It's Night Side with Dan Ray on de Bzy, Boston's news radio.
Nicole Davis, Happy Valentine's Day. I hope that you've had a great one. There's still four hours left. You're going to get off work and be able to celebrate, and of course I will be here with all of you for the next four hours. I hope all of you will be here with me for the next four hours. You know who also going to be long, Rob Brooks. My name is Dan Ray. I'm the host of the show. Rob is the producer, and he's back in Broadcast Central headquarters.
As we would say, can't even tell you where that is. It's a super secret. You can only know it if you're like the head of the CIA or Elon Musk one or the other, you will know where Rob is. Those are the only two people in the world that know where Rob Brooks is. We have a great show coming up tonight. We will begin at this hour with four very interesting guests. We're going to start off with
my good friend Anthony Simarco. We're going to have some commentary on the big stop the coup demonstration in Boston today been at ten o'clock, going to talk about Valentine's Day a little bit more in depth with award winning photographer podcaster Carry Brett, who has had a very interesting career, not only as a celebrity photographer people like Bill Belichick, Conan O'Brien and others, but she's also a very interesting life experience which has some relevance to Valentine's Day, which
is today and on this day. Her book her first book. She's done photography books before, but this is her first book called Shot at Love, a celebrity Photographer's unfiltered lens on dating and finding love. We will talk to her and we will have later on tonight Brushes, no, not brushes with celebrity Grinds of Gears, my second favorite twentieth Hour subject and first to start off tonight, one of my favorite guests. We haven't had him on in full meaning for an entire hour, and we've got have to
do that fairly soon. Great local historian Anthony Somarco, who's going to explain to us the inception of Valentine's Day, which started, I guess Anthony rather close to Boston in the second largest city of New England and Worcester. How are you this evening? Happy Valentine's Day, Anthony.
And same to you. How are you?
We're doing just great. Let me tell you, I'm ready to go here four more hours and it's Saturday morning. So I guess Valentine's Day got it start. I didn't realize it got it start in Worcester.
Well that's true. I mean there was a woman by the name of Esther Howland. She had been a graduate of Mount Holy Of College in eighteen forty seven. And the funny thing was her father was an importer of different things to its stationary store in Worcester. One of the things that she saw were English made Valentines. And because she was an enterprising young lady, it turned out that by the eighteen fifties she was making val times by hand. They were so beautifully done that they would
take anywhere from one day to two to finish. And this is a woman that would revolutionize it.
Yeah wow.
And she would actually have a group of women that would work as an assembly line.
Is there. Well, it's sort of like henry Ford before Henry Ford very much. Tell any record as to what she must have charged for these works of art. I mean, you know today, surprisingly.
Today they are works and they're actually in the collection of Mount Holyo Archives. But at the time she was charging between fifty cents and a dollar. These were handmade, labor intensive valentines, but that.
Would try, he said, in those days, that was some real money, Anthony. It was.
There'd be about ten to fifteen dollars today, And by the eighteen sixties and eighteen seventies, this was a woman that was garnering one hundred thousand dollars a year year. So she wasn't just a Valentine card maker. But she even created a book called The Sentimental Valentine Writer for Ladies and Gentlemen. And what it was was that people who were tongue tied that could actually not imagine writing, you know, sentimental verse. She had a cheat sheet you
could actually copy from it. So she created an empire that would be one of many. There were three different companies in Wooster at that time just making Valentines. So by the eighteen seventies her Valentine company was something that was probably the best known in the United States.
So she was making one hundred thousand dollars either during or shortly after the Civil War. Long before Babe Ruth made one hundred thousand dollars and Ted Williams made one hundred thousand dollars.
Well, I suppose if they were actually playing baseball for love, maybe they would have. This was a woman that knew what she was doing, and she had widows and spinsters and young women before they married, all working for her in a factory. And what she was doing in some ways was creating the greeting card industry. And during the twentieth century they had established an award called the Esther Howland Award for a greeting card Visionary and it's given
in her honor every year. But when we think of a card in the eighteen forties and fifties and sixties, they were beautifully done. But what they have represented is in this day and age that over two hundred and fifty million Valentine's a cent worldwide for February fourteenth.
