While Fat City regularly reports news about giveaways and free meals, I've rarely gone to these events myself. Mainly because I hate waiting in lines. Waiting 90 minutes for a $5 breakfast is valuing your time at little over three dollars per hour. As the Chicago Tribune points out, nearly every "free" item turns out to actually be cost-prohibitive,
Perhaps the most vivid example of this appetite-driven behavior cameearlier this month ... Oprah directed followers to her Web site to
download a coupon for a free KFC grilled chicken meal -- on Oprah's
tab. Predictably, the site was swamped.
New York Magazine compiled a list of sob stories of those tryingto access the free-chicken voucher at Oprah.com. One woman said it took
her more than three hours to print the coupon ... At a KFC in Manhattan, there were reports of patrons staging a
sit-in at the restaurant.
The article implies that people's irrational response to food giveaways is because of the economy. To which I say bull.
It's human nature to throw sanity out the window for free food. As witnessed by the Cooper's Hill Cheese-Rolling.
The Cooper's Hill Cheese-Rolling is an annual event in England, where
dozens of men and women chase a cheese roll down an extremely steep
hill. The 2009 contest took place on Monday and from the YouTube videos
that have been posted it looks as if it was just as wild and dangerous
as in years past.
The contest is nearly 200 years old
and those people running, tumbling and often breaking bones to get to
the bottom first are all doing so for food. A wheel of
cheese.
So why wouldn't others be willing to spend three hours printing out a coupon to save a
few bucks?
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You can see this same mindset at work every year on Black Friday, when people will camp out in a parking lot all night to save twenty bucks on a DVD player.
I'm with Owen on this one - it's usually not worth my time to deal with the mob scene that results when almost anything is given away for free.
she (and probably many others) likely spent her paid time and used employer's printer and paper. I had coupons but threw them away instead of schlepping to kfc and registering, probably won't go there any time soon. i enjoy freebies but some people take it over the edge, you can find all the coupon cutters rolling carts full of free stuff they will never need.
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