Price Be Right Puns

Back in the before times, when sit-down restaurants existed, I used to order boneless cheese sticks and would just throw the word "boneless" in front of any appetizer with 100% corniness. The purpose of this isn't to make a good joke. It's not a good joke. The purpose is to make my dining companions catch some cringe splash damage and want to crawl into a hole and die out of embarrassment for my being horribly corny.

But there is a real, deeper purpose that I've discovered entirely by accident. People, especially young people, are so self-conscious and worried about saying or doing something embarrassing that it taints a lot of social gatherings. They go to a restaurant and are afraid to speak up even when their order is blatantly wrong. They'll tip well even when the food took an hour to arrive and the server has disappeared into the corn stalks behind a baseball field. It takes 2 hours of hanging out together before some friends finally stop nitpicking themselves, uncomfortable in their own bodies and brains, feeling perpetually judged, and begin to relax. These are the kinds of people who go to sleep every night replaying cringey moments from high school. Their last thought of the day is when the Burger King girl said, "Enjoy your meal!" and they said, "Thanks, you too."

It takes 2 hours and/or a lot of booze before they're comfortable enough to take conversational risks and truly reveal themselves. But if I come right out of the gate with a really dumb joke, then we can cut to the chase. There's less danger because someone in the group already shot themselves in the foot, right off the bat. They pulled a pin on the cringe grenade and then jumped on it.

You cringe at my dumb joke and then we're over the hump. Someone has already done something pretty stupid, so go ahead and order the hubcap of nachos and a massive chocolate shake because nobody is going to judge you poorly while they're all judging me.

In terms of price negotiations (haggling), there is a psychological concept called "anchoring". You throw out the first number and all subsequent numbers are compared to that number. This is the same idea. We've already set the humor standard pretty low at "boneless cheese sticks", so you can say the dumbest shit you want and, as long as it's not worse than my cheesy joke, it won't matter.

This is why, when you were a teenager and your dad took you and some friends out, your dad made corny jokes. He knew they were corny jokes. You and your friends un

Due to lack of real estate options in their city, they all set up shop next door to each other. In order to convince customers to come to their store rather than one of the other Jacksons, they all put up signs to attract customers.

The one on the left puts up a sign that says "Jackson's clothing store (Best prices!)"

Not to be outdone, the one on the right puts up a sign that says "Jackson's clothing store (Best quality!)

The one in the middle thinks about it for a while, and eventually puts up a sign of his own.

"Jackson's clothing store (Main entrance).”

I was walking down an aisle scanning prices and all that jazz and a customer comes up to me and asks:

Customer: "Hi sir, do you know where I can find a wall plug?

Me: "A wall plug? What do you mean?"

Customer: "You know that thing you put on the screw for better support? Do you know what I'm talking about?"

Me: "Yeah, they'll be right here" I told him while we were walking to where they were.

Customer: "OH! So how do you call them?"

I couldn't remember the name of it so I told him "I don't call them. Unfortunately, they don't have phone numbers."

The look he gave me was like he was disappointed and amused at the same time.