It's amazing. I mean when you think back, when you do the research as you have done, and you realize that that's something that again is popular as Valentine's Day started. Now, was Valentine's Day in existence before she started making cards? Or did she bring Valentine's Day into existence? And again, you know me Anthony, I asked questions that I'm not sure that answer, So.
I'm glad you said that. Well, in ancient Rome they had a festival called Lupa Carlia, and Lupa Carlia basically dealt with the loopa or the wolf that actually had suckled Robulus agreements the founders of Rome.
It was a peg the emblem, as you know, that is the emblem of Boston Latin School.
I know, yes, and I have one actually sitting in the parlor that we bought in Rome. But the idea was Claudius Gothagus, who was a pagan emperor of ancient Rome, became friendly with Saint Valentine. But Saint Valentine wanted to Christianize him, and the emperor had him beheaded on February fourteenth of two sixty nine AD. So you began to realize in some ways that the whole Saint Valentine was truly a saint of the church. He was somebody in
some ways that was martyred because of his Christianity. So what they decided to do was to create a new festival on the same date as Lupecalia, and now they were honoring Saint Valentine not only the saint of courtly love, but Saint Valentine represents the saint of epilepsy, beekeepers, travelers, and fainting, and people began to realize even in ancient times, Saint Valentine was somebody who in many ways was quite
well known. But it really wouldn't be until the early nineteenth century that we began to see England, especially with Cupid factories, as Charles Dickens would call them, of people working in an assembly line to create these beautiful Valentine's Day cards, and really the whole concept was it was something that would actually, in the twentieth century become probably one of the biggest of the holidays, and probably just secondary to Easter and Christmas.
I can remember as being a little kid, you know, in the third grade, the second grade, and your parents would buy you a pack of these maybe fifty Valentine Day's card and you the nuns would make us write out Valentine's to all the kids in class, and you learned the codship.
It was a big deal. But you know the odd thing is, you know, in my book on Valentine's Day, traditions involved, and I also talk about things like Salah's Valentine's Vinegar Valentine's and Crampus Valentine's as well as candy. And you know, when we think of Valentine's Day candy, it was Cadbury that created the heart shaped bonon bond box and it would later be carried further by Shrafts, which was at Sullivan Square in Childstown and even today Phillips Chocolates and Donchas there.
Yeah, there's no one who knows the traditions of Boston and the history of Boston better than my guest Anthony Simarco. Where how could folks go to your website and perhaps maybe pick up a couple of these books? Anthony, What's what's the easiest way for folks to track you down? Because I'll get twenty phone calls on Monday or Tuesday saying how do I give mister so Marco's books?
And if you work, I mean they're available on Amazon dot com. That's probably the best. I don't have a website, but if they also go to Facebook they google my name. I always put down exactly what books I'm working on and where my elections are. So this has been a busy week for Valentine's Day tradition.
Believe, but I'll bet the last name is spelled SA double M. Got to get the double M in there, ar CEO. Anthony's Marco Anthony. Always great to hear your voice. Always great to talk with you. I so enjoy talking with you. And we'll get you on somenight and maybe take some phone calls at some point in the not too just in the future. Fair enough, thanks Anthony. Right, we get back, going to talk about something called pig butchering. It's not what you think. It's a scam and it's something.
It's an ugly scam. Not that there are any handsome scams. We're going to talk with Roberts Cissis Leano. He's the CEO of cybersecurity training company called protect Now. And this is serious. You need to listen to this because during the last five years, about seventy five billion dollars has been globally lost through pig butchering scams. We'll explain it all on the other side of the break here on nights side on Valentine's Day Night twenty twenty five. My
name is Dan Ray. You were listening to w BZ Boston's news Radio ten thirty and your am dial coming right back after this quick break.
