ while their main product literally destroys polar icebergs in THE most direct way possible, before being shipped all around the world by air to it’s wealthy customers.
It still staggers me that this guy can justify spending €70 on a bottle of water. Don’t get me wrong the guy earns a good whack but he’s certainly at the lower/mid end of the office food chain. It’s the perfect example of a highly intelligent and financially literate person ignoring everything they have learnt in their professional life when dealing with their own personal finances.
The man has a child to support and a mortgage (if not other forms of debt too) yet is willing to literally piss his money away on such prolificacy. Under [ironic] questioning about why he didn’t indulge in a case of 6 bottles he honestly answered that he wanted to just test the waters (pun intended) and check the taste matched his expectations first before putting in a bigger order.
Meanwhile at UTMT towers I’m quietly regretting not gathering up and melting some of the snow we had a couple of weeks ago and bottling up to sell at the local boutique farmers market.
Merry Christmas all!
