As a high school student, I am constantly overloaded with the temptations in the modern market. Shopping has the ability to relieve the stress of a girl’s (or boy’s) academic and social life. A lot of us are, however, oblivious to how our stress is transferred to the wallets of our parents. The current state of the world’s economy makes everything worse for the parents and their bank accounts. The recession in the economy barely affects people my age because they are the ones who do ‘all that money stuff’ but we can cut costs easily by pulling a few favors here and there and asking one question; “Do you have a discount card?”
Here is a scenario of when and how this question can reduce costs: You are out with your friend at Kinokuniya because you love books. You have picked out six books and decide to buy all of them which add up to about $200. That’s all fine with you but you suddenly have a pang of guilt because you read the above paragraph and thought of your mom’s credit card that you are about to use. When you get to the cashier, that lady asks you whether you have a Kinokuniya Privilege Card and if you don’t, whether you want one. One does not, at a time like this, make your own discount card because it makes no sense to have your own when your friend, who is doing the shopping with you, already has the relevant card. So you turn around and ask your friend “Do you have the card for Kinokuniya books?” and he or she replies ‘yes’ and you use it. Just with that question, you just saved about 40 bucks. From that awful number of 200, you reduced it to 160 easily. Now you can take that forty dollars back to your mother and she’ll be proud of you for not spending $200.
Consumers are usually the ones that get the benefits. We don’t have to worry about how those books are made, how they get shipped to our store or how much the company should sell it at. The world market makes it so easy for us consumers to keep buying things. One swipe of a credit card or a simple pull of two pieces of paper-like money out of your wallet and you get what you want. But after a few hours, the guilt strikes for using so much money. If you won’t ask that one simple question for your parents, do it for yourself. Discount cards save a whole lot of money that you’ll be happy to have saved.
2. How to cut costs as a producer:
Most of the time hiring too many workers is not a good idea. This is especially if you have a small working space, it would become overcrowded and work would not be able to get done. If I refer back to the topic of bookstores like Kinokuniya, would it make sense to hire 50 people just for the information counter? No, not at all. Although Kinokuniya is definitely a big bookstore that can be hard to navigate around, too many ‘helpers’ would be unnecessary. This would not only cause confusion to the people, but the useless workers’ wages would make costs for keeping the store go up.
If one worker costs 300 dollars a month and the minimum number of workers needed is 10, you would be spending 3000 dollars just on workers. However if you hire another 10 workers you would be spending 6000 dollars. These extra 10 workers will be exactly that; extra. Nobody would need them and that extra 3000 dollars that you’re spending would go to waste. That is why when you start a shop you must remember to only hire the minimum number of workers you need. Too many has no advantages whatsoever.
True, you may need to cut down on workers, but isn't it infuriating in a bookstore when you want to turn for help and the line is so long because there are less workers that can service your requests?
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