Now back to Dan Ray live from the Window World Nightside Studios.
I'm WBZ News Radio. We're with us is Robert Sciliano. He's the CEO of cybersecurity training company called protect Now. Robert, I had never heard of the phrase pig butchering, but having read up on a little bit, I understand why it's called pig butchering. How are you? How are you tonight?
I'm good?
Thank you.
So Robert, tell us about this. It says pig butchering scams are on the rise, and I think that you're suggesting that I don't know. In the last five years, one study says that seventy five billion dollars globally was lost through these scams. Tell us about it.
So this is when. Okay, So I think everybody at this point gets a text message at least a couple of times a day, and that text might be like hello, or is this Robert? Or hey, I'm sorry I didn't call you earlier or something like that, like just some innocuous lame well few words. Yeah, like the whole idea behind these text messages that we get and First of all, these texts are coming from you know, robots, right. There isn't generally like a human actually sending that text. That's
done via robo calling. And they just blasted out millions and millions of text messages every single day. And why the Federal Communications Commission hasn't shut them down? I don't know. Maybe they can't, I'm not really sure.
Yeah, that is my question, Robert, absolutely, because there have been politicians who have including some from Massachusetts, who have pledged that when I go to Washington, I will stop these phone calls and these text messages. But I interrupted you, and I didn't mean to. I think it's a great clear explanation. Continue please, yeah, so sorry.
So all these text messages that we get on a regular basis, they are designed for one reason and one reason only to get us to respond, that's it. And so once we respond, who's this, I'm not sure who you're calling or it's Robert, you know, did you mean to call me? Like the whole idea is simply to get us to respond, and once we respond, then a human might engage from that point on on the other end.
And what that means is like the idea behind the initial response is that they're they're seeking dialogue, they're seeking conversation, communication, they're seeking to make a connection of some kind of any kind, you know, and you know, and it does. It doesn't mean that like like everybody's going to respond because you know, maybe you don't respond. I definitely don't respond,
like I understand what's happening here. But you have to understand, like there are a lot of people out there that are just lonely, you know, Like loneliness is a very real thing. It's a very unfortunate thing. And when people are lonely, like they're just craving communication, they're craving attention.
And so the simple add human contact is what they're craving.
It's it, you know, and that's where we're an interdependent species and we require each other. You know.
So once they get you, once they get you, then they'll start to get you involved in something that might even initially get some money back for you, right they kind of hook you.
So yeah, well eventually, you know, but they might spend weeks just talking, just texting, just communicating, just getting to know you more, just getting deeper and deeper, just creating a deeper and deeper human connection via text, you know, And so what happens when what happens when you get to know somebody, you begin to trust them, you know, and as you as you as you spend more time with somebody, And again this is just remotely it's via text,
but this time that this person is spending with you is deepening the connection, the relationship.
And so just to ask you one quick question, Okay, the people who are talking to you, a lot of this stuff comes from offshore. How good is their English? Their their their colloquial English.
Well, at this point, with the basics like Google Translate and AI, you know, and artificial intelligence, uh, in all the various large language models, all these various tools, Uh, it's no problem. You know, the scammer grammar is gone. Like there's there's no need for scammer grammar. Right, Okay, at this point they can communicate as effectively as you know, anybody because they're using robots to do it that are you know, eloquent and speak perfect English.
And what they do and again just a little stretched on time here. So what they do is they will propose an investment of some sort and maybe you'll get some money back initially and you think that even makes you a little more confident, and then eventually they will get your information and empty your accounts, abuse your credit card, or maybe get you to get you to send them a good amount of money and you get ghosted.
