Benny Jay: In Cheap We Trust

September 22nd, 2009

It’s the middle of the night and I can’t sleep — must have been something I ate — so I’m sitting on the downstairs sofa reading “In Cheap We Trust” by a journalist named Lauren Weber.

It’s all about our need to be more frugal, so we don’t, you know, destroy the world by using everything up.

She’s got a pretty convincing argument, but I just wish she used a different word in her title. To me, cheap and frugal are not quite the same. Frugality is a virtue — waste not, want not, that kind of thing. But cheap is a form of selfishness.

Put it this way: Most cheap guys I know — and I’ve known way too many of them — aren’t cheap cause they want to save the planet. Ah, hell, no — they’re cheap cause they don’t want to pay the bill.

Take Jamie, for example. Cheapest dude I know. The next bill he picks up will be his first. When we go out to eat, he scours the menu looking for the least expensive thing he can buy — maybe a salad. You ask, “Jamie, why aren’t you eating?” And he says, “I’m not really that hungry.”

But tell him you’re treating? Man, you never saw a guy get so ravenous so fast. Next thing you know he’s ordering the steak. Maybe an appetizer. How `bout the soup? Probably finish it off with a piece of pie.

This guy’s so cheap, I once saw him risk serious injury to avoid paying twenty-five cents. Here’s how: He was driving north on Damen and he pulled over to park at a meter. This all occurred, by the way, as I happened to be walking up the road.

So, anyway, just as he’s about to parallel park, he notices a car pulling out of a spot behind him with time left on the meter. He pops his car into reverse and backs up. Almost backs up into an oncoming bus. All to save a quarter! Got out of the car with the biggest smile on his face, like it was the happiest day of his life.

Another notorious tightwad I knew in my college days — call him Bill — was so cheap, he wouldn’t order coffee when we’d go out to eat breakfast. Instead, he’d wait until I had a cup or two and then he say, “hey, man, can you ask the waitress for a refill?”

“What?”

“Yeah, man, I wanna cup….”

“But I have a cold….”

“I’ll take my chances….”

Okay, so I made up the bit about having a cold. But when the check came, he went over it like an eagle-eyed accountant, making sure I got stuck with the full cost of the coffee. Cause, technically, he had not ordered it. Now that, my friends, is so cheap, it’s cheaper than cheap.

I’ve told my mom that story at least a dozen times. She never gets tired of hearing it. She loves trashing cheapskates. It’s one of our favorite past times. It annoys the hell out of my father. I’ll tell her a story about, say, Jamie, and she’ll say: “Davy, you have to hear this….”

And he’ll say: “Don’t you people have anything better to occupy your minds?”

My father’s really big on how we occupy our minds.

The funny thing is Lauren Weber would love my parents. As children of the Great Depression, they understand the need for frugality cause they remember when there was barely enough food to eat — you’d better not leave any chicken meat on the bone when they’re around.

But are they cheap? Just the opposite. When the bill comes, my father’s quick like a cat — grabs it right out of the waiter’s hand. The man doesn’t have a cheap bone in his body.

My sister on the other hand? Well, the last time we all went out for lunch, she grabs the bill before my father can get to it, looks at me and says, “C’mon, our treat.” You know, like she’s the big sport.

So I get out my Master Card and she gets out her American Express and, well, you can imagine what happens next. The waitress says, “sorry, we don’t take American Express.”

My sister looks at me with this little sheepish smile. Oops, turns out it’s her only credit card and she has no cash. “If you want, I can go find an ATM,” she tells me.

I wind up paying the whole bill. Now, I wouldn’t say she’s cheap. Just sorta slick….

Anyway, this is the stuff running through my mind as I sit on the couch in the dead of the night reading that new book by Lauren Weber.

At about six in the morning I get a little sleepy and pad off to bed. I’m just drifting off, when I remember: I owe Big Jon Randolph sixty-something dollars for that Dylan ticket.

Damn. I hop out of bed and write him a check. I’d rather lose sleep than have him think I’m cheap….