My Wallet Growing Plastic

Have you looked in your wallet lately? I cleaned mine out a few weeks ago. I was amazed at how much plastic was in there that was not a debit or credit card. Face it, wallets were built and designed to hold money, credit/debit cards, and identification but now everywhere you go business want to give you their rewards card. They give us this card so they can save us money as loyal customers. I never heard so much cow dung. The resulting fact is if you don’t get their card they will screw you by forcing you to by marked up merchandise.

These are just some of the cards I found in my wallet: Best Buy Reward Zone, PetsMart PetPerks, Tom Thumb Rewards, Petco P.A.L.S, Kroger Plus, Brookshire’s, EDGE Game Stop, ExtraCare CVS/pharmacy, Office Depot, My Sonic. This is just about an inch worth of cards. You heard me, one inch. This doesn’t include I.D. Cards, money cards, insurance cards, or heaven forbid I might have cash in my wallet.

The million dollar question is how do you put all of this in a wallet without breaking it at the seams, or having the back pocket turned into a weird deformed lump on my buttocks. How soon would that make me a target of a good mugging? Afterward the mugger would probably get irritated because it all discount club cards. Have a heyday with that, bozo. Make sure to use them all. I need the reward points.

Now I realize you can get the key-chain tags. Are we really going to go there? I thought not. A whole inch worth of discount tags on your chain. Yeah, well you must be yanking mine. I mean, this is really a joke.

You can even scan them into your phone, and just pull out the app as needed. That’s right, let people know you have financial information on your phone. With this device they do not even have to mug you just use one of those scanning thingamajig and they got all your information. I think I want an app that fries any machine trying to steal from my electronics. Unfortunately you might get sued for booby-trapping your merchandise from unlawful use. Other than the state of our economy, this is a pretty good sign that the criminals are running things when we risk prosecution for protecting our items and/or ourselves.

You know, I am not even sure what all these cards do. For instance I do not remember ever getting a discount from the PETCO card. I just went to their website and it tells me I am saving money on a wide range of items throughout their store… Apparently I just do not know how much I am saving. Good thing they were able to tell me. I guess I need to keep this card.

I have also been told that stores use these for tracking purposes so they know what people are buying and what to keep in stock. The card tells them that? Do they think we are morons? Their daily, weekly and monthly sales and inventory gives them that information. If it doesn’t they are the morons using the governmental monetary and product tracking system that is supporting our nation. Simply these cards are the easiest way to get you on a mailing list, and eventually no matter what they say this information will most likely be sold to other data collection facilities that will be sold to mass marketers.

I would boycott using these cards starting today, but I know many of them bring merchandise down to what it should cost. It’s not like I think I am getting a great buy but I at least know I’m not paying the supper inflated price that non-members pay. So, I guess in the end what we need is someone to re-invent the wallet. A wallet that will shrink these cards down to just one. Because I really do not care how many cards I have just that I get the best deals and that I do not feel like I’m sitting on an uncomfortable booster seat. A discounted booster at that.

(C)Jonathan S. Brooks 04-19-11 (Picture Unknown Artist)