The Pake Mentality

These and other pics from kotaku.com

Earlier this month we posted about the pake (pah-kay) mentality. Yes, pake means cheap, but it also means having a singular focus on extracting value from every last penny in one's pocket, at the expense of one's time and social relationships.

It means taking a (free) bus cross-town to save one dollar on canned vegetables, it means asking a relative to fix an eight-year-old laptop worth at most $50 (perhaps this is a Machiavellian method of getting the relative to spring for a new computer, which has happened by the way), it means endless negotiation with a hapless clerk over which features are included with a mundane appliance.

For an outstanding example of what being pake means we must turn to China, of course, where Pizza Hut imposed a rule of one trip to the salad bar (hat tip: Tyler Cowen). Customers responded by salad stacking, and it's been reported that Pizza Hut is removing salad bars entirely. The pake mentality may win in the short run, but ultimately everyone loses. © 2013 Stephen Yuen