Senior Citizens Discount
By Col. Riaz Jafri (Retd)
Westridge, Rawalpindi
In the USA a Pakistani friend was waiting in line behind an older gentleman at a restaurant and heard him ask for his senior discount. The girl at the register apologized and charged him less. When he asked the man what the discount was about, he told him that seniors over age 55 get 10% off everything on the menu in that restaurant every day. This incident prompted him to do some research, and he came across a big list of restaurants, fast foods, supermarkets, groceries, department stores, medical stores, retails and apparels, travel deals, entertainments and many other types of offers giving various discounts with different age requirements, some 55, some 60 and others 65. He was actually surprised to see how many discounts there were and how some of them started even at the young age of 50! On further research, my friend found that this practice of ‘honoring’ the senior citizens was quite in vogue in many Western and European countries and considered as a mark of their being civilized.
Could we also become civilized by introducing a “Silver Card” for our Senior Citizens over the age of 55 and a “Gold Card” for those over the age of 65, which could fetch them proportionate discounts, say 10% and 20% respectively at certain places in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan?
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