The decreasing utility of Red Lobster
A reader of Dan Ariely’s ‘Predictably / Irrational’ blog asked if spending big in one domain of one’s life (specifically, the reader referred to building a house) often led to big spending in other domains. He mentioned employment as an additional example towards the end of his letter.
The notion that experiences in one’s workplace can trickle into personal spending habits is something I’ve thought a lot about. I remember gliding into the Per Se restroom from their private dining room, thinking to myself, “Yes, thank you Yahoo! for this $900 / plate meal,” or gorging on $1,200 worth of food at Megu courtesy The Washington Post (mmm, those Kobe beef meatballs …).
The accumulation of these expensive meals made it harder and harder to schlep back to Brooklyn and be greeted by another dead mouse needing to be tossed into the garbage. (It also made it less appealing to date dudes that weren’t at least in the same tax bracket I was.) I don’t mind meat-on-a-stick but my workplace experiences had habituated me to meals that involve wearing nice heels and brushed hair.
My guess is that as more data enters someone’s brain, they recalibrate the utility they derive from initial experiences. So, the dinner that seemed like dress-up fancy when I was six, for example (the family meal at Red Lobster), becomes much less appealing and in some situations borderline declasse once exposed to data points x, y, and z (Per Se, Megu, and an adult visit to Red Lobster).
This reminds me of my earlier complaints about the burden of an Ivy League acculturation. Now, I pine for clubby leather reading chairs and a private library with custom bookshelves. I never would have known that those goods were out there to lust after had it not been for one of the reading rooms within my dorm in college. Similarly, before, I happily sported tapered, high-watered denims with a wash that was four seasons old and leather shoes that I bought on clearance for $17 with soles so worn that they flopped out and exposed the sock that was hand-picked to match whatever shirt I was wearing. I was a fashion nightmare, but I was an oblivious fashion nightmare.
My oblivion lasted until I landed on campus freshman year and was surrounded by classmates who wore shoes by some guy named Steve Madden and carried bags by someone named Kenneth Cole. The awkward heat of adolescence simply morphs into new forms, I realized, and the utility of those flop-soled shoes was plummeting to <0 in the face of these new data points.
Not unlike realizing, while gnawing on the buttery love of what a real lobster tail tastes like, that Red Lobster isn’t really a dress-up kind of restaurant.
So yes, I’d like to interpret Bob’s missive to Dan as him suggesting that one’s job can affect one’s personal expenditures. Clients taking me to fancy meals made me like the feeling of going to fancy restaurants, and made me more attuned to the ways in which previously valued restaurants fell short.
And don’t get me started on the injustice of being put up in nice hotel rooms while on work travel.
