The art of wasting people's time

David Thorne strikes again. With mod­er­ate success.

I like that he’s a bit of a Robin Hood. Fight­ing for the every­man. Tak­ing on the cor­rup­tion inher­ent in the system.

This time he had some over­due DVDs from Block­buster.

Read the whole lot here

He poses a ques­tion you’ve no doubt won­dered about for years — why are late fees so high…

I have checked pric­ing at the DVD Ware­house and the cost of replac­ing your lost movies with new ones is as follows:

Harold and Kumar Escape from Guan­tanamo Bay $7.95
Water­world $4.95
Jour­ney to the Cen­tre of the Earth $9.95
Logan’s Run $12.95

This totals $35.80 so I would rather pay that than the $82 late fee. I have no idea why Logan’s Run is the most expen­sive of the four movies as it was def­i­nitely the worst. Have you seen it? I wouldn’t pay $12.95 for that. I would use the money to buy a good movie instead. Prob­a­bly some­thing with Steven Sea­gal in it. The entire premise com­prised of liv­ing a utopian and care­free lifestyle with only three draw­backs — wear­ing sev­en­ties jump­suits, liv­ing in what looks like a giant shop­ping cen­tre and not being allowed to live past thirty. This would seem log­i­cal though as I would not want a bunch of old peo­ple hang­ing around com­plain­ing about their arthri­tis while I am try­ing to relax at the shop­ping cen­tre in my jump­suit try­ing not to think about the com­puter crashing.

  1. 1

    There are rea­sons for late fees to be as high as they are. For instance, there’s a sort of social­ism that goes on. Sure, those un-returned movies don’t cost as much as their fees. How­ever, some oth­ers (new releases or video games for exam­ple) would.

    Sec­ondly, she’s right — not being able to lend out the movies is a real pain. It’s irri­tates other cus­tomers and can harm the rep­u­ta­tion of the store if some­one has to wait 5 + weeks to rent out a movie while the store fights with the recal­ci­trant bor­rower to get it back. On a related point, it wastes the valu­able time of staff to have to chase things up.

    And even if no-one wants specif­i­cally and par­tic­u­larly wants the video, it’s nice to have it there for the sake of browsers.

    But David Thorne is hard to dislike.


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About St. Eutychus

Eutychus was a young man who fell to his death because the Apostle Paul preached for too long (Acts 20). I've decided to canonise Eutychus and make him the patron saint of my dalliances around the Internet.

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Recent Comments

Jeff K : I ask people how their Bible reading is going if I get into an awkward convo at church. works a treat.
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KIM : *like* or am i not supposed to put words in stars?? i like it anyway!
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Ben McLaughlin : Heh! That's cool that they were such good sports about it.
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Al Bain : It was your comment that all actions should tick at least one that got me wondering. I think the three categories we have been talking about are helpful. And probably the easiest way to thi
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Nathan Campbell : I don't know that I'm restricting all actions to this trichotomy - because I think "worship" is probably another element that could be added to the Venn diagram (that would overlap heavily with the ot
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al bain : On what scriptural basis are you restricting all actions to this trichotomy?
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Nathan Campbell : How are these, for definitions... Work = Activities for bringing order. Rest = Activities for rejuvenation. Play = Activities for pleasure. I still think the best actions tick two or more of
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KIM : i second the recommendation for communicate jesus -- and can vouch that its blogger is just as adept at real life interaction as he is at facebook!
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Gary Ware : That hollow feeling in the pit of your gut when the fact you've been ripped off is really something isn't it? At least it doesn't involve damage to the car, as well. We had our Tarago front quarter w
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Anika Q : Rather off topic, but I found out today that there is a seminar on the Eutychus passage in Acts in UQ's religious department this Friday at 2. I thought I'd mention it to you, for obvious reasons.
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