Pictured: Capitalism
Oh, you thought skiing and snowboarding were for the working class? That’s cute. Think again, peasant, because one California ski resort just transformed the industry forever and drew a line in the snow between the haves and the have nots. They’ve raised the price of single-day lift tickets to three cartons of eggs.
Ski and snowboard everymen have been shouting about the industry’s inevitable crawl toward pricing them out of the sport. This move is likely the one that turns wealth gaps into a fault line. And while podcast bros will try to convince you it’s all just a culture war tactic implemented by coastal elites to divide us as a nation, one resort executive tells The Inertia the change was nothing more than a strategic move to pad the bottom line.
“With resort attendance at an all-time high, we have tried anything and everything to squeeze dollars out of each guest,” the executive told The Inertia, wishing to remain anonymous, adding that they were present in a manager’s meeting when the idea of $35 hamburgers was first floated. “We thought that would absolutely be a line guests wouldn’t cross. I mean, who in their right mind would pay $35 for a dry hamburger an elementary school lunch lady would be ashamed to serve?”
But alas, what started as a sick joke — the offensively priced lunch — quickly became a social experiment. People paid $35 for those hamburgers. How about $22 for a breakfast burrito? A single chicken finger with stale fries: $25. Gatorade: $12. A beer for $15. And the list goes on, all of it with profit margins growing because everyday employees, from lifties to ski patrollers, weren’t getting any of that pie.
Then came the $300 lift ticket. Surely, that would be too ridiculous, industry fat cats thought. Attendance will slow down, concessions sales will fall through the floor, and resorts will be forced to lower their prices.
Or not.
“Once people stopped blinking at $300 lift tickets and attendance hadn’t dropped, we realized nothing will ever stop us,” the anonymous executive said. “It’s to the point where we are so profitable that actual money has no more value. Our shareholders’ dividends checks have grown every quarter for 12 years now. My own wage is 1,834 times greater than the average resort employee. But eggs. Getting your hands on eggs in this economy right now is tough. They’re the great equalizer. So we must acquire them. Bring us your eggs. Cage free, organic, brown, white, Grade AA, it doesn’t matter. Just go to the grocery store and fight with somebody for that last carton.”
Editor’s Note: If you didn’t figure out this was satire within the first few sentences, shoot us a note and we’ll send someone to hit you over the head with a frying pan immediately.
