Hype for the Charleston Anvil

Fellow Bennington alum Randall Nichols and I have a history of supporting each other’s creative endeavors, which comes naturally since everything Randall touches turns out approachable, fun, and hard-hitting.  The Charleston Anvil is an indie art/literary/comic/everything else zine he’s started up with some fellow West Virginians, with the first issue released earlier this month in both print (!) and digital copies.  About half comics and half prose (plus photos and illustrations), there’s plenty of variety in style and substance, and the above adjectives I used to describe Randall’s work (approachable, fun, hard-hitting) apply equally to the entire issue. 

I’ve also got a story in there—a piece I had on the backburner called “One Nation, Indivisible” about a telemarketing call gone awry, which also marks the first time that work by both Randall and yours truly have appeared in the same place.  The print copy is cheap and the digital copy is pay-what-you-want (even if that price is nothing), so it won’t cost you anything to check it out.

Hype aside, it’s refreshing to see a start-up lit mag maintaining a print edition, since the costs involved with third-party printers and glossy covers tend to complicate the process more than most literary start-ups are willing to handle.  Comics and graphic novels especially tend to read more easily on the printed page, where readers are spared the scrolling and resolution issues that tend not to be a problem with words alone.  This also marks the first time my fiction has appeared in an actual print magazine, making it feel more valuable that someone’s taken the time and money to prepare a hard copy in the digital age.

It’s also refreshing to see a magazine with illustrations, since so many literary-only magazines tend to ignore visuals under the mistaken belief that poetry and prose are somehow purer when they’re not surrounded by a bunch of distracting pictures.  In reality, though, illustrations in magazines were a staple of the Saturday Evening Post-era and before, where, with so much different content vying for the reader’s attention (as opposed to a novel, where readers go in expecting a single experience), pictures help the reader differentiate between individual pieces.  Randall’s sci-fi story “The Norse Star” is one of the illustrated ones, and it includes a 2/3-page title pic that captures the opening image of the hero staring at the story’s impossible heroine and a few others spaced throughout the columns that enhance the story’s reveal.

Besides “Norse Star,” there’s an opening essay championing self-expression (“We Need You to Be Yourself”), an eight-page comic retelling of Hamlet with giant robots (“Hambot”), a short piece by fellow Benningtonian John Wiswell (“Making Her”), an illustrated essay on the subtle relationships in Jonny Quest (“Sadness File: 037”), and a final comic about a deal with a cowboy hat-wearing devil gone awry (“Walk for the Cure”).  Take it from me—it’s solid stuff, so here’s the link one more time.

Thoughts About Trains and Buses

Why is the American train station symbol so complicated?  The airport symbol is a picture of a plane, the bus station symbol is a picture of a bus, but the train station symbol is a picture of a building and platform with a train on rails headed toward the viewer head-on while a person stands on the platform to board.  Also, who looks at a train head-on like that?

Getting on a train is a lot easier than getting on a plane.  When you take a plane, you have to find the right terminal, check in online or using that complicated boarding pass dispensing machine, check your oversized bags for twenty-five dollars, then wait in a security line where you empty your pockets and remove your belt and shoes and pull your laptop out of its case and put everything into those plastic bins while you try to keep your pants from falling down.  With the train, though, you just kind of go to the station and get on, and it’s really easy.

The routines of flying also get to me.  Like, the flight attendants have to explain the same safety procedures each time you fly, repeating the same motions over and over until they lose all meaning.  Or you have to watch those videos where you hear about exit rows and oxygen masks and flotation devices, which you’ve also heard about a million times, and the whole thing is so well orchestrated that no one pays attention.  The trains are different because you can tell the people on the intercoms are just kind of making everything up as they go, since the head of Amtrak hasn’t given them a script to follow.

Why do flight attendants give out free drinks on planes?  I always take one, even though I never really want a drink that badly.  Train conductors are too busy for that shit.

Flight attendants always appear extremely well-groomed and the women always wear a lot of make-up, like they’re trying to make flying more sexual.  The train workers wear uniforms too, but you can tell that the dress codes aren’t as strict since their jackets are often too loose and their shirts are untucked, since they’re really just there to work and you’re just there to get where you’re going.