Right, they'll actually present you with links to actual live web sites that show tickers in crypto coin, and they show you know, the the gains and the money that can be made, and they show that like this is
where I've made money. Like they'll they'll take it to what would be considered like a legitimate website where they've made investments in their money has just doubled and tripled, and they say, hey, you know, like you know, if you spend even only one hundred dollars, you could probably make one hundred and fifty like in the next five days and then make and they'll actually like invest one hundred and fifty and then they'll get fifty back like they can cash out, and like, whoa, this is crazy,
and so they'll it's it's it's it's just like a Ponzi scam, and before you know it, like that one hundred and fifty turns into you know, twenty thousand, and over time they're investing, investing, investing, get a little bit back, Get a little bit back, get a little bit back. And what they're doing is they're they're fattening the victim up, like when you satten up a peg and ually you butcher rate.
Yeah, that's beautiful. You know, it's funny. I got to ask you a real quick question. If I can't here, so I get like everybody else, she gets scammed phone calls. So I get a phone call today. I can tell it's a delay. I can tell it's some form of a pool of people. In the background. There's a lot of noise, and they want to know, am I Am I happy with my Exfinity bill. Now obviously they're looking at me and say, oh, no, it's too much. But all I say is, yeah, I'm very happy, and they
hang up. What is that scam they're going to try to have you? You know? And you can tell by the way this person's calling from somewhere I don't know, East Moldolvia. This is a real person. But they have an accent that like nothing I've ever heard. And they're making a thousand phone calls and if ten, if ten hit, they're ahead of the game.
Yeah, And they're looking for credit card information, they're looking for any type of account numbers, they're looking for social security numbers. They're looking to do anything and everything to get you to sign on the dotted line to provide any type of financial information or sensitive information that they can eventually turn into cash.
Robert, you are one of the best cybersecurity people who I've ever spoken with, and I've spoken with a lot. I would love to get you to come back some night and spend an hour with my listeners as well. This segment is simply a quick interview segment. I'd love to get you to come back if that's possible. That possible anytime, buddy. Okay, Now, let me ask you this. How can folks get in touch with you? How can they get more information? You have a company called project Now.
Is there a website that people could follow up?
Yeah, it's actually protect now project now. Excuse me now LLC? Yeah problem, Protect now LLC dot com. I'm actually in the Boston area, so protect NOWLLC dot com.
Excellent. Excellent, that's even better, Robert, thank you very much. I will have my producer get in touch with your folks and let's let's do an hour in this somenight and really this is not enough time to get as much information out that we need to get out. And you do a great job. Thank you so much.
Be safe, sir, you too.
All right, we get back right after the news at the bottom of the hour, we're going to talk with an assistant professor of Technology and Operations at the Michigan University Ross Business School about Valentine Day's gift Valentine's Day gifts and again it comes down it's kind of like a scam. You was Sokker for the free gift with purchase. We'll explain right after the news break at the bottom of the hour.
It's Night with Dan Ray on Boston's news Radio.
Well, following on our Valentine's Day scheme, we are delighted to introduce to Professor Lennart Bardman. He's a professor Technology and Operations at the University of Michigan Ross Business School. Professor Bartman, welcome to Nightsatt. How are you.
Thank you for having me Dan.
I'm doing very well. It's a wonderful nay, so happy you tho to welcome.
We were just talking with a cybersecurity expert. Sort of the theme that we have going tonight and not only is a Valentine's Day theme, but also how people have to be smart and protect themselves. And you asked the question, I think you even might have done a survey as to on customer loyalty. More than seventy percent of customers say that they would prefer to get a gift a free gift as opposed to a discount. Why is that
comparison important? I think I know the answer, but I just want my audience to understand what we are actually discussing here.
Yes, I didn't do that research myself, but that's a very striking number. Seventy percent is a vault. The reason for that mostly is that when you're given a free gift, you feel that you know you're getting something that you didn't have to pay anything for, So it's it's kind of that psychological benefit. And the benefit of that is that if you were to just get a discount, you'd feel like, Okay, I'm still getting what I'm getting, but I'm getting it at a slightly reduced price. It's nothing
that extraordinary. So it's really the difficult the different way of feeling about that that that gift versus a discount.
Important. Not all that significant, I think, is what you found.
