A dueling charity outside the store has led Amy to offer a $5 gift card when people donate a toy to the toy drive inside the store. The two charities are substitutes for one another and offer similar goals. Some people donate to charity to feel good about their actions, but others are willing to donate if they are incentivized to do so. The Samaritan decides to buy a jar of army men to get a gift card for each one.
Tag: gift giving
Jonah sets up a baby registry to help Amy afford some of the things she’ll need for her newborn. Her coworkers are mad they weren’t invited to the fake baby shower, so the store throws Amy (and others) a baby shower. After getting through the gift portion, Amy thanks everyone for the gifts, but notes that some of the gifts she received were garbage. Only the car seat was a gift that she actually wanted and was the purpose of setting up the baby registry. Gift giving is often considered inefficient because people don’t fully know what the other person’s willingness to pay is for an item. Had Amy been given cash, she could have purchased items that she valued.
Categories
Giving Cheap Gifts
Cheyenne gives Dina a gift to thank her for being a bridesmaid, but Dina thinks it’s just cheap jewelry that one of her birds might eat. She asks Cheyenne to return the gift and to just give her cash instead. The inefficiency of gift giving occurs when purchases of gifts spend more money on an item for someone than that person would be willing to spend if they had purchased the item themselves.
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Dina is Bad at Gifts
Dina tries to impress her coworkers by giving them gifts, but she breaks into their lockers to give them their gifts. Some of the gifts are mildly offensive, but she thinks they are appropriate. The deadweight loss typically associated with gift giving is that people who give the gifts spend more money on the items than the recipient is likely to spend for the same item.
After being assigned to wrap gifts for customers, we learn that Garrett doesn’t actually no how to this. He tries to hide this by making an economic argument that wrapping gifts is inefficient since it just wastes time in the transaction process.
Categories
Annoying Roommates
Garrett and Jonah became roommates after a tornado destroyed Jonah’s apartment, but it turns out that their habits aren’t exactly conducive to being roommates. Garrett passively aggressively lets Jonah know that he’s messy when it comes to taking a shower so he buys Jonah a bathmat. In return, Jonah suggests that he get Garrett a pair of noise-canceling headphones since he’s so bothered by every noise Jonah makes. The two go back-and-forth listing the various ways they annoy each other.
Teaching with Superstore 