You would think when our brains tell us something is unrealistic, we would believe it.  For some reason, that’s not the case.  Repeatedly, quick money scams are advertised in newspapers on TV and in magazines.  Given their preponderance, it’s clear that enough people have taken the bait off the hook.

What is it that causes so many people to grab for the gold, when there probably isn’t even any copper at the end of the rainbow?  It’s got something to do with imagining that we will be the chosen one.

“Who cares that all those other people haven’t won the lottery.  This time it will be me.”

Interesting aside on the lottery, BTW, that appeared in the news last week.  There was a story that rated the least bang for your buck in terms of return, and the lotteries around the globe were the hands-down winners.  Go figure that.

Has it stopped people from playing?  Nope.

George Orwell in his great book, “1984,” postulated that in the future (his book was published in 1949) the lottery/legal gambling would be a technique used to keep the masses down.  Those who have nothing will take that one shot at winning the big one because they can’t envision improving their lives through hard work, diligence, perseverance and skill.

Because there is something inside us that “wants” to believe something good will come from an investment of our time/resources, we buy into programs that really aren’t good for us.  A case in point is a story in the news awhile back on multi-level marketing programs.

It probably doesn’t come as a surprise, but the study on which the story was based indicated that less than1% of the people who get involved in multi-level marketing programs actually make money.  Again, this is no surprise.  The surprise is that people keep joining multi-level marketing programs because they WANT to believe. 

We fake ourselves into thinking the newest version of an organic shampoo will be extra special, and our inherent great sales skills (of which we are all just loaded, aren’t we?) will ensure we make millions by selling it to our neighbors, friends and relatives.  We don’t consider that we may lose money or that these programs are out to get you to put money into it (sometimes a lot) before there is a decent payoff.

Most people who participate in multi-level marketing programs lose money not only because they can’t sell, but also because there are start-up costs in terms of buying inventory.  The newspaper story said those losses average $1,000-$5,000 per individual.

Who gets that dough?  People higher up on the food chain do -- the ones who came up with the “can’t miss” concept.  It’s a “can’t miss” for them, but a sure miss for the others who join.

We still join though, drawn by the emotional tug.  We believe we can be that one guy or woman who has the gusto, contacts and energy to set up a business that allows us to quit our day job.

I’ve been drawn to the allure, years ago trying to sell Excel telecommunications when the industry was just starting to open up to competition.  It made sense, and I got 10-15 people to sign up, but the telecom behemoths sniffed us out, offering irresistible discounts for customers to return to their warm folds, which they did.

It didn’t mean the experiment was a failure but I was lucky not to lose more than some personal time since there was almost no initial investment required.  I took it as an inexpensive lesson learned, like many others where something sounds to be good to be true.

Stay off the snake oil unless you really know the business or have the exact skills to profitably drive growth.  You may yearn for that monthly check materializing in your bank account, but the reality rarely fits the fantasy.  Stay grounded.

 It shouldn’t come as a surprise, but it does.  When customer service for a major company fixes something for you promptly, courteously and thoroughly, you are surprised.  Admit it.

Year after year of dealing with electronic voice systems, people who can’t answer your questions and just plain lack of enthusiasm in representatives leads you to think that no company really cares about their customers.  They’ll throw you into a queue and get to you when they can.

So it’s marvelous when the opposite happens:  Someone takes care of you.  They find an error in your favor.  Your account gets corrected.  The company apologizes.  Ha, you can’t expect all of that, but some of this actually happened to our family recently.

 In December, while doing Christmas shopping, I made a purchase at Barnes & Noble.  I think two thin books were purchased.  I plopped the receipt down in our pile when I got home and stopped thinking about it.

 My wife Debbie does our family books, and checking this out, found that we had been billed for approximately $50 on our $20-something purchase.  She asked me what I bought.  I couldn’t remember anything beyond the two small books, which were listed on our receipt, along with the total.

