It’ll Do

A few days ago I went to buy a new computer. My old laptop has entered Elderly Senator territory — it’s slower than it used to be, the fan seems to run continuously, it takes longer to wake up from sleep mode, and I just no longer trust it to go the distance.

“This is probably the one you want,” said the guy at the Apple Store, pointing to a MacBook Pro with a large screen and a gigantic memory capability. “It has the fastest processor, can do pretty much anything, it’s really the best.”

It was also north of $2500, which would be acceptable if I needed “the best,” but what I really need is something in the “it’ll do” category.

“What do you have in the mediocre zone?” I asked.

Well, actually, I didn’t say that. What I said was, “I’ll take it,” and I walked out of there with probably the best computer on the market which is something that I completely and totally do not need.

Why did I do that? Actually, the right question is, Why do I always do that? At a restaurant, when I ask the sommelier for guidance and point out the kind of wine I usually like at the price I’m comfortable with — “I’m looking for something in this general area,” I say with a wry chuckle that I hope softens the this guy is cheap message — it is comically easy for me to be to talked into a wine that’s a little more expensive.

“This one here is one of the best wines on the list,” the sommelier will say, pointing to a wine that’s never less than 20% more expensive than the wine I picked out. (It’s also never more than that, either, because these wine guys know what they’re doing.)

“Do you have anything cheaper?” I will never ask, because I am weak and easily upsold. “The one you pointed to is uncomfortably close to my quarterly tax payment.”

Instead, I get the expensive wine, which like the expensive computer, is nearly always noticeably “better” but never really necessary. I get the pricey ear buds, because someone told me they’re better than the cheapo versions, and I am convinced that organic eggs are better even though the results of every taste test I’ve seen are that they are indistinguishable from eggs that come from hens fed an array of chemicals and neurotoxins.

I’m ashamed of myself, of course, but slightly cheered by the knowledge that I’m not alone. I have a very finicky friend, for instance, who does not like the smell of most laundry detergents — they make him itchy, he insists — so he buys extremely expensive no-scent laundry soap at the fancy pharmacy near his apartment. “It’s the best,” he says, pointing to the all-in-French label as if that settles that. He knows that the solution to his problem is baby detergent — Dreft, for instance, which is available at WalMart — but what he wants is “the best.”

I’m aware that some of you are rolling your eyes right now. And some of you are probably thinking rather smugly that when the revolution comes, it’ll be people like me and my Never Dreft friend who will be first on the scaffold. And that may be true, although in my case I have to say that you’d be underestimating my capacity for loudly and cravenly turning on my past lifestyle and publicly denouncing all of my friends.

But face it: we’ve all become spoiled fussypots. We each have our own set of gotta be the best categories that do not, even remotely, gotta be. Starbucks has nearly 40,000 stores worldwide selling a product (in various upgraded and super-premium forms) that people used to give away for almost nothing. If you’ve been to a Starbucks, you’re part of the problem.

What we all should do, en masse, is refuse to upgrade anything for the next six months. We should declare an immediate end to the quest for The Best, and learn to embrace the Just Okay. We should buy only the mid-range, so-so version of whatever it is we’re shopping for, and discover that we never needed the premium version in the first place. It will be liberating.

Except for the computer I just bought, which I’m using right now, and let me tell you it’s fantastic. I’ve got maybe eight applications running and a video going in the lower right corner and the thing is humming along. Glad I got the best.