I also rode a Greyhound bus where the driver took smoke breaks outside with the passengers.  He gave a long, anecdotal explanation of the bus rules, telling us not to gab on about who was sleeping with who or who said what on Facebook because it was distracting to other passengers, and warned us that if we were caught with drugs he’d pull over to the side of the highway and wait ninety minutes for the police.  This was more entertaining that listening to a bunch of FAA legalese.

Another bus driver began our trip by saying that if we were having a problem with anyone on the bus, he would come back and take care of it personally.  No pilot in the history of flying has ever said anything that badass.

A piece like this could have probably earned me the AmtrakResidency.

Ode to the Candy Machine at the University of Nebraska Press Building

For Chrissy Osmulski (1981-2015)

In the lobby of the office where I work there used to be a small candy machine perched on a pole by the elevators, the kind where if you put in a quarter and turned a crank, a mass of candies would drop down a chute, clatter through a hinged doorway, and fall neatly into your hand.  This machine, though, was different: while most candy machines have only three or four slots in a neat line, this one was a cube with slots on all sides, two on each horizontal face, with a total of eight candies to choose from.  It had M&Ms, Skittles, Reese’s Pieces, Mike and Ikes, Hot Tamales, trail mix, novelty gummy candies, and even some brown nuts of a kind I’d never seen in a vending machine.

The candy machine was the one iconic feature of the building lobby, where I spend no more than a few seconds waiting for the elevator each time I go into work.  It’s a long, rectangular lobby with entrances on either side, both of which are covered by square, flat awnings.  Oversized American flags and a potted plant attempt to instill a friendly atmosphere in the corridor, and perpendicular to the entrances large glass doors open into large offices, though both of these offices have moved and printed notices remind visitors to come to their new locations.

I noticed the candy machine on my first day because it was the one object in the lobby that actually stood out, and I swiveled around it to see the types of candy on its four faces, two of which were tilted inconveniently close to the wall.  It occurred to me that if I had a quarter (which I usually don’t—I rarely carry change anymore unless I’m doing laundry or happen to have purchased something with cash that day) I could turn the crank and get a handful of Reese’s Pieces to eat on my way home, a reward for making it through the workday.  I could also have tried the brown nuts I’d never seen in a vending machine before, or bought some Skittles to eat one at a time (since Skittles are best savored individually, rather than in a mixed handful).  I wondered how much candy one got for a quarter—had the manufacturers considered inflation by working an adjustable valve into each slot’s measuring mechanism, or did twenty-five cents buy the same number of M&Ms today as it did in 1980?  If it did, then buying candy from the machine might be a better deal than buying it in single-serving bags from the gas station, a bargain the building owners may or may not have foreseen.

Then, one day, the machine disappeared.  When I came into work and found it not in its usual spot, I looked first to the other end of the lobby to check whether a thorough janitor or furniture mover had placed it there temporarily, but it wasn’t at the other end of the lobby either.  Nor was it there the next time I came, or the time after that, and even though the American flags and potted plant were always in their same places, the candy machine wasn’t.

I often remember how the candy machine’s compartments were always full, and though I’d initially considered this an illusion maintained by slanted surfaces inside the case, it occurred to me that fewer people passing through the lobby meant fewer candy purchases, and fewer of those people carrying change meant fewer purchases still.  I wonder how much money the building owners made from the machine, or whether some rental agreement had actually caused them to lose money by keeping it there.  I also wonder whether I could have halted them from removing it if I myself had started carrying change and actually used the machine.  I wonder what those brown nuts tasted like and what they’re called; I can’t describe them exactly, but would know them if I saw them again.  But most of all, I wonder about the men who’d come while I was away and pulled the machine down the outside ramp on to a truck, and whether they’d taken that truck to a warehouse somewhere with all the other candy machines no one wanted.  If I’d happened to be walking in the day they were bringing the machine out, I could have done nothing more than watch them from the back stairs. 

I miss the machine now that it’s gone, since there’s nothing else in the lobby to look at, and without it I find my thoughts at the beginning and end of the day much emptier than they used to be, with fewer things left about which to wonder.

