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Steve, I see a couple of major flaws here.
Always up for critical mastication. :-)
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I don't have, nor can I afford, a phone that uses QR codes. Neither do most of my coworkers. Only one--who has a secondary source of income and a wealthy grandparent--has a smartphone. Most of us get by with mildly-intelligent phones or, in my case, a flat-out dumb phone. Whenever I see a contest where you have to enter via QR code, it ticks me right off, because I as a consumer am totally disenfranchised from being able to enter or get any of the fun information that those codes are supposed to open up. Most of us flat-out cannot afford the phones that would make this project work.
All of the other bullion-card-esque things that are out there use QR codes or other barcodes for identification purposes. I was merely following in the same paradigm. :-)
A QR code is merely a convenience, much like how smart phones are a convenience. Around here in central NJ, nearly everyone has a smartphone or direct access to the Internet within 30 feet. I understand completely that not everywhere in the country is as nearly as connected as where I am now but this more connected context is what I was expecting when putting this idea together.
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There is also this: People are stupid. I know that doesn't sound very nice, but I see enough of them for a living to say this is very true--like the dozens of geniuses who look right at our coffeepots and then go "do you sell fresh coffee here?" No, sir, those pots are just for you to look at. We change them out every forty minutes for our health, and our commercials advertise "freshest coffee going!" because we want people like you to come in and ask silly questions. The vast majority of people are going to go "huh?" if you try to explain this project to them (and that isn't a diss against folks with a poorer education, either; one of my coworkers, the one y'all have heard me complain about, has an engineering degree and he's a blithering idiot).
Stupid happens. :-) In fact, where I am confident that one day science may relieve us of death and
maybe even taxes (though that may be a stretch), it will
never eliminate stupid.
You should see some of the odder reactions when I spend $1 and 50ยข coins and $2 bills. However, when someone is exposed to something new, it ceases to be odd when they become familiar with it.
Not to mention that the people who
do understand silver coinage off the bat grok onto it immediately.
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Finally: put yourself in the worker's place. I work at a gas station and my shifts range from 7-10 hours long depending on the weekly schedule. At the end of an eight-hour day I come home, make a cup of tea, browse Tumblr or CCF, and go straight to bed. My feet and neck hurt, and often I've had to deal with things like abusive customers, burst soda or beer bottles all over the cooler, cleaning black mold out of the drain, scrubbing up some drunk's bodily messes, you get the idea. For these privileges I get paid $9.75 an hour before taxes, and I'm the highest-paid person in my store. (only our acting manager makes more--and that's because she gets a bonus and I don't.) We do not get employee discounts on purchases (even non-gas, non-alcohol purchases), sick days, or any of the amenities you're probably used to if you work the kind of job that lets you afford to do stuff like this. In fact, I had to fight the company over whether or not I should be allowed to take ten minutes per eight-hour shift to eat lunch. This past week? Going into work, lifting heavy boxes, serving customers, filling the cooler, changing 30-gallon trash bags--all while trying to get over a respiratory tract infection. I've even gone in with a crutch under one arm for balance and a brace on my ankle after a bad sprain, because the company did not provide me with a way to take time off--and more than one customer chided me to "hurry up, I don't have all day" as I hobbled from my cleaning duties toward the counter.
The guys at Pizza Hut, one building over? They're in even worse trouble. Some days they actually pay to come to work. No, you didn't read that backward--the delivery guys get wages so low and tips so crappy that they have to pay to work. And the guys at the auto-parts store behind me--same story, different name.
By the way, with all that's going for you, if you drop-kicked those customers you'd be justified.
I'm honestly not used to any amenities as I'm self employed and work from home (which sounds good and cushy, but *isn't*). The "good" thing about being your own boss is that you answer to yourself. The bad thing about being your own boss is that you never
ever get a day off. Even on my sick or hurt days I'm laid out on the couch with my laptop in my lap, a box of tissues on one side, my phone on the other, going over lexical charts, fielding orders, and grading papers, and at any moment I could be interrupted by an inquiry or a delivery. At the same time I also home school my kids with my wife, so it's always running between work and family (and struggling to keep them separate) and as a result we also need to keep our living space in top shape as we're actually *living in it* throughout the day. I also suffer from chronic sinus headaches that can knock me out for hours at a time multiple times a week, and when those hit, I have to double up right after to catch up on lost work.
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Even as a collector, I wouldn't be interested in one of these cards. If you came in after eight o'clock during one of my 3-11 shifts, the first words out of my mouth if you handed me one of these would be "you know this counts as a dime, right?" (and before eight, same story--just friendlier.) Oftentimes I literally do not have the money to make three-dollar purchases out of my drawer, and I would not have the patience for you to try and tell me why I should totally take this card.
Nice idea, but especially with the groups you're talking about targeting, I don't think it's going to fly. We're too poor, too tired, and too generally irritable. There's a reason customer service has such a high burnout rate, and anything that makes our days harder--like having to figure out if we're accepting "spot" or "buyback" value--is a huge part of it.
Don't misunderstand me. I'm not looking for this to be a nuisance or inconvenience to make peoples' lives harder. I'm also not looking to make Benarke lose sleep at night with grand plans. At this point, it's simply something
fun with some numismatic education thrown in.
If a store chooses to accept these, I think that best-practices would dictate the need for a policy, much like how BerkShares, Ithaca Hours, Shire Silver, rounds, or assay cards are accepted, where the exchange rate is known or is set for the day (much like how a gas station sets its prices in the morning).
If an individual cashier or manager says "no," then that should settle that, no questions asked.
This project I've worked on as a hobby in the few off hours I have at my disposal in a given week (usually in the wee hours when my headache medication won't let me sleep) with bits of money and office supplies I've scrounged, and a few concept drawings and pages of PHP and MySQL code I've cobbled together on top of Numismetrica. It's a crazy idea and a labor of love. I'm not looking so large to make Benarke lose any sleep over this (as it were) but if I'm able to turn it into something self-sustaining -- even as a curiosity -- it'll be worth it to me. :-)
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Posted 09/23/2012 1:13 pm
