HST & AMS: Food Matters

Hope you all had a fantastic Canada Day, and for our dear American friends, a festive Fourth of July as well. Something else happened on Canada Day, which is a little something we like to call the Hella Sexy Tax, or HST. Since this now applies to some things that it didn’t before, such as food, some prices rose. However, because the AMS is broke as hell and now paying their employees minimum wage, they increased prices above the HST. This makes sense in most cases, where they simply rounded the price up.

Big Insider Daddy himself, Neal Yonson, decided to deem this an Issue That Only Sorta Matters and contribute to Sparkles R Us.

Mmmmmmbzzzrrrrr…..

Even though the HST is actually 3% lower than the current tax on alcohol, prices are still going up ~7.5% at the Pit, Pendulum and Gallery. The cheapest regular-priced pitcher will run you $14.50. Thank god for Tuesdays at the Gallery…oh, Gallery, we miss you. Amazingly, this means the cheapest pitcher on campus will still be at Mahoney’s—you know, the bar not run by students. Why is Hatchet Lager so cheap? Can we buy super cheap kegs of it for parties? Why won’t Molson return any of Neal’s dozen emails on the subject?

Blue Chip Cookies

The price of coffee is going up about 10% on brewed coffee and 4% on barista drinks. If you don’t already bring your own mug, this is the perfect time to start. You’ll save 25 cents every single time, and they have a buy-10-get-1-free stamp card. Suggestion to the AMS: print the cards on pink next year, and make the stamp design a unicorn. The increased business will take care of the structural deficit in no time.

Blue Chip is the black sheep of AMS businesses because the listed prices don’t include tax. This results in things costing weird amounts that don’t necessarily end in 5 or 0. Which means pennies. And anyone who has ever handled cash will agree: pennies are the DEVIL.

Honour Roll

Having watched people move through the Honour Roll line, no one actually looks at any of the prices. Reporting that prices are going up 3.5% seems pointless. Telling you that Ben Cappellacci broke it down with VP Students himself, @bowtiebrian, seems much more important.

no photoshop required.

Pi R Squared, or The Pizza Place That’s Still Open When I’m Drunk

Apparently people got really up in arms when the price of a slice of pizza went up from $2.50 to $2.75. Now it’s time to get militant.

GG’s rant: So, you want me to pay $3 a slice now? Is that how we’re going to play this game? This is complete bullshit, and imma lay it all out for ya, yo.

5 years ago, I used to eat Pie R every freaking day. I couldn’t get enough of the stuff. A little while after that, I worked there, and saw the conditions the pizza was made in, and the cleanliness and working habits of the staff, and I still ate there. But the past year or two, you’ve disappointed me. Your bacon baked potato pizza? Still quite yummy, but not as good as years past. Why not? It’s all in the crust.

In the days of yonder, Pie R crust used to be hand rolled, with a nice spiral edge. Sometimes, it would come out as a giant monstrosity that would consume half the slice. Other times, it would be a crunchy delight. Now it’s just a machine that creates a unified, boring crust. If I wanted boring shit like that, I’d head next door to Pizza Pizza. From Pie R, I want pizza with character. You put ridiculous toppings on your pizza, and the crust should match.

$3 a slice?  Maybe. Just step up your game, and I might switch back to eating your pies regularly. For now, it’s the Pendulum for me, because Kai heats up a friggin’ ahma~azzzing italian sausage lasagna. [Ed. note: I also assemble a mean sandwich.]

not only is this a fucking gif of a pendulum, its has a picture of FOUCAULT.

Pendulum is the best place to eat on campus. Period. Yes, we’re fucking biased—Kai works there [Ed. note: which does not necessarily mean I have positive reviews], Taylor eats there 5x a week, and Gossip Guy gets drunk there. However, despite their kickass tuna sandwiches, they only made something along the lines of ~$2000 profit last year. For the ENTIRE YEAR. Since the AMS is made up of blood-thirsty, greedy, proletariat-crushing capitalists (though the Pendulum itself is actually composed mostly of hippies—real hippies, not student activists), prices are going up, on average, 8%. Profits must be had! That quesadilla is too affordable!