Why I Don't Like Direct Deposit

I get paid by direct deposit now (on the last day of the month, unless that day is a weekend or holiday, in which case the money goes in on the business day immediately preceding), though I miss the days when I first began working and got paid weekly by check.  This was at Market Basket, where every Thursday after one or two o’clock the paychecks would come in on a truck, and you had to go to the courtesy booth and tell the woman (it was always a woman) behind the glass your employee number, after which she would rifle through the stack of paychecks and slip yours through the slot between the glass and the counter.  If you went right at one o’clock this usually took longer because there were still many checks to rifle through, but if you went on the weekend the woman was usually able to find yours without much time at all.

I didn’t think about this then, but having a physical paycheck and stub (in my case the kind where you tore off three of the edges and the stub came open, still folded on its fourth edge with the paycheck loose inside) provided a physical reminder of the work you’d done, and that you were being rewarded for it with money, the reason you went to work in the first place.  Sure, the paycheck was only cheap paper with numbers and a printed signature, but the act of tearing it open, signing it, and depositing it at the bank linked the act of working with the reward of having money.

Now, though, the money goes directly into my checking account without my seeing how, and though I can check the same numbers on my computer or a deposit receipt, there’s no talk of money when I’m at work, or anything that associates money with work at all.  When I’m at work now and people talk about money, they speak of the rewards of their labors as being disassociated with the act of work itself, as if the money was being deposited into their accounts on its own, as if work and money were completely separate.  Though we all know that the money we receive comes because we performed work that month, there’s very little within the working experience to remind us that this is true.

When we forget that money comes because of work and that work leads to earning money, we start doing the work without understanding why, and spending the money without remembering where it came from.  Work becomes an aspect of life rather than a chore done to earn a reward, something we do without thinking, that we’ve always done and continue to do, while the money flows in and out like the water from a tap that we know not to waste but leave turned on anyway. 

Such disassociations are dangerous because they make it more difficult to leave a job we don’t like, or are ready to move on from.  The more passively we view earning money, the harder it is for us to risk disrupting the flow.  I try not to forget that, even if I don’t have a tear-away pay stub anymore.

When the Market Basket Workers Fight Back, Everyone Wins

I didn't make this, but it sums up the movement's feelings pretty well

Market Basket supermarkets, my first-ever place of employment, has made the news for its companywide demonstrations against the ousting of former president Arthur T. Demoulas as part of a longtime family rivalry.  Arthur T.’s firing led to employee demonstrations in front of every store (“Honk if you love Artie T!”), a call for shoppers to boycott Market Basket, and empty grocery shelves as truck drivers refuse to deliver products. 

The rivalry between the two Demoulas families has been longstanding as the board of directors split into two factions: one in favor of keeping employee benefits substantial and its store prices ridiculously low (Arthur T.’s side), and the other (led by Arthur S., a.k.a. the Bad Arthur) plotting to make more money by raising prices and looting the employee profit-sharing pool.  The pictures on the movement’s Facebook page sum it up pretty well.

I don’t work for Market Basket anymore, but the Warner store was a big part of my life for a long time.  I spent most of high school and college there, used its paychecks to buy my first two cars, and spent a great many hours in its dairy cooler goofing off with my friends. It’s also where I learned about work, how not to fake sick when going to a music festival, and how to balance a part-time job with school, creative work, and a social life.

It’s more than just nostalgia, though, that drove me to follow the saga of the company where I once earned my living stocking the half and half shelves; it’s what the Market Basket battle represents in our country’s struggle to counter trends of increasing imbalance.

Right now, Market Basket employees earn twice yearly bonuses, varying in size depending on the worker’s wages and the time spent at the company.  They’re also offered shares in an employee profit-sharing program where they can cash out a large sum of money after retiring.  Again, this amount varies depending on the time spent with the company.  In an age where the pension and profit sharing programs of the post-war era have been dismantled in favor of individual retirement plans, Market Basket offers its workers (even the part-time ones) a long-term deal that rewards loyalty and discourages job-hopping. 

Think of it this way: if the grocery store across the street offers an experienced worker with profit-sharing benefits a higher salary to do the same job, that worker is less likely to accept because the offer involves a greater long-term loss.  Employee longevity offers pluses for both sides as workers enjoy higher benefits and the company spends less money training new employees.  It also gives workers more incentive to stick up for their rights, while a culture of job-hoppers will just grumble and seek out a better deal somewhere else.  The people in charge don't always like that.

