It’s hard enough convincing my parents to give me a little cash once in a while, but now I have to pay extra when I buy some stuff at the liquor store with the credit card they gave me. How am I supposed to feel right about buying a couple of forties when they’re taking an extra $.50 just to process my card?

I got into it with the store owner, and he said his small business pays hundreds of dollars each month to allow people to use credit cards, and he can’t survive if he doesn’t jack up the rate. And I can buy that,  because he’s just an honest guy trying to make a living selling booze, tobacco, and titty mags.

I totally googled it, and learned that credit card companies make a shit ton of money already, because people buy stuff and then pay it off later at like 20% interest. Someone on this one site called it usury, but that’s a nice term for loan sharking, I think. So the card companies are kinda cool because they loan shark my parents and then take payoff money from my booze dealer.

The thing that isn’t cool, though, is that I need to pay an extra $.50 each time I make a beer run, and at that rate, my parents are better off paying a yearly fee to have the card, especially if the grocery store by my house and 24-hour eating establishment down the block start bustin  me with fees, too. So far, I’ve been able to convince my parents it’s not safe for me to carry cash all around with me and that I’d be too irresponsible to have my own credit card, so they’ve let me hang on to theirs, but this might piss them off if they check the bill over for errors.

The liquor store dude said only the government could step in and help out the small business owners, but what can I do about that? I’m not a lobbyist or anything, and my dad says government is wasteful and all that, so he won’t help. I guess I’ll just have to hop on the bus and go to one of those big grocery stores that don’t charge extra fees, but that includes me freezing my ass off at the bus stop and sitting next to people who smell worse than that guy in my physics course who wears spandex shorts and rides his bike all over campus. Maybe I’ll just stock up next time and then I won’t have to pay the fees as often.