Fancy Shmancy Things

Here's my gripe: why do people insist on making things fancy, when they could just as easily have done it simply?

I'm not talking about Rolls-Royce compared to Toyota - there you have "fancy" for a reason - better quality, better features, stand-out-from-the-crowd looks etc. I'm talking about providing the exact same feature set, just fancier. On the other hand, if the more expensive product or service will actually benefit you more, then I can see a justification for buying it. My late grandfather used to say, "We are too poor to buy cheap" meaning that cheap things break and you will just have to buy them again (like my mobile phone cases).

You could say that if you have the money to buy the fancier item, then why not? Here's why not: because you are getting ripped off! I remember shopping in K-mart once for a sandwhich toaster. I recall that the higher-priced ones were identical to the lower-priced ones, except that the more expensive ones had more plastic mouldings on the outside just to make it look good. The toast would come out exactly the same, but this one is $20 more expensive because it looks like it can fly. Too shmancy.

Here's another example: today they served a ground meat-filled pastry for lunch. The pastry was thick and covered with sesame seeds. Sounds good, no? No. The pastry was so thick that I had trouble cutting it with my knife, and the filling was just ground meat. Since I couldn't eat the "shell" anyway, I ended up hollowing out the pastry and I just ate the meat. So, in effect, they may as well have just served the ground meat on its own. A case of too fancy, too shmancy.

I should have just had the chicken.