That's correct. Yes, So let you would imagine going to Sophora today on Valentine's Day and buying some perfume. Let's say that costs one hundred dollars, and then you get a ten dollar free lotion with it. But maybe you don't actually care about that ten dollar free lotion and you prefer to just have a ninety dollars perfume instead, because those ten dollars are saved and you can spend on something else. Normally, these free gifts are not the
kind of samples. They're not really that much worth to the original item the church for buying. That's something that posts people don't see.
So it's a psychological response as opposed to an intellectual response, is what I'm hearing you say that. If you think about it, you'll probably say the free gift's probably not going to be great, and I'd rather save my actual money in my pocket and get ten percent off. But people don't think that way. I think is so there's some psychology as well as economics involved here.
Yeah, there's psychology, there's economics. There's also for the retailer. Actually, the reason they like these free gifts is that they can keep the perceived value of an item very high. So, if you see a perfume that costs one hundred dollars, you think that the quality is better than a perfume that, say,
costs eighty dollars or ninety dollars. And so if you keep the price of the perfume at one hundred dollars and then give away a ten dollar free lotion or twenty dollars free ocean, let's say, it seems like that perfume still has that very high quality that you originally assumed when you saw that price, and so it's like a it's a good way for retailer to trick you a little bit into spending a little bit more than you might want to.
Actually.
Yeah, Now this is interesting to me because at some point the retail industry must have figured this out, and I'm assuming that they probably figured it out with smart graduates of various business schools around the country that Harvard Business School or Warden or Sloan or Kellogg or Ross Correct or Ross.
Yeah, exactly. Our students are the ones that go into these businesses and they work in say the marketing or the operations departments and they try to see if they can create better deals that would work. And that's something that you know, we we partially teach, but we also try to research and see what what what what that's about. But yeah, that's that that's happens. Yeah, for sure, it's just a part of my research.
So yeah, like.
My research actually largely focuses on how can you use data to make better decisions? So how can we use the data if we collect about the customers through these retail stores and see if we can personalize the deals to the customer, or can we maybe personalize the price to the customer, or where we what we offer them in the assortment. And part of that, of course, can feel a little bit like we're trying to trick the customer.
The part of that is also you're trying to give the customer what they would like to have, right, You're trying to show them what they might be interested in. It's a different way of viewing the problem. But that's that's kind of what my research focuses on.
So now, is that why a lot of businesses are asking people for they'll ask questions about their privaces. Our businesses actually compile knowing information on individuals. Are they taking information from individuals and compiling sort of a profile at their customers.
They're doing both, So this is actually really good question. So in most cases, businesses don't have enough data about a specific person to be able to say like, oh, this is what they really want. Most of what they can do is they can segment their customer base into say, okay, these are men from Boston that like a certain that like certain TVs, for example, and then we should offer them these particular items. And it's not really at the individual level yet. Most of the algorithms are not that
good yet. But you know, with the generative AI that is being produced in the large language models that are being produced, more and more of the retail firms are collecting data that might be able to really offer you what they think is specifically what you would like to see on their website, and maybe that can seem as that they're trying to get you to buy a more item.
So they can also be that, well, if you're looking for a dress, maybe we should just show you the dress that you would like to see, similar to like how Netflix shows you the movies you would like to watch. So there's a, there's kind of a two sided story to that.
Yeah, well, this reminds me very much of political polling. In other words, they do polling obviously, and they have to get even to do the entire country. They get a thousand or twelve hundred or fifteen hundred people, a very small group of people. But if they balance it properly between men and women, people of all different backgrounds, younger, older, et cetera, they can get a pretty good idea of a of a large of a big election, even up
to a presidential election. So you're right. If there's a product that they feel their target is twenty something men, they know that every twenty seven twenty something man may not buy that product, it may not be interested in that product, but a significant number of those twenty somethings
will be. Same way with a politician, they'll say, well, we're going to appeal to twenty something men because this will be the candidate's position X on issues you know, ABC and D. They're not going to get every one of the votes, but they will know that that is a rich part of the electorate that they can that they can dig down on yes and help themselves an election day it's kind of a similar thing or my way off.
