You know, sometimes I wonder where to draw the line when running businesses. You’d have to figure out how to be humane while dealing with your clients, and then you’ll also figure out how to be strict so they do not make a fool of you. One thing many of us know for sure is the fact that people will happily trample all over you if given even the slightest chance.
As the saying goes, give a man a mile, he’ll take ten! It’s in our nature as humans to always push our boundaries and find out just how far we can go before our acts eventually catch up with us. And as a result, we have to safeguard ourselves so that people don’t treat us this way.
But then, where do we cross the line in all this? Where does this stop being about us protecting our interests and more about us simply being wicked and greedy? This is not a clear line for people to see, and it’s blurred by the various scenarios of life that we’ve found ourselves in. So, each scenario has its own unique story.
If we know the story behind each, then we might understand why some people make the decisions they do, and be able to accommodate whatever it is they want. But then, we can’t know everybody’s stories. And whether we like it or not, we’ll still have to answer to scenarios we know nothing about.
This is a new year and one of the major issues many of us will be facing is that of rent. We’d have to pay rent for this year, and it’s likely that the landlord has increased the rent even though nothing in the house has improved since you moved in. And even worse, the landlord is putting pressure on the tenants to pay up quickly, with threats of kicking them out.
The landlord doesn’t know you personally, and you most likely don’t know the landlord personally. If you did, you could approach him and beg him to take the rent back to what it used to be, or you could instead ask for more time to be able to pay up. The landlord, knowing your situation may agree to this and take pity on you.
But then, what happens when you don’t even know who the landlord is and you only work through the middleman (probably a lawyer)? This means that whatever the landlord says, you have no choice but to do it or you’d find yourself out on the streets.
This is not isolated to houses and rents, it also works in normal day-to-day purchases. Traders could hike the prices of their goods for no reason at all, even when other shops in the area are selling cheaper. If you knew them, you could buy them at a cheaper price, but if you don’t you have to buy them at whatever they’re willing to give to you.
This could be a result of greed, or simply the need to accumulate as much money as possible from customers. There has to be a point where it stops being about safeguarding your business. Everyone understands that when the economy sinks, inflation will rise, and people will expect the prices of goods to rise. But once it rises beyond logical reasoning just because you’re looking to reap way more profit than your colleagues, while it may not be illegal, you may only end up ruining your business in the long run.
So, I don’t think there’s really a line, if there were it’s only metaphorical. There’s no good and bad side to it, once it comes to business, everyone will do it the best way they can. That will be their excuse. When they inflate goods and services by 200%, they say it’s for their business and they have no choice. It’s crazy, but then, it’s what happens.
Things like these are what we’re facing now. Unnecessary inflation, manmade scarcity… everything seems to be happening at the same time and the year is only a few weeks old. All in all, I’m still looking forward to what the rest of the world has in store for me. I’m sure it’ll be awesome.