• Library late fees (kidding, my local library still charges 10 cents per day)

Q: Will this change discourage returns and make it harder for me to find books? A: Studies of libraries in other communities that have eliminated late fees have found that ending late fees actually results in a higher rate of books being returned, as people are less likely to avoid the library if they are not concerned about having to pay money. That means more books in circulation for APL customers.

The inflation rate was eventually incomprehensible, and the government Statistical Office stopped publishing the inflation rate. Some creative minds devised a method to track inflation and the exchange rate and termed this innovation the “Hard-Boiled Egg Index.”

It sounds extreme, but we had to calculate the exchange rate and estimate inflation, based on how much ZWD one needed to buy a hard-boiled egg over time. It was generally accepted that the purchase parity of three hard-boiled eggs in most parts of Africa was one dollar US, and therefore this became a reference point. Tracking how much the price in ZWD of three hard-boiled eggs over time would give a fair estimate of the movement in exchange rate and inflation rate.