Addendum to the Software union post... By a lazy smoker

This is a post by a smoker friend of mine, who prefers to remain anon.--- Soumi

This ain't for the non smokers. This is straight from the heart of a passionate smoker. Apart from the Income taxes, rick drivers, etc etc.. we smokers have to bear the wrath of another species of “wanna get rich quick” type of people. The paan tapri owners. I specifically speak of the one next to my office. The owner of this particular shop is old and wears ragged clothes and looks illiterate! But looks can be deceptive! He is the best businessman on the street. Behind his villager type appearance is another Dhirubhai in the making… that do without doing any worthwhile of work.(That is for us common people. He doesn't need to work!)

He adds personal taxes to anything he sells. From petty toffees to cigarette packs, they all are sold at his price. The taxes are random and usually dependant of the personality of the customer (Read idiot -- Soumi) And since there isn’t any competitor in the near vicinity, we have to bear with him and his taxes.

I have to praise this guys economic fundamentals. He has very strong demand-supply fundamentals. If the demand of a particular commodity (in our case a toffee costing 50p) goes up, the price of the commodity too shoots up. The same toffee which is sold at 50p all over India suddenly is priced at 1 rupee. That’s a straight hundred percent increase in price. (I guess he has a laptop at home, where he keeps accounts…complex graphs and formula and God only knows what else). And the fluctuation of the prices of the commodities can challenge the variation pattern of indexes of most of the stock-markets in the world!! As I said the demand goes down the prices go down. A week later the same toffee was 75p (since we stopped buying it... obviously)

Another trick in his kitty is the best business move of the century. The day he increased the price of the above mentioned toffee by 100%, he got a local made counterfeit which was priced at 50p which must have cost him around 3p (the taste was not even worth 1p, but considering the duplicate cover the toffee was wrapped in..3p is ok). Man…what a move... if you don’t wanna pay 1 rupee for the original toffee. Abracadabra…you get one for 50ps. Not many people are fortunate enough to witness such smart business moves.

But another incident takes the cake guys!!! Read on…

One fact of the tapri owner which was never noticed by anyone came into light in February. He is a master in economics; since the Indian economy affects his business (he could give the big analysts a run for their money). This one took place in Feb as mentioned. The day the Budget was proposed (with a clause of increasing the duty on cigarettes), the prices of the already overpriced cigarettes shot up. Could you believe that…the budget’s not yet passed in the parliament and this moron is selling cigarettes at a higher price citing Budget as an excuse. This was even before the stock market reacted to the proposed budget.

Mostly next year the way he is getting greedier, the cigarette prices will rise in January itself, even before the finance minister cooks up the budget .

Kudos to this man, who is here to make a fortune at our expense and being successful at it. And we addicts can’t even help it. As the saying goes “there is fire at one end and a fool at the other”