Uninvestigative Reporting

Inside a typical restaurant, a group of girls is out to dinner. The spinach salads and cheesecake slices have been eaten, and the mojitos and chardonnays sit half-finished on the table. The girls who are present have gossiped ad naseum about any girls who are absent, and all that remains is to pay the check. After painstaking itemization and multiple recalculations over several agonizing minutes, each girl's share of the check has more or less been determined. Then it happens, as it invariably must - each girl pays for her share of the check on her own respective credit card. All across America, this scene repeats itself over and over again, like the mythical Sisyphus pushing his boulder up the hill. Why doesn't one of the girls pick up the check and be paid by the other girls? It's not possible, because girls don't carry more than a few dollars in cash. But why not? We tried to find out.

I'm Oscar de La Jolla. That story, and Andy Rooney, tonight on It's OKTO Blog.

I'd like to admit up front that this is a very poorly-researched story. I came up with three possible answers to why chicks never carry any cash, but I didn't really ask any girls why they don't carry cash. I actually was chatting up a cute chick Saturday night and she offered a fourth explanation, but I don't really remember what she said because I was busy looking at her boobs. But I did get her number so maybe I'll be able to coax that information out of her again at a later date. Coax her? I just met her! Oh!

A buddy of mine who was out with me the night I met this chick texted me the next day to see how things had gone. This dude has a pretty sweet interrogation method, as the first text to arrive read "Did you throw a f*ck into that chick?". When I indicated that I had not, the next text to arrive was "I thought you were going to make her into your c*ck ornament." Eloquence at its finest. I'm pretty sure this dude was Cyrano de Bergerac in his former life.

REASON #1: FEAR OF ROBBERY. Except in very rare cases (e.g. the Y-Scale, the female "professional football player" we met in San Luis Obispo, or some of my very unfortunate hookups), woman are the smaller, weaker sex. Therefore it would follow that women are concerned about having their purses stolen. Naturally, if there were any cash in the woman's purse, she would lose that in a robbery along with any gum, lipstick, Blackberry, sanitary product or cute lime-green iPod shuffle that might be in that purse. Now, many girls aren't that hip to finance, but I think most all of them know that their liability is limited to $50 in the event of unauthorized use of a credit card. So by not carrying cash, they're cutting their losses at $50. It's actually a pretty reasonable thing to do. Maybe guys should consider doing it, although it's much less impressive when you're "making it rain" by throwing your Visa, ATM, Safeway Club and Supercuts cards (tenth haircut is free!) onto the main stage at the local strip club. Not that Dr. Seuss the stripper didn't try and convince me that she'd be mightily impressed had I opened a line of credit on my card in the champagne room.

REASON #2: IMPULSE BUYING. As you may be aware, women tend to worry about their weight. Heck, I once worked in an office where a group of women got together and petitioned the boss to prohibit people from keeping candy dishes at their cubicles because these women were being unfairly tempted to eat the candy. Yes, instead of using willpower, let's make life just a little more miserable for those people stuck in cubicles by taking away their candy. Good thinking, way to suck it up for the team. By not carrying cash, women short-circuit their ability to buy a candy bar or a sugar soda during the day without having to petition the city to prohibit stores from carrying fattening products. True, women could still use their credit cards to buy a Twix, but with the credit card minimums imposed by most merchants this isn't very likely - just as women love to buy things on sale, they tend to hate to pay more for a product than they have to. Of course, they could always buy an US Weekly along with the candy bar to get above the credit card minimum, but at least it's an additional hurdle.

REASON #3: FREQUENT-FLIER MILES. If a person had the self-discipline and the financial ability to pay off their credit card each month, buying everything on the card seems like a pretty smart thing to do. You'll be building your credit score, your card may offer theft protection when the card is used to make certain purchases, and you can get credit cards with all kinds of reward programs like cash back, hotel points, or frequent-flier miles. So why not pay for everything on a credit card and take an annual trip to the Caribbean? Granted, you'll have to go in the middle of the hurricane and pirate seasons, but you won't be paying for that middle seat on the airplane, which is nice. Plus, you're maximizing your rewards while paying exactly the same amount you'd pay if you used cash. Carrying a balance and incurring interest charges (as a few women tend to do) might outweigh the benefits of the rewards program, but many women may be using their credit cards with the intent that they'll pay off their balances, even if it doesn't actually happen.

I don't know which of these answers is the right answer. I don't know if any of these answers is the right answer. Maybe the answer is that women each want their own receipt so they can expense the meal at work, or deduct it on their tax returns. Crap, I might have to actually ask a girl about this, unless someone wants to tell us the answer in the Comments.

And now, Andy Rooney.

Andy Rooney, as those of you who watch 60 Minutes know, has lost touch with reality. He's at best irrelevant, and at worst terrifying (especially in HD - woof!). But I love how whichever of the other goblin/correspondents who introduces Andy Rooney ("I'm Morley Safer... coming up next, Andy is wondering why they call the newspaper "USA Today" when it isn't published every day") always has this smirk on his or her face when Andy's segment ends, as if what Andy just finished saying was even remotely funny. Wait, I don't love the smirk, I hate it. Who do they think they're kidding? Screw those guys.

I'm Oscar de La Jolla. We'll be back next week with another edition of It's OKTO Blog. With any luck it will be the long-awaited third installment of the Legion of Doom series. I don't like our chances, but we can dare to dream.