 She began the laborious electronic and phone-calling process to find someone to eradicate the charges and set our life in order.   There is no need to go into those details.  But she had to be wondering, “I’ve been balancing books for 20+ years of marriage and finally it means something.  There was an error and I’m right.  We’re going to get money back because of all that hard bookkeeping work.”

 It is vindication.  It made her feel great, I’m sure, a reflection on the importance of checking details and ensuring they are accurate and someone out there isn’t cheating you.

 I don’t know how long the reconciliation took.  She sent me the email when it was resolved.  The credit card company wrote about their pleasure in informing us that the transaction was resolved in our favor and we were owed $24.60.

Debbie wrote, “Wow – All that time spent reconciling everything and I saved us $25 – cool!  Now to spend another 40 hours to do the same.”

 What’s sad about this is we shouldn’t have to think this way.  Customer service should work EVERY TIME.  There should be no gaps. You call someone, you get a prompt answer and have your questions answered, and the proper solution is provided.  End of call. Isn’t that what it’s supposed to be about?

If you are like our family, this does not happen to you.  Pick a provider of insurance, medical care, or automotive service and when is the last time you got a live voice and were off the phone in fewer than five minutes? 

Beyond the time and frustration we all so frequently face, this is also one of the few times I remember something every being resolved in my favor.   That’s worth marking down on the calendar as a victory, and a day for annual celebration.  “January 10, 2015, go out to dinner with Deb and order $24.60 worth of food to commemorate customer service victory last year.”  There, it’s written down on this year’s calendar so I transfer it to 2015 when we get those calendars in December.

Victories are short-lived.  We’ll move on, and will find something else to grouse about in the weeks and months ahead.

But for now, we will savor this one, pull out a twenty dollar bill and five dollar bill and stroke them gently, realizing just how precious they are, recognizing someone else parted with them to acknowledge their mistake.  After we put the bills back in the wallet, it’s on to the next challenge:  Battling the medical insurance company for the $194 bill that came last week after all expenses were supposed to be covered on recent surgery.  You can bet that’s going to be fun.

When I was in high school, we cut and pasted copy to create our newspaper, poring over lighted glass to hone the edges and fit the pieces together as best we could, kind of like a jigsaw puzzle.  Our editors were all there together, talking about the stories, cracking jokes, saying those goofy high school things.

From there, we went out to the printers.  Our editor got to do the duty, but once or twice I went as a backup, and it was fascinating to see the paper get laid out and printed off the press.

When we delivered the paper to our fellow students, they had something tangible in their hands, a product we were proud of.  That feeling is going away.

Recently, the high school our last two kids are attending decided to phase out the printed version of their newspaper and go to an electronic-only format.  This is nothing new if you are in the newspaper, magazine, newsletter or book business.  You know that print -- where we turn pages with our fingers and feel paper while we do so rather than slide to the next story electronically -- is going out of business. 

Companies and associations that put out newsletters grapple regularly with the “cost vs. convenience” issue.   It costs less to send it electronically, but many people find the convenience of carrying around a newsletter or newspaper more conducive to reading it at their discretion.

This conflict has been around for multiple years and is still not fully resolved.  When you have remote workers, they cannot read online.  There are still, believe it or not, people who don’t have computers (laptop or desktop) at home.  They may have a smartphone, but the reading screen is so small it detracts from the stories.

As a newspaper and magazine kinda guy, I love turning the pages and burying my face in a good story.  It’s pleasant.  So when I hear of high schools eliminating their school paper in hard copy and putting it online, it’s bothersome.

Interestingly, our younger daughter Skyler (Read:  Next Generation) is against the electronic version, too.  Maybe collectively we’ll be able to argue for the retention of paper copies.

Here’s her two cents:  When the school used to publish the paper in hard copies, the students knew when it came out.  It was placed at their disposal at multiple locations, they’d grab a copy and read it when they had down time.  It was a product they held in their hands, and they used it.