Profit-sharing weighs heavily in company politics, as when Arthur T. replaced a full $46 million in bad investments lost in the 2008 crisis.  Such an act did not go unnoticed, and with Artie T. gone, workers fear their profit-sharing and other perks could be taken away. 

Financial matters aside, though, building a loyal worker base offers social benefits that, as Arthur T. has stated, “can’t be measured in dollars and cents.”  Higher benefits mean workers can put their children through college, buy houses without being foreclosed on, and take vacations to improve their quality of life.  Developed skillsets and company loyalty also yield positive results for communities as customers enjoy consistent service and interact with happier employees rather than a revolving door of untrained workers and policies favoring anonymity.  Customers are growing tired of the big-box model anyway, as this 2011 NewEgg commercial suggests.

These values go beyond company profits and bottom lines.  Contrary to what Mitt Romney might think, corporations are just abstract entities existing around the people who work for them.  When real, human workers (the people who make up the majority of the company) are seen as transient and expendable rather than loyal members of the group, it becomes easier for CEOs to dismiss them as undeserving of the company rewards while they quietly increase their own salaries.  Americans are becoming more aware of increasing gaps between the top and bottom of the corporate hierarchy, and one way to discourage such behavior is to consider all members of a company as playing for the same team.

It’s one thing, though, for us to sit around on the internet discussing poor working conditions and another to actually do something about them.  The Market Basket delivery boycotts and employee protests (thousands attended the Tewksbury rally on Friday) are the closest I’ve seen to a full worker strike in my area, the kind of Upton Sinclair/Sylvester Stallone-style protests that gave us the five-day workweek, safer working conditions, and hundreds of other benefits that people every day take for granted.  The strength of the Market Basket protests sends a clear message that corporations can’t manipulate workers and get away with it, and that people will take action when they’re treated unfairly.

Some may argue that with capitalism, workers are free to get a new job if working conditions don’t meet their satisfaction, and that a competitive free labor market can only help workers as companies fight to win their favor.  Unfortunately, though, with nationwide unemployment still at 6.1% and some states as high as 7.9%, finding a new job is easier said than done.  Worse still, if every company offers low wages and minimal benefits, what incentive does a new company have to offer more when it knows that workers will settle for less?

The Market Basket workers have said they’re not going to give in until Arthur T. comes back.  Meanwhile, the bad publicity, empty store shelves, and lost revenue have prompted rumors of Arthur T.’s buying out the other side as the quickest path to resolution.  No matter what the outcome, the New England grocery world isn’t likely to remain the same, and if we’re lucky, both workers and board members everywhere will take notice.

An Open Letter to the Marketing Executives at Super 8 Motels

Dear Sirs:

I'm writing to complain of your recent advertising partnership with Pizza Hut restaurants. Though your use of the red-roof Pizza Hut logo on your motel room keycards is itself mildly intrusive, more egregious is your obliviousness to said logo’s resembling a large arrow that would appear to designate the proper direction for inserting the keycard into the lock, when it reality the roof’s direction points toward the back of the keycard. The problem is worsened by the actual card insertion indicator, a small, dull triangle banished to a lower corner of the keycard where tired guests can easily miss it and (guided by the more massive and eye-catching Pizza Hut logo) insert their cards in the wrong direction. The likelihood of this mistake is such that during a recent stay, even the senior motel desk clerk inserted our card incorrectly and determined our door's lock to be low on batteries.

I recommend that you either A) Switch the direction of the Pizza Hut logo so that it matches the direction in which the keycard is inserted, or B) Make the insert directional arrow larger and the Pizza Hut logo smaller to avoid confusion.

I appreciate your prompt attention to this matter.

Sincerely, &c, &c.

(will post reply if one is received)

The Phone Booths of Lincoln, Nebraska

Two phone booths occupy the streetcorners of Lincoln, Nebraska, three blocks apart, one at the intersection of 11th Street and N, the other at 14th and N.  Their appearance surprised me, since they're the only ones I can recall seeing in America (though Canada has their fair share).

