Discount (From Asian Image)

Discount

12:19pm Friday 13th November 2009

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We love discounts more than most people.

The reason is simple. It has to do with how we are brought up. If it isn’t discounted in one way or another we don’t want it.

In those wonderful days when you had to walk home with Tesco bags in the pouring rain the discount was everything.

And the people who got more discounts than anyone else were our mums. They were experts at getting the discounts even when they didn’t need them.

I remember going to several shops and my mum would get the discount just by staring at the shop owner.

“How much is this?” Trembling the owner would reply “£3.25”. My mother would look at him...”No it isn’t”. And that was that.

The price was slashed in half within seconds. The grocer would write the ‘I owe you’ in that little black book of his and we would leave safe in the knowledge we hadn’t been ripped off.

Funny how we never asked a non-Asian for a discount...oh that would be so demeaning.

As times have changed the people haven’t. I walk into a store and as soon I see an Asian face behind the counter I automatically find different ways to get a discount.

A familiar tactic is to strike up a conversation in the hope that we are related in some way...have common friends...or hail from the same native village back in Paksitan, India or Bangladesh. Failing that I try to pull the ‘but we are all Muslim brothers’ sentence.

If that doesn’t work I will proceed to say how things are far cheaper in one of his competitor’s stores.

The real discount artists among us try to belittle the shop owner (it’s called doing his baystee..) so much that eventually he will feel guilty at not slashing the price by 80% and treating us like the royalty we are.

I saw this happen at a funeral parlour once...it wasn’t pretty.

The most awkward situation in the world is the ‘introductory discount’. This one has its roots in the homeland but has made its way to this great nation of ours.

You have a friend who also has another friend who is selling something.... “Don’t worry just tell him you know me and he will sort you out.”

There is an awkward moment when you stand there thinking.. ‘Am I to ask for the discount?’ Things are fine until this other person doesn’t give you the ‘introductory discount’ you ‘deserve’. Eventually, I ring up everyone during the bargaining stage and try to belittle both of them. The best trick is to accuse your initial friend of causing the whole damn problem.

The funny thing is even after having gone to such great lengths to get the discount some of us decide to do what we do best and blurt out... “Well, I don’t want it now.”

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