When 75 Cents Was Worth a Dollar

This is a story from roughly a quarter of a century ago, back when I was in college and living in the dorms. The washers and driers were coin-operated, specifically three quarters apiece. Now I was there on academic scholarships, but surrounded by lots of scions of the UMC. So I was careful to save up my quarters, and they were not so much.

Eventually it became known that I always had quarters, and people started coming to me for them. This started to impact my ability to have enough quarters for myself, so -- having taken Intro to Economics -- I did the logical thing to discourage a behavior and started charging more for it; to be precise, I began charging a dollar per three quarters.

This went on for awhile until I was suckered by a sob story and sold a guy some quarters at face value. Then the next time he wanted to buy quarters, I naturally wasn't going to believe that he couldn't manage to scrape six quarters together in all that time. I wasn't going to fall for his con again.

But he wouldn't take no for an answer, He argued and argued and argued and ar- ar- ARRGH!! I finally blew my top and vowed no more quarters for anyone. And I made sure to let all of my disappointed regulars know exactly who to blame.

So that is my story about when 75 cents was worth a dollar, until eventually the aggravation of dealing with assholes made even a 33.3% surcharge not enough to make it worth my while. And all the people who had loudly declared that I was ripping them off? Yeah, they were mad as heck that I wouldn't do it anymore. Go figure.