cayra

Having peace and saving time is assuming that you will end up losing sometimes. 🤍

Not long ago I had to buy a new chip for my phone, but it arrived at my house broken. When I went to the store hoping to exchange it for a new one for free, the clerk said I had to buy a new one. For a minute I tried to argue that I already paid for the chip and it wasn't my fault that the product arrived broken.

But unfortunately I realized that fighting for my rights would cost me a lot more time and stress than paying for a new SIM card (as they are quite cheap). I treat my time as the most valuable thing in the world and I couldn't afford to waste it on such a small problem. It wasn't pleasant to pay for something I had already paid for, but sometimes it's better to take the loss instead of stressing myself out by arguing with an attendant.

Another situation happened on New Year's Eve, when I was with some family members in the car, stopping at each convenience store looking for a 3kg bag of ice to chill our drinks.

At each store, my uncle, who was driving, would give a 10 reais bill to someone to go down to the store and ask how much a bag of ice cost. The instruction was that if it cost more than that, the person would refuse and go back to the car because we would continue looking.

At the third store, I volunteered to get out of the car and go buy the bag of ice. Luckily for me, there was still ice in this store (demand was so high due to the special date that some didn't even have it anymore). I simply paid the amount they charged (I don't even remember exactly, but it was somewhere between 12 and 14 reais) and took the difference out of my pocket.

In my uncle's mind, a 3kg bag of ice costs 10 reais, and paying anything above that means losing out. This mentality cost us a little time on a day as special as New Year's Eve (I honestly don't think we would find that price anywhere on that day).

If you can, always choose time over crying over pennies. Accept the loss ( ˶ᵔ ᵕ ᵔ˶ )