A Penchant For Proportions Over Discreet Units
The other day I bought an onion from one of my go to grocers in Chinatown. The intention wasn’t to pick up a lone onion, but after looking over the freshness of the other items on my list, I decided the onion was the only thing that I actually needed that evening.
At the cashier, the onion came to 22 cents. I paid with a quarter. I was given a nickel for change. Remember, we have abolished the penny, so the onion’s cost got rounded down. This seemed unfair to me. Due to a federal currency policy, I had paid only 91% of the cost of the onion. Actually, what it really felt like was that I was given back 1/11 or roughly 10% of my entire bill. Yes, this is all ridiculous and it didn’t take me long to reset myself to the proper perspective. But something instinctual happened, didn’t it? I had automatically picked out the proportional details of the transaction, rather than than looking at the discreet units, which was 2 cents.
Enough onions will get rounded up (say a slightly larger onion costing 23 cents) to even out this effect, too. There is nothing unfair about a 22 cent onion.
Jae-Ho
