Life of Hardin Vol. VI, No. 1

You Get What You Pay For

You get what you pay for. That is true. Mostly. (Except that the phrase is grammatically incorrect. You cannot end a sentence with a preposition; i.e., for. It should read--if the person who first coined it had any grammar training or respect for the English language--”You get that for which you pay.”

But that doesn’t roll off the tongue quite as well, and the person who first let it slip more than likely uttered it in a moment of frustration and despair after he had passed up the thoroughbreds at the name-brand horse dealer and purchased, instead, the half-price nag with no return policy and no warrantee from the livery stable down the street. Said nag then whinnied and keeled over dead on the way to the ranch, breaking the new owners’ leg and pinning him under her dead carcass for an hour and a half in the hot sun.

“You get what you pay for,” he uttered as his neighbor, who happened to pass by at that moment on his way to borrow a cup of sugar dragged him out from under and wrapped a splint around his leg. We will forgive him his grammar error in the moment of weakness. So . . .)

You get what you pay for. That is true in the same way most adages are true: It is a good rule of thumb. Sometimes you get more than you pay for, if you have planned and looked, and finally find the name brand that should cost you X but instead will only cost you 1/2X at the moment. Then you get more than you pay for.

Getting more than you pay for is a good thing. Except when it comes to restaurants. Nicer, more expensive restaurants, to be specific. They know the saying as well as you. They know that people expect to get what they pay for, and so if they are going to charge double, they had better make sure they have satisfied the proverb. And food, after all, is food. If it is pleasing to the palate and satisfies the hunger at eight dollars, what more can be done to add to that--to make up the difference and give you what you pay for--at sixteen dollars. So they try too hard.

Take my own example. I was treated* to a meal at a nicer restaurant (by nicer I mean every meal on the menu is over ten dollars and they turn out the lights on you and expect you to eat by feel). I ordered chicken fingers, which I normally do, and a salad. I got what was paid for. The chicken was good. The salad was good. But there was something more to it. It stayed with me longer than a regular three dollar side-salad. It stayed with me leaving the restaurant. It stayed with me in the car. It stayed with me that night when I arrived home. I tried to chase it out with water, with milk, with ice cream, with Tums. But it would not go. It was not a three dollar salad, it was a nine dollar salad, and intended to live up to its price tag. It stayed with me in bed, asleep, and woke me in the morning. I finally drowned it with coffee. It could not live through that.

So beware. You get what you pay for. It is advice to buy quality, but it is also a warning. Don’t pay twenty dollars for something that you should have bought at Chik-fil-a for six.

*I am grateful to those who treated me, and this article does not indicate ingratitude toward their generosity.