Stop Buying Things That No One Will Ever EVER Need!

So I am a pretty big fan of The Office and the last episode dealt with the main character Michael Scott’s money troubles. It was quite hilarious because he started working a second job as a telemarketer after work to pay off his credit card debt and declared bankruptcy by screaming loudly “I DECLARE BANKRUPTCY!” Then he sought help from the office accountant Oscar and Oscar summed up Michael’s expenses with a chart that looks like the following:

Oscar explains the chart to Michael like this, “the green bar is what you spend on stuff you need — the car, the house. The red bar is what you spend on non-essentials, like magazines and entertainment, things like that. This scary black bar is what you spend on things that noone ever ever needs like multiple magic sets, professional bass fishing equipment.” Michael seemed quite oblivious to this assessment and said, “how did you do this so fast, Powerpoint?”

This episode reminded me of a classic The Onion article titled: Chinese Factory Worker Can’t Believe the Sh*t He Makes for Americans. Seriously, people spend a lot of money on completely useless things. Here are a sampling of the most useless things I have seen people buy or advertised on TV:

1. The Segway — This thing is about $5000 per pop and had software bugs that propelled its rider off when the batteries ran out. One of my coworkers actually brought one to work and caused quite a commotion, but she never brought it again.

2. A Personal Breathalyzer — This is arguably useful if you’re a partier and you’re responsibly checking your blood alcohol level after each romp, but if you’re semi-coherent I don’t think you would go check your blood alcohol level. Also, if you’re keeling over I don’t think you need a breathalyzer to tell you that you’re drunk.

3. The Autocool — This is something I saw advertised on TV and what is hilarious about the commercial is that it doesn’t show how much the car cools after the Autocool is installed. It has a thermometer for the car without the Autocool and registers about 117 degrees, and for the car with the Autocool the commercial doesn’t tell you the temperature and instead just says it’s “MUCH COOLER!!”. It seems that a lot of people are reporting that it’s a useless piece of plastic.

4. Pet Strollers — I really really don’t understand the point of these for completely healthy pets. Usually when my dog goes out he really wants to walk and run around. The point of walking a dog is to give it fresh air and exercise. My dog is a little Pekingese that can’t walk for more than two blocks, but there is no way we will get him a stroller. He really has fun just walking the two blocks everyday.

This is just a small list of things I consider quite useless. I think a lot of people are like Michael and don’t realize that they have spent so much money on “things noone ever ever needs”. Do you have a big black bar like above? What exactly did you buy?

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