Feeling The Inner Wa

This column originally appeared on Sunday, April 18, 2010

You gotta love the Wa.

No, I am not speaking of the Japanese word, “wa,” which loosely translated -- and frankly that is the only way I am capable of translating Japanese -- means something like “the experience of calmness or reflection”, or “a spirit of tranquility and peace.” Those are nice thoughts and all, but it’s not what I am referring to.

Nor am I referring to Wa, the city in northern Ghana that has been settled by the Lobi and Dagaare people for many a year now. I am certain that I would find something to like if I happened to find myself visiting Wa, perhaps even the local foodstuff known in Ghana as sao and in English as T-Zed, even though I have not normally been known to ask for a fresh hot steaming bowl of corn flour porridge at mealtime.

You probably already guess that I am also not proposing that you, and by that I mean I, gotta love the Thai unit of measurement, the wa, equal to about two meters or one fathom, if you are counting, although I wholeheartedly embrace the verb form of the word, which in Thai means to stretch out one’s arm to both sides.

Although frankly, looking at the above I wonder if what I mean when I say “you gotta love the Wa” actually does take into account a lot of what is involved in those above concepts – tranquility, food, and open arms.

I am talking specifically about the Wawa convenience store chain that many of us have come to rely on for so many of our daily needs and desires. Normally, the editors here at the Daily Local News like to caution me against taking stands one way or another on corporate interests, and I generally agree with them. But when it comes to the Wa, sometimes the normal rules just don’t apply.

The Wa made headlines this past week because of a singular moment in its company history. I speak, of course, on the moment when the one-billionth-transaction fee free ATM withdrawal was completed. If they ever track down the date when that transaction was completed, I believe that it behooves us as a country to declare it a regional holiday, or at least commemorate it as we would the day that the Phils won the World’s Series in 2008. A moment of pure joy could not be as easily pinpointed.

The notion that a corporation of the size and complexity of Wawa – whose stores are ubiquitous in southeastern Pennsylvania but also found in New Jersey, Maryland, and Delaware, would offer a service for free that other entities have decided is worth charging ever increasing amounts for is nothing short of stunning. If you fly these days, the airlines will charge you extra is you have a mustache or beard, or have eaten a full meal in the last six hours. There is a popular satellite dish television network that apparently charges people who call their customer service line, at the tune of $5 a ring. Don’t get me started on companies that make you pay extra for completing your billing payments over the Internet.

I have never understood the concept of a service fee at ATMs, first encountering it in Brooklyn in the mid-1990s when my friend Sondra told me I would have to pay to get money from the machine. “What for?” I wondered. “Service fee,” she explained, being a law school graduate and having more of a handle on these things. “But there’s no person working here,” I complained. “I’m the one doing the work, pushing the buttons. It’s like a waitress charging me a fee for filling my tray at the serve yourself buffet!”

Some banks, local ones mostly, held out on charging fees to non-account holders, and then just chucked that idea like a baseball umpire chucking out a scuffed baseball. Soon, every ATM asked you whether you would accept the fee, which I suppose was polite enough, but frankly if you said no, you were left with no further options.

Except at the Wa. No fees, same money. I had a friend visit me from Minnesota last year and we stopped to get a copy of the newspaper at a Wawa on Route 202 south of West Chester. Never having heard of Wawa before, my friend made light of the name, saying it sounded like something a moody child would say. Then she stopped to get some cash at the ATM. I think I heard her say when she put those crisp bills in her pocketbook, “Ya gotta love it.”