No, it's a similar thing. You're trying to find the groups of people that would like certain things and show them right stuff, and you're just trying to only average, do a good job. Right as a retailer, you would like to sell your items, and you could ever know exactly who's going to buy a bit on average, you might be doing a good job. There's a little bit of a difference with poling, though, because in polling it
is just expensive to get all the data right. You need to call the people, you need to maybe have surveys to figure that out. In the case of most of these retailers, what they have is they have some you know, loyalty program or a loyalty card or some credit card that you can get with them, and then because you sign up for that, they can just collect data about you, follow points and keep tending you the deals and promotions and things that they think might be
useful to you. So instead of collecting data from a very small group, very detailed, what retailers tend to do is they tend to basically collect data about all their customers at a very broad level, and using that data they can then segment their customers and kind of figure out which customers they should target with certain items or certain prices or certain promotions.
Great information, professor, this was very interesting. Again, I'm more of a political guy, and that's where we do a lot of politics here, and I'm always trying to find some similarities between whatever issue we're talking about, and you've made it very clear that there's some there's some some similarities, but also some distinctions. I think it'd be a great professor in class. Thank you so much for taking some time. Is there is there any website that that you could
that you might like to refer my listeners to. Oftentimes when folks come on, they've written a book or they have a paper that they'd like people to see. Anything that we can we can help you, or or the business the Ross Business School raise their profile well, just.
In general, if you're interested in learning more about what the business school community does. Right, there's nice academic journals about that, but that's a little bit too much to read.
So instead, what we do as a say the school is it if you go to our website of the business there will be nice articles that are written by journalists about what we as professors have figured out in our research, and they're made in a way that they should be easy to understand, and anyone that works in in you know, the business world should be able to
grasp some important insights from those articles. So it'd highly advise you to go to the Michigan Ross website and have a look at if there's anything that's useful for your job.
Thank you very much, Professor Leonard Boardman, Thank you so much, professor. We'll talk again.
Valentine's Day.
Same right back at you as well. To you and yours. Thank you. Coming up on the other side, we're going to talk with a representative the National Association to Convenience Stores about the disappearance of the penny, and I suspect the impact of the disappearing penny might really have a tremendous impact on convenience stores who deal in cash on a basis of their transactions, a much higher basis of cash transactions at convenience stores than other stores. We'll explain
when we come back. And we talked earlier this week about getting rid of the penny because it's too expensive to produce, and now we'll talk about the impact that we'll have on consumers. Back on night Side right after this break.
Now, Dan Ray live from the Window World night Side Studios on WBZ News Radio.
We talked earlier this week during the eight o'clock hour about the elimination of the sacred penny. Now, who will that impact? Jeff Leonard from the National Association of Convenience Stores, he's the vice president of Media and Strategic Communications, believes that it'll have probably a great impact on the group he represents convenience stores. Jeff Leonard, Welcome to Night's Side. Why will this have an impact more so on convenience stores?
So there's been a lot of great reporting looking at you know, what does the cost of the penny and what does that do? What we can add context and is talking about what happens in stores. Convenience stores have about one hundred and fifty million transactions a day. Of that total, one third or fifty two million our cash. So we're looking at it from the time standpoint. How much time would you save if you're not counting out pennies? Because when you go to convenience stores, the first thing
you want is convenience in and out really fast. And we're focused on can we make it a little faster, and that's where the elimination of penny comes in as an issue that we want to talk about.
So you sounds to me like you think that might be a good idea.
Well, it has to be something consumers want, and we have done some surveys. We did some surveys last week before President Trump's announcement. And when we initially asked customers or consumers and a national survey, would you like to get rid of the penny, just flat out that only about one third said yes, about thirty six percent. But then we started explaining to them in the survey it would save money, it would speed up transactions. This is what you don't have more pennies sitting.
Around, Jeff. This is what we call push polling in politics.
Right now.
