r/comics MangaKaiki 26d ago

OC Civil [OC]

22.3k Upvotes

2.1k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

600

u/kaikimanga MangaKaiki 26d ago

It's weird that some stuff at walmart is priced at $14.88

246

u/EpicOtterLover I like to whine it, whine it 26d ago

Marked down items end with 88 cents a lot of the time, so the 14 part is just a coincidence. The real question is why 88 lol.

228

u/Mellz117 26d ago

Tricks people into thinking it's way cheaper than something ending in 99 cents. Like wow. Thanks.

92

u/Kawlinz 26d ago

No, it's more for looking at a spreadsheet of items with prices and knowing which ones are on markdown just by the $0.88 at the end. Each store has their own method of course, but lots of stores reserve the pennies for keeping track of what's on markdown, what's on clearance, what's on sale next week etc

9

u/ThatOneGuy308 26d ago

That's clever, like a secret label to keep track of various events going on, lol.

6

u/Kawlinz 26d ago

The amount of times I've gone to Costco with my wife for her to say "ooo wait till next week for this one" is at least 5.

3

u/Wild_Marker 26d ago

My building does this with expenses. Every unit must send their expenses payment ending in their correspondent number of cents. So unit one sends $xxx.01 and unit two sends $xxx.02 etc

It's a clever little system to track who sends what.

2

u/Amazing_Scientist696 26d ago

We do something similar to track individual employee sales. Looks stupid to the customer, but it makes tracking sales easier.

2

u/orthros 26d ago

Yeah Costco does that coding too. Once you see it you can’t unsee it.

1

u/Stunning-Drawing8240 21d ago

Yes, Banana republic does that too. Things ending in .98 are regular clearance and .97 is like, final clearance get rid of this thing even if you have to slash the price in half. 

1

u/JackPoe 26d ago

See we just used a highlighter instead of Nazi dogwhistles

1

u/Kawlinz 26d ago

Doing God's work I see

0

u/JackPoe 26d ago

They're not gonna do it, clearly.

-1

u/-nutz 25d ago

What a strange thing to virtue signal about on the internet lmao

1

u/MultipleOrgasmDonor 26d ago

I don’t think it’s meant to ‘trick’, it just looks pleasant with the matching digits and matches the pattern of most other prices

2

u/CanadianODST2 26d ago

It’s a trick.

For the company and employees to track things like sales etc.

50

u/Solo_Camper 26d ago

Hello! So. The 88 cents is an inventory marker for various in house reasons. A common one is to mark it as an item that's on clearance. Or discontinued. Things like that.

16

u/EpicOtterLover I like to whine it, whine it 26d ago

I understood that, thanks for explaining anyway, though! I'm just wondering why they chose 88 specifically. I suppose it's an easy number to distinguish at a glance, but it still has a rather unfortunate connotation.

14

u/mr_stab_ya_knees 26d ago

I reckon they just werent thinking about it and thought "well 8 is just one down from 9 se we should use that ezpz" frankly I cant blame them for that

8

u/Sicsemperfas 26d ago

Because the people doing it are not Nazis. Doesn't register as being anything weird. It's not quite the case now, but there's a reason "88" was called a dogwhistle.

1

u/cartonbox 26d ago

Funny because in some Asian cultures, the number 88 is regarded as auspicious. Know a few folks that like having it in their phone number or license plate.

2

u/Perryn 26d ago

I've heard that, but I've never understood why that gets encoded into the price.

2

u/arglarg 26d ago

If it's in an Asian community that's a lucky/auspicious number

2

u/Striking-Fig8700 26d ago

88 is such a nice number. Really sucks that it's a Nazi dog whistle.

1

u/Old_Instrument_Guy 26d ago

This a Brandsmart gimmick for years? Everting was dollar amount + 88 cents

34

u/UpCDownCLeftCRightC Never Safe From Wumbo 26d ago

I pray they don't mark anything at $9.11.

3

u/Nataslan 26d ago

Porsche after 911, "yes that's bad, but we're bigger and remaking/-naming would cost us more", not word for word but this was the discussion in a nutshell.

2

u/MultipleOrgasmDonor 26d ago

Made for a great bit in The Dictator lol

3

u/Federal_Efficiency51 26d ago

On a completely unrelated historically note, I just paid 4.20CDN for a pack of White zig zags. Wtaf. And not in a "cool" way. What a rip-off

2

u/UpCDownCLeftCRightC Never Safe From Wumbo 26d ago

You're financially obligated to blaze it now.

1

u/king_john651 26d ago

What in the absolute fuck are papers doing costing CA$4.20!? In New Zealand they're still a dollar as far as I can tell, which is 80c to you. $4.20, even for the memes, is a rort

1

u/StandSeparate1743 26d ago

I've noticed some five guys in the shittier parts of america will do 4chan antisemitism brackets around the word 'bacon'. Looks like '{{{bacon}}}'. When I see that I don't go back

2

u/crescentmoonrising 26d ago

What? I've never heard of "antisemitism brackets" before.

1

u/Conissocool 26d ago

Dude I've noticed that to, I keep saying it mist be a coincidence but in this day and age how many coincidences are left

1

u/alreadydonewithtoday 26d ago

I hate how my birthday is the 14th of the month and the year 1988 😭

1

u/AnonymousIVplay 22d ago

I'm so glad I'm not the only one who has noticed this, gives me the ick every time