I have often struggled with the premise that every dollar spent at an event is worth seven more dollars before the dust settles. I even wrote a column a number of years ago about the effect of a negative monetary event and how that multiplies sevenfold, but I now see the failed logic in that premise.
In a semi-lucid moment this morning, before I awoke, I found the answer. Use the financial implications of buying a cup of coffee to explain the theory. It doesn’t matter whether it is at Tim’s, at Twigg’s, or at the McCafe – the system works. Forget for a moment whether it comes in a waxed paper cup or whether you brought your own aluminium or insulated plastic cup. Let’s just go with the paper cup which the paper company manufactured from recycled paper and cardboard, not the environmentally detrimental reusable container that will eventually end up in the landfill and you have to wash with lake and ocean-damaging chemicals every week or so. Every day if you worry about bacteria and such.
Anyway, when you buy your cup of java, a few pennies – make that cents - goes to paying the attendant who brewed the coffee, another who poured it, the cleaning staff that keeps the wet snow tracks off the floor, the City who provided the water, the people who picked the coffee beans and the pilots who flew it all the way here from Central America (Costa Rican Arabica dark roast!). That has to be at least seven people who you helped with their daily income. Oh, don’t forget the shareholders of Tim’s and all the employees who work in their offices. And the truck drivers hauling those transports on icy northern roads: those 18-wheelers with a picture of a cuppa and donut on the side. Already I’m feeling better about my cup of coffee. Feeling better or at least somewhat happy is the theme of SITP as well as the reason for having a cup of Joe in the morning.
If you paid for your purchase with a toonie and a loonie, you kept people working at the Canadian Mint. If you pointed your phone at the cup of coffee and paid that way, you put more pennies into the Bank’s coffers, whose frontline personnel thank you. If you tapped or slid a piece of plastic, everybody is just as happy.
However, what if – just saying – you didn’t have the wherewithal to cover the cost of that cuppa. What if your credit is overdrawn and in fact, you never will pay for that cup of coffee because you had to file for coffee bankruptcy? Will all those tens of people who you thought you were providing with an income, now be forced into penury? No. The rest of the coffee-purchasing society will pay your debt through the increased costs of the bank and then right down the line, in reverse order, to the person who poured your cup of java.
You can see where this going: The City is not going into bankruptcy because of the loss incurred by Summer In The Park. They just don’t have the money collected from you yet to cover the debt. (They paid using the Reserve Piggy Bank that upsets some people.) It will be on the next year’s property tax bill or in the increased user fees that are coming. Do not worry about the owners of the concession at the Gardens just because they hired more staff than they needed to serve the committee-anticipated attendance – they will recoup their loss. It’s the same thinking that the coffee vendors use: failure to pay is just a cost of business. The customer still feels that jolt of happiness at the first sip of freshly-brewed coffee, just as the citizen feels happy at the thought of SITP. Feeling good is all part of that sevenfold explanation.
On the other hand, if you are one of those people who never goes to the SITP but still have to pay a few dollars in taxes for others (visitors and neighbours alike) to attend, think of it as arriving at the morning coffee-filling station, paying for a double-double and getting an empty cup. Not a happy camper. The attendant saying it will be a better day tomorrow simply wouldn’t cut it.
Could I have a refill? Please. The coffee, not SITP.
