MLW: Tequila anyone?

There are a number of different conveniences that help us through our everyday lives. Some come at an extra cost and some are free of charge. There are multiple dry cleaners who will pick-up and deliver to your door. Some restaurants and businesses in the area will bring your order out to your car so there is no need to find parking. That’s besides the stores that already deliver to your home or the supermarkets that take your order by email and then, as if there were Grocery Fairies, bring the boxes to your home. Either way, these numerous conveniences not only give one business a leg up on each other but they also curry favor with the many people who do not like to leave their cars.

We are all busy and some of these conveniences tend to become necessities. On the other hand, sometimes you have to wonder just how lazy/spoiled/entitled we have become. Someone in retail once told me that there is a customer for everything. I’m not sure who is looking for the “gourmet kishke” I saw in the supermarket the other day, which, on some level was a concept I even found seriously disturbing and partially oxymoronical. I do, however, completely appreciate the newspaper deliveryman and, if I wake up Shabbat morning so early that my paper has not yet even arrived, I long for his arrival.

I have very limited understanding, however, of the cash-only businesses. That means greenbacks and silver — nothing else. Forget that you cannot pay with credit cards, you cannot even pay by check. I have stopped doing business with establishments that do not offer such conveniences to their customers, and the fact that I never have cash on me unless I find a $5 bill in my skirt pocket is beside the point. In reality, the acceptance of a credit card or a personal check as a means of payment should not even be considered a convenience but rather, the cost of doing business. If a cup of coffee or school tuition can be paid for with an Amex, then buying a pie of pizza with plastic should not be that difficult. It is 2011. At some point, I’ll be able to pay for my shoe repair with PayPal. Mark my words — we’ll get there. Until then, I will enjoy the other conveniences that the world provides.