Do you want to spend three minutes waiting for a beat to drop? Listen to “Promised,” a track off Wiki’s new album that intentionally never arrives. With a little help from MIKE, Wiki is reflecting on his life as a performer and the endless dance of pleasing fans while maintaining a balance sheet, and his continuous vamp feels like you’re waiting on hold while he figures it out. In a sense, you are — go on and sit with the tension, it’s good for you.

I do not love a hot portmanteau, but we’re making an exception for “skimpflation,” a growing phenomenon where companies cut corners to make their operations more efficient, and in so doing, make stuff less efficient for the rest of us. It started (at least in its current iteration that’s so bad it deserves a name) as a Covid thing — cutting services for safety or to scrape by amidst the mess — but now that things are evening out and companies could bring back those services, some are toying with an idea: “what if we just… didn’t?”

Disneyland’s entry trams are still frozen, for example, which means there’s no choice but to walk a mile into the park. Outside the park, food delivery is slower and we’re all waiting on hold endlessly. It’s annoying, of course, but it also hides the magnitude of inflation because things still cost roughly the same, only you get much less for the price.

Drew Austin hits it the hardest in his newsletter, Kneeling Bus: At CVS, he writes, “An increasingly large percentage of the stores’ merchandise is locked behind glass as a safeguard against large-scale shoplifting (including most of the stuff I actually buy at these places, like razorblades and deodorant), which means that my visits typically involve hunting down a store employee who has a key to unlock the case. These chains’ embrace of self-checkout kiosks, however, means that there are fewer and fewer employees in a given store, and tracking one down can double or triple the duration of the errand. Ironically, the lack of employees and their replacement with self-checkout makes shoplifting more likely, which in turn necessitates locking up more of the merchandise, in what appears to be a vicious cycle. The absurdity of stalking the CVS aisles searching for a store’s single employee contrasts with what is clearly sound business logic, as the savings from reduced headcount offset the costs of increased theft. Repeatedly finding myself in retail environments where the customer is collateral damage in the tense battle between payroll and loss prevention is nearly enough to drive me into the welcoming arms of Amazon Prime, but I’m too stubborn to accept that just yet.” I’m screaming, can you hear me?

Here’s another opportunity for companies on the skimp train: Upcharge people who want better. As people get worn down by bad service and long wait times, more and more physical businesses are introducing priority access to their services, according to Gad Allon, a Wharton professor I’ve been interviewing for a story. Killington, for example, lets you pay $50 on top of your lift ticket to wait a less-ungodly amount of time to access the “more popular slopes” — handy for you, and terrible for everyone else who just got pushed even further back in line.

Disney, of all places, used to have a pretty egalitarian solution to this problem in the FastPass, which would let anyone book a specific slot on a specific ride for priority entry (you’re not a king if you have to stay organized). But now they’re killing that program in favor of a pay-to-play priority entry system so you only save time if you’ve got the cash. Wouldn’t you expect something more inventive from the most magical place on Earth?

L’Oreal’s Kérastase Luxury Hair Care brand is running a friends & family promotion and that’s… you? To get their professional guidance & expertise with “non-negotiable respect for the health of the hair and scalp,” as they put it, you can take 20% off sitewide* (some exclusions apply) and get a free little blowdry primer while you’re at it. Just use the code HOLFF21. The deal lasts from 11/15-11/21, and if you want to take advantage but don’t know where to start, take their hair quiz for personalized recs for your hair type. Friends & fam, indeed.