I was recently informed by a major drugstore chain — let's call it Floorbrown's — that some of my points were expiring. These points were accumulated by buying things and could be exchanged in the future for other things. I thought the points were eternal. I'd hoped to pass them on in my will. Nope: If I did not buy something more and get more points, I would lose 80 points from my balance of 4,080, and that would put me a thousand points away from my first Reward.
Well, of course I ran 10 blocks in a dead sprint, grabbed the first thing off the shelf I saw and slammed it down on the counter, panting with exertion. There. Ring it up. I made it.
Anything else besides the Maxipads, sir?
No! Ring it up! Quickly! The deadline is descending like the blade of a well-oiled guillotine! I grabbed his lapels. "Eighty points are at stake," I hissed.
Let's back up for a bit. Perhaps you still collect those punch cards that some shops use. Buy 37 bowls of soup, and the 38th is on us! (Restrictions apply. Cannot be redeemed for anything but tepid celery broth. Offer not valid between the hours of 11 a.m. and 11 p.m. Tax not included. Spoon-usage surcharge may apply.) You stick them in your purse or wallet, and after you get about 6/10ths of the way to something free, the card mysteriously relocates to a drawer in the kitchen.
So you start a new card, which you find two years later with three pathetic punches. Or you find a batch of cards with so many punches you think: "Technically, I probably own the store now."
You combine the punches, and lo, the free item appears. I'll bet that you could bring five years' worth of unredeemed, incomplete cards to a coffee joint and they'd honor them. The punch is a sacred compact.
Not points! Points die. Points just go away. Why? Are they made of milk? Do they curdle and smell after a while? Perhaps there are discussions at the highest level of Floorbrown's Inc. on the problem of accumulating unused points.
