The Real Cost of a Sandwich

During the Irish economic bubble I worked for a busy fencing company in a small town. I was the only member of staff who brought a home made lunch to work. All my colleagues went down town at lunchtime, and bought sandwiches in a supermarket deli.

Over lunch one day we discussed the merits of buying lunch versus making it at home. I said that for the cost of one deli sandwich I could make lunch for five days. A colleague suggested the deli sandwich was more convenient. Wrong I said, it takes me about two minutes to make a sandwich each morning. To get a deli sandwich I would have to go downtown, queue at the deli counter, wait for the sandwich to be made, queue at the checkout and get back to the office. This would take ten maybe fifteen minutes.

Not only did it take time to get a deli sandwich, it took time to earn the money to pay for it. Given my rate of take home pay at the time it would have taken twenty minutes labour to pay for a deli sandwich. Add ten minutes to get the sandwich and the total cost in time would have been thirty minutes a day, or two and half hours per week.

It took twenty minutes labour to pay for a weeks worth of home made sandwiches and ten minutes a week to make them. I was investing thirty minutes a week to pay the lunch bill. My colleagues deli sandwiches were costing them at least thirty minutes a day.

In fact it was even more than that, because they usually bought a donut or Danish pastry and maybe a soft drink. In reality the deli sandwich was costing about forty minutes a day or three and half hours a week. Over a year about one hundred and sixty eight hours, or twenty one working days, or over four working weeks, just to pay the lunch bill.

One of the most extraordinary things about the modern world is how much inconvenience people will endure in the pursuit of the illusion of convenience. When you spend money in pursuit of convenience, don’t forgot to count the real cost in time and money. A tank of oil may seem convenient compared to cutting and burning timber. It is convenient to flick a switch and heat your house, but don’t forget all the hours of labour it takes to keep the oil tank filled. When calculating the true costs never forget that time and money are interchangable resources.