Phone Booth at 11th St and N, Lincoln, Nebraska

Both are near parking lots where one might conceivably need to phone for help in the event of a dead car battery or leaking brake line, and both are in neighborhoods just outside of Lincoln's college-friendly, restaurant-filled downtown.  Both stand in close proximity to staples of an older community: a library, a bus station, an electric shaver repair shop, a travel agency.  I like to think that phone booths symbolize sections of a developing city too old to be of practical use, yet too new to be preserved as historical areas.

Phone Booth at 14th St and N, Lincoln, Nebraska

I wonder what will happen to these and other relics of the mid-twentieth century, especially those that occupy public spaces.  I think how this story has played out a million times with cobblestone streets, outhouses, and downtown railroad crossings, most gone, but some remaining as curiosities.  Unlike art, which can serve an aesthetic purpose in any time period, when objects designed for practical use become outdated, we perceive their uselessness and they become garbage.

11th St and N Booth, Interior

Though they may serve a purpose for those caught without a cell phone, these phone booths have value as history and as landmarks of individuality, objects that help us imagine an earlier time more vividly than reading about it in a novel or seeing it on film.  Places, like any other form of art, can show us another form of experience.

Seek them out.

Interested in phone booths?  This guy's collected pictures of pay phones from every continent.

Mail-Order Rebates: There'll Never Be an App For That

Filling out a mail-order rebate is a concrete test of skill. Think about it: in the digital age, everything that companies do (job applications, car registrations, college registrations, college classes, classified ads, telephone listings, funeral arrangements, pizza delivery, bill payment, package tracking, ink cartridge refills, ticket reservations, and photo printing, to name a few) is online except mail-order rebates. Why is this, you ask?

First, consider the reasons that companies offer online services to consumers. They know that online services are easier, as people can avoid the bothers of talking with salesclerks, finding directions, and putting on pants. Those who aren't shy about technology are more likely to choose online services over real-world ones because of convenience, and some will even avoid doing things that can’t be done online because they're so used to the convenience. This is because most people will always take the easiest way out of a given situation so they can extend less effort, save time, and encounter fewer problems. Thus, companies will always have incentive to make their processes easier so they can sell more products and make more money.

Mail-order rebates are the exact opposite. Companies advertise rebates that sound appealing (“Just $49.99 after mail-in rebate!”), and since everybody loves getting money, customers feel like they’re getting a deal and now have incentive to buy the product. After the customer makes the purchase, however, the company is no longer trying to draw in that customer, and no longer has an incentive to make the process easy.  Actually, the company now has incentive to make the process as difficult as possible so they can avoid giving out rebate money.

Consider three examples: an instant rebate, an online rebate, and a typical mail-order rebate, along with the steps required to complete each. Which one sounds more appealing to a company?

Example 1: Instant Rebate
Customers must:

1. Buy product
2. Do nothing – cash register is set to automatically deduct rebate

Customer Effort Required to Receive Gratification: None
Percentage of Customers Finishing All Steps: 100%


Example 2: Simple Online Rebate With Direct Deposit
Customers must:

1. Buy product
2. Keep receipt from purchase
3. Go to website (listed on receipt)
4. Fill in form
5. Enter code from receipt
6. Check off box saying Terms and Conditions have been read
7. Wait for company to send rebate
8. Receive notice of rebate automatically deposited into bank account

Customer Effort Required to Receive Gratification: Marginal
Percentage of Customers Finishing All Steps: Almost All


Example 3: Typical Mail-In Rebate
Customers must:

1. Buy product
2. Keep receipt from purchase
3. Keep form received at purchase
4. Keep box item originally came in
5. Locate pen (that works)
6. Locate flat surface (to write on)
7. Copy information from receipt on to form
8. Locate scissors
9. Cut UPC label off box
10. Locate envelope
11. Put forms and UPC in envelope
12. Copy address on to envelope (Important: Must be done before Step 13)
13. Lick and seal envelope (bitter taste left in mouth)
14. Put stamp on envelope (may require buying stamp from post office)
15. Locate mailbox
16. Insert envelope (may require opening mailbox door)
17. Wait for company to receive rebate envelope

NOTE: Steps 1-17 must be completed by the Offer End Date listed in small print on the order form. 

