quality and economy

[eor]

story 1:

The other day I was carrying a record over to the record cleaning machine when I tripped on the light that I use when photographing the record labels. It's not one of the huge photography lamps, but it's got a large metal shade atop a long telescoping pole which rests on three thin metal legs. I went down, holding the record up high in both hands to avoid damaging it, thereby not catching myself at all. I went down in one direction, the lamp clattered down in the other.

After I picked myself up I looked at the lamp and thought, "Damn it'll be hard to replace that bulb." The bulb, a big 100 watt incandescent, was the original bulb that was in the lamp when I bought it somewhere around '95. I'd bought the lamp as a floor model from a local photography shop. Now the lamp was in its component pieces on the floor. The shade/socket/bulb part had come detached from the metal holder, which had come detached from the pole. I picked the alluminum shade up and it was shaped like the letter "D". But amazingly, the bulb hadn't shattered, which saved me dealing with a million shards. Now I've had some accidents with this lamp before but none involving that kind of impact on a hardwood floor. I thought, "What the heck, worth a try" and plugged it in. The bulb lit up in it's usual blazing bright as the sun aspect. I still works!

Story 2:

I started buying smartwool socks back when I was working in the warehouse, standing all day long on concrete. I got the smartwool socks because I wanted extra padding and because it seemed like the plain cotton socks I'd always bought seemed to be wearing out as quickly as I could buy them. I started off with three pair as an experiment, then quickly got two more to cover the entire work week. It didn't take long to decide that my feet deserved comfort on the weekends as well.

Now these socks were expensive. One pair would cost as much as a package of the cheap plain cotton ones. But they were nice to wear. I wore them everywhere: in the warehouse, sitting around the house in the winter, climbing mountains. For six or seven years now, those are the only socks I've used.

Last week I put my finger through one of them at a spot that had gotten worn to the point that there probably isn't any point in darning the sock. That's the first smartwool sock I've had wear out. The first! Yes, the smartwool socks are expensive up front, but over the course of years they'll beat those cheap white cotton rags.

Go ahead, fight with the pepper spray weilding bargain hunters at Walmart if you think you're getting a bargain. It's false economy.