Now, the students do not visibly see when it comes out.  They are notified electronically, but that notice may fly right by their attention span.

Skyler likes carrying the paper to class.  She finds it inconvenient to go online.

Too frequently, newspapers and magazines fight this battle looking solely at the cost equation.  That’s not the best way to go about it.  They aren’t thinking of how many readers they will LOSE by going this route.

And isn’t it all about the readership?  You publish something with the idea of someone reading it.

There’s a fundamental desire to hold paper tangibly in your hands.  It’s comforting.  It gives you a sense of ownership.  It allows you to peruse different sections at your leisure.  You control the tempo.

The decision to eliminate paper copies of newspapers from distribution is not about the next generation wanting to be online and get every nugget on their smartphone.  It’s also not about cost.

When the decision-makers have to come down on one side or the other, they should think about their audience and why a person chooses to pick a paper up from a newsstand – the cup of coffee purchased there, the chatter with the guy behind the counter are as important to the day as reading.  When these choices are framed differently, we might reach different conclusions.

It’s hard to peg when this syndrome started, but probably sometime in the past 5-6 years would be a round, fairly accurate number.  It’s come about because of the increasing number of electronic sites we visit to deposit data about ourselves. 

To shop, bank, make vacation plans, rent cars, reserve a hotel room, order clothes, as a society we are going online more and more for these decisions.  And because of that, we are ceding control of information, trusting others to protect it.

From credit card companies to retailers, travel agents, Amazon and other huge companies, we send out our addresses, phone numbers, email, and credit card information.  Doing so, we place massive trust in entities we don’t really know.

For the most part, that trust is repaid.  Though there are breaches and many people can list personal examples of having to close down accounts, recover their identities or change passwords, in the majority of cases, we are safe and things function the way they should.

Despite this knowledge, most of us operating in a first world economy, using current tools of technology, live with a steady state of low level paranoia that at any time, our personal information could get stolen and we could lose a lot of money to a criminal.   I know I do. 

In fact, low level paranoia makes sense.  It’s healthy.  It means you remain a skeptic, and the companies you are entrusting to serve you continue to earn it daily.  They need to pay us back with protection, or we will take our business elsewhere.

That’s why the recent breach at Target is such a titanic headache for the company.  They have now lost their customer’s trust.  Earning it back is much harder.

Several years ago, a friend of mine had her checking account compromised.  I saw her on an almost daily basis at work.  Over the next several months, the topic of her trying to recover her identity was a repeated discussion topic.  The headaches she encountered (closing the account; opening a new one; cancelling payments; calling businesses to explain what happened) were almost beyond belief.  It gave me a headache just listening.

The issues today have multiplied as we further connect electronically, sending payments through the air rather than hand to hand.  We lose touch literally and figuratively of how we are paying.  We worry more.  Low level paranoia increases every time you hear of someone you know who has had to cancel a credit card because it was suddenly racking up unknown charges.

Companies have evolved the past 5-6 years to fight this fraud.  Think about it:  These companies did not exist 10 years ago.  Now, for a fee, you can have your identity managed and protect by a third party.  If it wasn’t so ubiquitous in society, it would certainly seem weird and threatening.

“Yeah, I pay this company 14 bucks a month so that my life doesn’t get hacked.  Seems like a small price for safety.”

Maybe it’s not, but if low level paranoia about identity theft didn’t exist, neither would those companies.  They capitalize on our fears.

Sometimes you have to wonder what it would be like to go back to a barter and trade society or one that is fully cash-based.  The only way to pay is to agree that what you are handing over meets the price of the seller and you place something tangible in his hands (cash or the item you are using to barter with). 

With technology leapfrogging, we aren’t going back.  Target is not going to be able to put the genie back in the bottle.

At the same time, common sense should prevail. Take reasonable measures to protect yourself: Choose complicated passwords and change them regularly.  Don’t open emails that seek personal information.  Make wise choices, and the paranoia eases.