It wasn't It wasn't that. It was more to see what were the triggers not to use that. No, I know exactly what you're talking about, but I know, of course everything. Everything increased, and the winning message was pennies will save money for the government. The one that I thought would win would be the time, but that didn't. But they all bumped up and you were over fifty percent now with people saying yeah, sounds like a good idea, So we continue to look at the issue.
So here's my question. Okay, when this first came out, I thought to myself, Okay, the ninety nine cent candy barge. Using this as a hypothetical, they'll charge us now a dollar for it, So no one, no prices will be rounded would be rounded down, They'll all be rounded up. I understand that. Okay, ninety nine cents for dollar, but
when you add in sales tax. Here in Massachusetts, we're now starting to talk about taxing candy, which for a long time was not taxable, and with a six percent sales tax, boom, it's going to be a dollar six You're still gonna have pennies to deal with. You know what, when pennies are gone, and maybe they'll never be gone in our lifetime, how do you deal with that fractionalization. If it's below three cents, you'd round down, If it's about three cents, you round up.
Well, Fortunately, we have some examples from Canada. Canada stop minting the penny in twenty twelve and stopped accepting pennies a year later. So I talked to some retailers and some customers in Canada. See how did they deal with it? How did it work? Basically, the if you pay by debit or credit card, no change. If you pay by cash, it's after tax, and if it's a one or two
cents that you'd normally get back. Well, first off, twenty, if you look at one hundred possible transactions we get changed, twenty of them aren't changed. That'd be the five, ten, fifteen, twenty, et cetera. Forty of them would be rounded down and that would be the ones like eleven would go to ten, twelve go to eleven, et cetera, and that would save
sixty cents. Sixty cents would be taken out of circulation, and then forty transactions would go up, and that would be the thirteen would go to fifteen, the fourteen would go to fifteen, et cetera, and that would save another one hundred and forty pennies. Now, the first question I got was won't this require a lot more nickels? Won't this require a lot more dimes? And in looking at the math, believe it or not, there would be no extra nickels used on average. There would be no extra
dimes used on average. Two hundred pennies would be taken out of circulation for every hundred transactions, but eight quarters would be added. So there's the two dollars versus two dollars. So if you don't like pennies, that's good. If you like quarters, whether it's for laundry or whatever, that's good.
What did people in Canada do when they said we're not going to we're not going to any longer except pennies. I know a lot of people had their penny collections at that point. They just be stuck with them.
Correct, Well, there's a gary you can trade. I mean you can go to one of those machines where you get redemption.
I heard an interesting phrase.
Somebody said I expected there to be more emotional payload with this, and he said it was surprisingly okay, it just was yeah, we really didn't notice. And now I don't have that jar at any sitting around.
You know, you know who loses out of this as well, and we probably have forgotten about him, Abe Lincoln.
He does, and anybody that knows nineteen oh nine SVDB coin collectors, etc. You know, there's also round up programs things like that, where people may may stick a couple of pennies in a collection jar or something like that. All kinds of things will have to change. But yeah, things happen, They certainly do.
Look, I really enjoyed the conversation, Jeff. If someone wants to get more information about your company or your your organization, how can they find you?
Well, National Association of Convenience Stores conveniences in our name, So we made that our website convenience dot org, and you can find me on the website if you want to talk, whether you want to tell me I'm right or tell me I'm wrong, or just give me new insights as we go down this path.
Sounds great, Jeff Leonard spelled e n A a ar D l E n ar D National Association of Convenience So, as vice president of Media and Strategic Communications, you did a great job for us. You made a complex problem easily easy to understand, and I thank you for that.
Thanks, Jeff, thank you.
All Right, we'll get back. We're going to talk about a demonstration in Boston today. I suspect we're going to be seeing more of these in the weeks and months ahead, in my opinion, and we're going to take a little bit of a deep dive into the demonstration and who was involved and what they were looking for and maybe what their actual purpose is. Stay with us on Nightside. We'll be back right after the nine o'clock news