Reality TV. It seems
that there is a show for just about any industry, occupation or lifestyle. Deadliest Catch, Storage Wars, Pawn Stars,
Parking Wars, Gold Rush, Extreme Couponing and many more. I’m not talking about game shows like
Survivor, The Amazing Race, Big
Brother, America’s
Got Talent or anything like that. We all
like to see someone else succeed in their business cause it gives us normal
folk inspiration and hope that we can do it too. But do these shows do more harm than
good?
I like Pawn Stars to a certain extent because it shows the
business aspect of the pawn industry and the team at Pawn Stars for the most
part, seem to be on the level and ethical.
Obviously, when selling or pledging your items to a pawn shop, it comes
down to who offers the best deal. Most
customers fail to realize that a pawn shop has to buy an item at a price where
they can make a profit when they sell it.
But I have seen many instances where the staff of Pawn Stars have gone
above and beyond the ethical standards to ensure that their customers are
getting a fair deal, even when the customers tend to be ill-informed or
greedy. I’ll use the Faberge Spider Brooch as an
example. The seller came in asking for
$2,000 for her brooch which she did not know much about. The “Old Man” without hesitation offered
$15,000 as his final offer but yet the woman decided that if he would offer
$15k, he would offer more. While there
is speculation to whether or not the brooch was authentic, the point is that
the “Old Man” could have just took her $2,000 offer and made a killing but he
knew based on his knowledge of the item that a fair offer was considerably
higher than the customer asked for.
On the other end of the spectrum, I think the show Shipping
Wars may be bad for the independent the shipping industry. After seeing the first season of Shipping
Wars, I would more than likely not use the site uShip to ship my precious
items. Grant it that any reality TV
series only represents a tiny fraction of the industry, I still feel it
represents the industry as a whole. If
one person is doing their job a particular way, then more than likely others
are as well. Seeing how the drivers
handled their loads and their equipment would cause me to be leery of trusting
them with my stuff. But I guess that’s
what insurance is for. Ironically, I did ship some things cross country using Uship and there were a few hiccups but my stuff did make it within the window. I'll share this story sometime.
In some instances, I think these shows serve as a vehicle
for recruiting new people. After
watching a season of Deadliest Catch, who wouldn’t feel compelled to try it for
a season? Perhaps you might want to hunt
down a gold claim to dig for riches?
Wrestle crocodiles in the Bayou? Buy
a storage unit and see what treasures it may hold?
It’s important to note that while it looks easy to go buy
five hundred dollars worth of groceries for five dollars with your satchel of
coupons, very few people can pull it off.
Of all the lockers you see on Storage Wars, they only show the best
stuff and hilarious items but only a fraction of the footage they gather.
In the end, it’s up to the viewer to decide what the show
does for them. Most people just watch
the shows because they are interesting but some people find that these shows
light that spark to try something different.
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All photos taken by Paul Clough.
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