18. Wait for company to process rebate form
19. Wait for company to send rebate check
20. Open probable junk mail in hope that it might be rebate check
21. Open rebate envelope (letter opener optional)
22. Put check somewhere safe
23. Put on pants
24. Drive to bank
25. Park car
26. Go inside bank
27. Fill out deposit form
28. Look up bank account number (for deposit form)
29. Wait in line
30. Give deposit form and check to bank clerk while answering routine questions about whether there’s anything else you need (there isn't)
31. Take receipt from clerk
32. Optional: Write deposit amount in checkbook

Effort Required to Receive Gratification: Way More than Online
Percentage of Customers Finishing All Steps: Way Lower than Online

Companies know that people will consider the steps, the resources involved (pen, envelope, stamp), the trip to the bank, the trip to the mailbox*, and procrastinate filling out the forms until after the expiration date because it’s always easier to put off doing something difficult than it is to put off doing something easy. Or, they’ll falter somewhere between Steps 2 and 12 (and, occasionally, between Steps 20 and 23). Still others will just plain forget. Even those who complete the process might not get their checks if they’ve neglected to correctly read the instructions (often explained in tiny print or with big words).

* Recently, the phrase “Save a trip to the mailbox” has entered the vernacular as a way for companies to make paperless bill payment more attractive. The trick lies in their using the word “trip” to turn routine mail drop-off into an arduous journey comparable to Hannibal crossing the Alps or Frodo bringing the ring back to Mordor.

Companies know these things, and they’re not going to change. They’ll never be an app for mail-in rebates; for the foreseeable future, the prizes will go to those who follow instructions, have access to envelopes and stamps, check their mail carefully, and manage their time well. The smartest consumers will win out, and those who thrive on instant gratification will pay more and be left behind.

I write about this topic because it provokes a bigger question: is the lesson taught by mail-order rebates an anomaly in a changing world of new technology and ways of doing business, or is it proof that the time-honored skills of accuracy, planning, and being prepared will inevitably yield success?

I wish I had the answer.


For Further Reading: 
About.com writer warning consumers about tricks companies play in offering rebates
US News & World Report article encouraging consumers to smarten up

In Which the Author Proves by Mathematics that Implementing EZ-Pass in New Hampshire Was a Poor Financial Decision

The busiest of New Hampshire’s toll plazas stands in Hooksett just north of the junction between the Interstate 93-293 division that one uses when driving south from Concord to Manchester, Salem, Nashua, or beyond to Lowell, the 128-I95 corridor, and Boston. From the north, one drives down a long, hilly, three-lane stretch unbroken by exits or signage, the only distraction being the state liquor stores flanking both sides of the highway where out-of-state patrons can purchase alcohol and tobacco products for much less than they’re accustomed to. After that, the road widens, the lines vanish, the cars slow down (but not to the extent required by law), and one is forced to choose between getting off at Exit 11 or merging into the Any Vehicle or EZ-Pass lanes.

EZ-Pass (for those readers outside the northeast) is a small, plastic transponder box that allows motorists to pay tolls without cash by fastening it to the inside of their windshields. The box is scanned by the reader when the car passes through the toll gate, automatically deducting the fee from the user’s EZ-Pass account. The system offers numerous advantages, specifically the benefit of not having to stop at toll plazas (traffic permitting), plus a 30% discount in New Hampshire. (Interestingly, Japan uses a similar system in which vehicle transponders require a separate highway card. The chief benefit of the Japanese system is that one card can easily be used in multiple vehicles, as opposed to the American system, which requires unfastening the EZ-Pass and having the passenger hold it crookedly against the inside of the windshield while the driver slows down enough to catch the signal.)

I do not deny that EZ-Pass is a fine system—my chief qualm is that it displaced New Hampshire’s earlier, more cost-effective system of highway tokens.



When I first became a licensed driver, these tokens were sold by operators in the Any Vehicle lanes of New Hampshire’s toll plazas, where motorists could purchase them as they paid their tolls. (The tokens were not advertised anywhere, I suspect, to keep them a secret from out-of-staters.) A roll of forty tokens cost five dollars. That’s twelve and a half cents per token. But the tokens were worth twenty-five cents each at the tolls. That means that using tokens, one could merge from Route 101 on to I-95 for only twenty-five cents, or pass through the Hooksett toll plaza for thirty-seven and a half cents (the cost of which has since been raised to a dollar). This is less than the price of a candy bar.

