Penny wise, pound foolish

It seems plain common sense for me to get off the bus at my designated stop without buying a ticket if the bus was too crowded for the conductor to get to me. And it is nothing more than opportunism if I surreptitiously hide behind a crowd to give me a few extra seconds so I can get away without buying a ticket. Say the conductor did reach me, and I acted as though I didn’t hear him. Even then, to call me a cheat is a stretch. But interestingly, all three cases are classified as cheating because the rules are unequivocal: To travel by bus, you must buy a ticket. So any violation counts as cheating.

Bus tickets are often no more than pocket change and it is very easy to assert one’s values when the stakes are negligible. It is interesting to see how our perception of violations changes with scale. How many of us would offer to pay up an airline if our credit card was not charged due to a system error when we booked a ticket online? We would laugh at the airline’s ineptness, rationalize that they deserve to lose money and feel good about the unexpected fortune. Okay, this can be excused as being a rare incident, but there are every day cases that no one looks as cheating. Have you ever paid your telephone or electricity bill on time even when the co forgot to send you one? This is the exact same situation with the bus ticket. A change of context and our mind starts playing games. In fact, research has proved that the way a question is posed or framed actually determines whether or not someone can answer it!

All this build up is to debunk to my favorite proverb, “Penny wise, pound foolish”. I love it because I have been accused of it and I can easily see how my actions can be summarized in those words. So I took a cold, hard look at why I do the things I do and have come to the conclusion that the proverb was coined by someone who had no inkling of how the human brain worked. First, penny-pound, cent-dollar, paise-rupee are not absolutes as we think them to be. Like values, money is relative too. The value of money changes depending on the situation. If you are buying a car for Rs. 50L, you wouldn’t think twice to buy accessories worth 25,000. But what if the car only cost Rs. 5L? Or let's say you take a cab ride home and the meter ran up to Rs. 490. Would you round it off to 500? What if the fare was only 90?

These two scenarios seem similar – things are relative – but the logic that guides in second scenario (cab) is very different from the first one (car). In the car scenario, one should definitely buy extra accessories for my 50L car and not 5L - why not go all the way when you are splurging money. But in the cab scenario, the decision to round off should depend solely on the service. That the fare ran upto 490 should not be cause enough to round it off and tip the cabbie Rs. 10. And that the fare was low should not stop one from tipping him. The magnitude of the money involved shouldn’t be equated with the magnitude of the decision involved.

I will avoid buying a bus ticket if I can and save Rs. 5. Once I get off, I will celebrate this with an ice cream that costs Rs. 20.