On a more realistic note, a half-and-half combo from the deli case or a T-Bird Breakfast Awesomeness, which most of you cheap bastards were getting anyway, has only increased in price by 50 cents. Cheapest items on the menu = still affordable. CASE CLOSED.

Other AMS Food Outlets

Bernoulli’s Bagels – 4% increase. BRING BACK THE APPLE CINNAMON CREAM CHEESE! And while you’re at it, could we get a vegan spread that doesn’t taste like warmed-over ass?

Burger Bar – 4.5% increase. AMS employees should stop bitching at Nancy (the Food & Beverages Mgr) about the lack of “healthier” choices when they spend all their meal vouchers at the Burger Bar. We have no idea how Elin Tayyar is so slim while eating there every day. (Bath of virgin blood?)

Outdoor BBQ – 5% increase. Just continuing the trend of charging more than the Burger Bar for the same burgers. But smokier, and they don’t give you weird looks when you ask for, let us say, double bacon, double cheese, double patty…

The Moon – 4% increase. Has anyone ever successfully eaten a complete Combo C in one sitting? [Ed. note: I didn’t even know this existed.] On a more relevant note, if the Moon doesn’t use MSG, why are there bags of it available in AMS Stores?!?

To combat the Hella Sexy Tax, you’ll be getting a HST rebate cheque, like your GST rebate cheques. However, the AMS is also issuing coupons for all the AMS food outlets in this year’s edition of the AMS Insider. So when they inevitably have boxes and boxes of them leftover, you can harvest them for extra coupons. Scavenging!

5 thoughts on “HST & AMS: Food Matters

  1. the sparkliest unicorn of all

    Just a question—the hst rebate that you guys will be getting, how does that work for out of province students? We non-BCers still don’t count as having BC residency, but i’ll be spending at least 9 months (if not more) of my year in Vancouver, and almost all of my annual spending will be done in BC. Presumably, i’m going to lose an asston of cash-moneyyyy on the “hella sexy tax” (or, hella shittay tax according to most folks) while i’m in bc. Are the HST cheques given only to BC residents? If so, how can I minimize the shafting that will be done to my wallet as a lowly out of province kid?

  2. amsconfidential

    (Really, this seems like a question for the BC Government Official Website, but we did the five-second Google search for you anyway.)

    Yes, as you’ve pointed out with such wide, innocent eyes, out-of-province-ers won’t be getting HST rebate cheques. This should come as no surprise, since non-residents haven’t been getting GST rebate cheques either. The non-BCer half of the editorial board feels your pain, since she’s an international student who’s spending at least four times what you do to care about campus politics here. And I didn’t even get to sign an anti-HST petition!

    We recommend, since you asked, minimizing the “shafting” by buying your big-ticket items in your home province/the states—unless you live in Ontario or Nova Scotia, that is, where HST is higher. You could also look into changing your residency if you plan on spending most/all of this year/next year/the upcoming years in BC.

    Or, you know, you could whine to a blog because you don’t like that they called the HST “sexy.” fyi: WE CALL EVERYTHING SEXY, IT’S LIKE A THING AROUND HERE

  3. The Unicorn Tax

    Oh Unicorny ones, a couple of notes:

    1) All Canadian residents would receive GST rebate cheques (except for HST provinces)!
    2) All residents of Harmonized provinces would receive HST rebate cheques.
    3) New Brunswick and Newfoundland have higher HSTs as well, not just ON and NS.
    4) PQ, PE, NB, NF, ON, NS all have higher sales tax rates, although PE is not harmonized, and PQ has a different collection arrangement.

    Also, Tax planning is always a sexy topic!

  4. Pierce

    @AMS Confidential

    “You could also look into changing your residency if you plan on spending most/all of this year/next year/the upcoming years in BC.”

    You do know that international students cannot change their residency – and thus receive tax benefits – until either one of these two scenarios happen: they marry a Canadian; or they wait a couple years after graduating and apply for permanent residency, right?

    Unless someone wanted to commute from Blaine or Bellingham – get a nexus pass if that is the case – there is no way of getting around this flat tax.

  5. Ian C

    10% more on Blue Chip’s coffee? Welp, that’s the excuse I needed to stop drinking that organic swill.

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