When New Hampshire adopted the EZ-Pass system in 2005 (before which time it was the only New England toll-collecting state not to offer an electronic alternative), it discontinued the token system. (It also eliminated the Exact Change lanes with the baskets you had to throw your coins into, though these can still be seen along the Everett Turnpike in Merrimack.) The savings rate was also reduced from fifty percent with tokens to thirty percent using EZ-Pass. That loss of twenty percent was presumably a trade-off for the convenience of the new system. Tokens had to go because it would silly to offer two money-saving alternatives. Besides, a twenty-percent difference is a small price to pay for convenience. Or is it?

Let’s say that a motorist commutes from his home in rural Hopkinton, through the Hooksett toll plaza, to the large, windowless manufacturing building off Exit 2 in Salem that houses his workspace. Let’s also assume that his company grants him one week off at Christmas during shutdown, plus another weeklong vacation of his choosing. (There are of course other company holidays and sick days, but to keep the numbers round, let us also say that he takes various unrelated trips through the toll plaza that cancel out these days.) That means that our hypothetical commuter crosses the toll plaza an average of ten times a week (once northbound and once southbound), fifty weeks a year, at the cost of one dollar per toll.

Using cash, this would cost $500.
Using EZ-Pass, this would cost $350.
Using highway tokens, this would only cost $250.

However, I have neglected to include the initial cost of the EZ-Pass, which the New Hampshire Department of Transportation currently sells for $20.95 (or $33.04 for exterior transponders). This raises the cost of using EZ-Pass to $370.95, meaning that tokens are now the cheaper option by $120.95 the first year.

This twenty ninety-five (which was actually less for those who purchased transponders during the transition period from tokens to EZ-Pass), can, however, be viewed as an investment for those who still want to save some money. Again, using the Hooksett toll plaza as an example, EZ-Pass users save thirty cents at each crossing. This means that users can recover their initial costs after approximately seventy trips. This is opposed to a roll of tokens, which pays for itself after five trips; or the equivalent $21 in tokens, which still pays for itself after only twenty-one trips. The reason for this striking difference is that EZ-Pass, as added equipment, puts only thirty percent of the toll fee towards recovering the initial investment, as opposed to tokens, which, as a form of currency, allow one hundred percent of the toll fee to go towards recovering the initial investment.

Let’s also consider the long-term impact of using EZ-Pass over tokens. Let’s say our hypothetical commuter lives in Hopkinton and works in Salem (or some other office complex in Hudson, Nashua, Merrimack, or Northern Massachusetts) his entire working life, from age twenty-two until age sixty-five, maintaining the same toll-use frequency outlined above. (This seems a reasonable estimate, considering that time spent living or working outside the toll zone will probably cancel out non-commuting trips taken between the ages of sixteen and twenty-two, or between ages sixty-five and death.) Let’s also assume that the Hooksett toll rate stays at one dollar for those forty-three years.

Over his lifetime, using cash, that commuter would pay $21,500.
Over his lifetime, using EZ-Pass, that commuter would pay $15,050.
Over his lifetime, using highway tokens, that commuter would pay $10,750.

The tokens are now the cheaper option by $4,300 ($4,320.95 if one counts the initial transponder cost). I consider that a large price to pay for a little convenience.

Unfortunately, the issue isn’t worth debating, because tokens are gone forever and they’re never coming back. EZ-Pass of course frees motorists from having to roll down their windows and fish out their cash, makes sense in congested urban areas, and saves a lot of time (including the time it takes to buy tokens), but it also eliminated an option that saved people a lot of money. And not having that option bothers me. Like so many other cost-effective choices, tokens have been replaced by newer, more popular technology that people can use easily while feeling confident that they’re keeping up with the changing times. We live in a more expensive world, but mean incomes haven’t gone up very much in the past few decades. We’re also in the middle of an economic crisis where people are burdened by joblessness, high debt, mortgage foreclosures, home repossessions, large student loans, skyrocketing health insurance costs, strict borrowing guidelines, high gas prices, low savings rates, and an increasingly unreliable Social Security system.

I don’t think the government should force anyone to save money by using tokens instead of an EZ-Pass. But shouldn’t it at least have given them the option?

As a consumer who prefers saving money over convenience, however, I’ve made my decision. I’ll take Route 3A instead.