I went looking for a needle in a haystack, and I found so much more |
I went looking for a needle in a haystack, and I found so much more
June 13, 2026 — 5:00am
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“Mark it up as a win,” said the young man at the Waste Transfer Centre, as I showed off the tiny piece of black plastic that I’d located in the scree of rubbish between the car bays and the bins. It had somehow detached itself from my ute hours previously, when I’d visited the tip to dispose of some pruned tree branches.
The plastic bit houses the rod that goes from one side of the ute to the other, keeping the tarp taut. Without it, you’d be driving around with a lake in the back every time it rained. As soon as I arrived home, I realised it must have snapped off while I was heaving out the rubbish.
I then wondered: how much will the car company charge for a new bit of plastic? The item would cost five cents to manufacture, so my guess was $143.65. Car companies, you may have noticed, always charge strangely precise amounts for spare parts, as if the price has been determined by some complex assessment of input costs, transport fees, plus local and international taxes, instead of some bloke in an office in Sydenham saying: “How much do you reckon the mugs would be willing to pay?”
Anyway, this particular mug was determined to........