Spend your dollars here

October 15, 2009

Dear Sir,

The usual string of letters has started again, admonishing the stores for their failure to have charming, helpful, polite, enthusiastic, insult-impervious sales associates and checkout staff in position, ready to be complaint-whipped by every neurotic with more time and money on their hands than tolerance and patience. It always does when difficult times create a variety of domestic stresses. Not that I am excusing poor performance in any employee role where customer service is paramount. And, at the end of the day, we are all each other's customer.

But, in the main, over many decades of shopping in Bermuda, I have found that most who are in immediate contact with the public are kind and caring, and even if they are under pressure personally, usually keep their problems out of the workplace. I am personally aware of several people battling cancer who always have a genuine smile, are extremely helpful and knowledgeable and treat their customers with unswerving attention.

Mr. Editor, I would like to ask your readers to share with me a small mathematical exercise, if I may. It requires a piece of toilet paper ten squares long which we are going to pretend represents ten dollars – the cost of an item which we are intending to purchase.

Taking this piece of toilet paper:

a) Tear off five squares and crumple them up and put them in the trash. This represents the average of 50 percent of the retail price which is what the shop has to pay to the manufacturer of the product. Very often the costs of goods is a much higher percentage, particularly now as the shops try to be more aggressively priced.

b) Tear off 2 squares of paper and put them in the trash. This represents 20 percent (probably more) of what the shop has to pay for sea or airfreight to Bermuda, and all the associated costs, such as Bermuda dock employees, Bermuda Customs & Excise employees, Bermuda trucking employees, etc.

c) Tear off one square of paper and put it in the trash. This represents ten percent (though many imports are rated at 22.25 percent) of what the shop has to pay for import duty, which in turn pays for Bermuda roads, Bermuda schools, Bermuda Social Services, Bermuda medical services, Bermuda public utilities, The Bermuda Post Office, and so forth.

d) Tear off another three and a half squares of paper and put them in the trash. This represents 35 percent which is the payroll which the shop has to pay for its Bermuda employees, for their pay, their sick days, their maternity leave, their vacations, their pensions, their heath cover, the payroll tax, etc. all of which in turn pays for the same costs for Government employees and Civil servants, etc.

e) Tear off another half sheet of paper and put it in the trash. This represents five percent, or the amount of money the shop pays out for advertising and shopping bags, etc., and which pays for Bermudians employed in the media, photography, modelling, printing, distributing, etc.

f) Tear off another one and a half sheets of paper and put them in the trash. This represents 15 percent, or the costs associated with "occupancy", i.e. what the shop pays out in rent to Bermuda landlords, electricity which pays for Bermudians employed at Belco, telephone which pays for Bermudians employed at Telco and all the other telephone and IT services and providers, and Bermudian plumbers, cabinet makers, builders, electricians, etc.

It's appropriate that I should stop calculating at "f" since if your readers stayed the course they will have realised that I would have failed a maths exam.

If ten squares of toilet paper represented $10, or 100 percent of the purchase price of the article we intended to purchase, but we have used up 13 and a half sheets of toilet paper, or 135% of the original purchase price, firstly we are not going to have anything left over with which to … to … if you see what I mean.

So, the shop has to ensure that it stays within the ten squares of toilet paper. Or, life could become very unpleasant.

To do that the shop needs your help, because every one or ten dollars which you take out of the Bermuda economy, which, in the first place, were created by the Bermuda economy, radically destabilises the economy, threatens the maintenance of infrastructure, and could lead to raging uncontrollable inflation, high unemployment, and a balance of payments nightmare where you could lose your house, and your children could lose their schools, and Bermuda could foreseeably descend into chaos.

Already the pundits are predicting gruesome unemployment for Bermuda, without the rest of us helping to make it worse by shopping overseas.

Yes, it's a "Doomsday Scenario" but any good historian will tell you that it is possible. History shows us that when commerce grinds to a halt, the rest of the economy collapses into the same abyss.

You like to think you earned that ten dollars? – but in reality, you were paid that ten dollars, which was really earned by you and every other worker in the Bermuda economy. Which is why when you spend it overseas, you are in fact stealing it from The Bermuda economy, and giving it to a foreign economy to pay for their people to enjoy the good life at Bermuda's expense.

On a lighter note, I am reminded of a story of two wartime WAAFs (Women's Royal Auxiliary Air Force) who went to the ladies loo. One emerged earlier than the other. "What took you so long?" she asked her friend. "Well," said the other, arranging her uniform and patting her hair: "On the door of my cubicle was a message ' Only use ONE 'til war is done'…. But I had to leave a reply." – "What do you mean?" asked the other, quizzically.

"I got out my lipstick and wrote: 'Had to use TWO because my finger came through'."

Loo paper could get thinner again if we don't support the economy.

By all means criticise poor service and poor products and uncompetitive prices – but leave your dollars here, at home, where they belong. Take your shopping trip here. On top of everything else, it will save you airfares, and you're less likely to get Swine Flu!

We pay high prices in Bermuda restaurants and we leave a 15 percent "gratuity", i.e., a compulsory payment to bolster staff earnings, and yet the restaurants are still full.

Unfortunately, the shops don't have the luxury of demanding a 15 percent compulsory tip to bolster their staff earnings. If they did, spending would grind to a halt overnight. We've got to eat, clothe ourselves, and buy necessities for our homes and our children. So please, when the shopping mood takes you, look after your own by shopping in Bermuda.

It is the circulation of money in an economy that makes the economy viable.

Take that lifeline away and we are all doomed to eventually eat gruel in the Poor House, providing there is one, and gruel to eat, or an empty bowl to lick.

If you are in any doubt, ask your local economist about the theory of "The Velocity of Money" and the impact of your dollar on the economy. You will be very surprised to learn the astonishing result of one dollar spent in the economy and its compound effect on GDP (Gross Domestic Product). The next time you tip the grocery packer one dollar you are in fact creating a substantial amount of income for the Bermuda economy.

TACITURNUS

Southampton

P.s. Now, in the interests of the environment, retrieve those squares of paper, flatten them out as best you can, and place them over the toilet roll for the next guest to use. We used to do that with newspaper, printed with letters such as this, before we all became affluent.