Retail Anarchy

Somewhere in his early thirties, George Clinton stood on a stage, tripping on LSD, dressed only in a bed sheet, and declared, "Free your mind and your ass will follow," and then proceeded to laugh uncontrollably for several minutes. It was, however accidentally, excellent advice for his audience.

True enough that George was mainly dealing with race relations, and not with consumer affairs, but the advice is easily adapted and equally as accidentally useful.

Before we can discuss George or how his work affects you, I need to explain a few things to you about the book you're about to read.

First of all, I am an economist, and therefore an expert about my topic. Fair enough? Let's examine my credentials. How did I come to be an economist? Did I attend a university and get a degree in business? No. Did I work for a financial firm? No. Have I ever taken a class in economics? No. As I discovered, all one needs to do in order to become an economist is simply to declare themselves to be one. All of Wall Street bases its decisions on the opinions of economists (admittedly, with legitimate credentials, I hope) but it is not actually necessary to do anything other than breathe in order to claim to be one. Having been an economist for almost five years, I have been offered multiple opportunities to speak to decision-makers at large corporations and their various industry conferences, and my thoughts have been taken under consideration when making business decisions that affect their various companies. Yet I have absolutely no formal training or experience of any kind. Pretty much all I have done is relay information that I have processed in the most primitive forms of common sense I could imagine, and then find my ideas receiving more and more attention. To George Clinton's detriment, I didn't even have to drop acid or wear a pair of tin-foil underpants in order to get people to listen to me.

Second, none of this happened by accident. For years, I would visit big box stores and watch customer service deteriorate and then come home and listen to economists on television place blame on abstract things like the price of oil to justify why retail sales were slipping. I've known for a long time that I had something I needed to say about the situation in retail but it's been only recently that I see how these things are affecting average consumers in such a profound way that it would be irresponsible for me not to speak out about them.

Third, I need to address a natural criticism of the work that follows. While any serious literary critic will rightfully note that this work is somewhat meandering (a "sprawling mess") and reads closer to a blog post than a proper book, it is entirely my intent for the work to have this aesthetic. This is due to the fact that the shopping centers which it criticizes have also been laid out in this very same fashion. While some first time authors may use another author's work as a blueprint, I used the floor plan of the King of Prussia Mall in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania. Additionally, I have intentionally thrown out any fundamental literary structuring because this particular book was written for people who rarely read books. It is my sincere hope that after discovering and reading this one, they may begin to visit bookstores and libraries as opposed to the big box retailers who are presenting advertisements as faux-information, such as is found in commonplace "advertorials." If I have to hear my future mother-in-law regurgitate one more Fox News commentary as scientific fact, I'm going to take a baseball bat to her television.

Fourth, you may find yourself infuriated that I never fully introduce the characters or establishments. I take that as a raving compliment. In life, you may have discovered that you hear a great many stories about people you have never met or places you have never been. In writing this book to depict a slice of modern life which is being grossly ignored by the media, it is my hope to replicate a human experience and, as such, I present to you a conversation as is intended, not spoon-fed.

I trust that you, the reader, are of reasonable intelligence, and can figure out what is going on for yourself. If children can understand a Harry Potter book loaded with imaginary words, I'm quite confident that the average adult can comprehend a book about shopping.

Some people apparently get angry reading this work because of the information which is intentionally missing. For the more literary-minded among you, please understand that this is a device to elicit said emotion. When was the last time a book made you truly angry? So mad that you threw it across the room in disgust, then ran after it, picked it up, and kept reading? Those were the things I was looking at when writing it and, hopefully, you won't need to spackle and repaint small holes in your wall when you're done reading it. I have found it to be just wonderful to discover how many of my friends look at a film like Triumph Of The Will as a great work of art and speak of it with nothing but praise, yet are infuriated by my book about shopping.

Fifth, if all of this doesn't make you crazy (and strangely intrigued) already, this book is actually about dancing. Yes, celebratory physical expression of your emotions in public places are a key theme of the volume you hold in your hands. We all (hopefully) come to a point in our lives where we look around to discover that we are now the oldest people in the nightclub and feel a bit sad that we are too old to dance. I have discovered that with the proliferation of iPods (and the fact that in-store music is now interrupted frequently with advertisements for products) it has become socially acceptable to dance in public, and that with big box retailers dominating our landscape, the average department store is now bizarrely transformed into a discotheque of people dancing to their own individual playlists. This is why there are so many references to music in the book; because if you promise to read it cover to cover, I promise not only to make you throw it across the room in anger but to make you laugh, and want to dance. Go out and find yourself another economist who can offer you that. Dave Ramsey may want to hold your hand, but I'm here to burn your town down.

Sixth, many grocery stores hire mentally handicapped people to work as baggers, the people who are there to put your groceries in shopping bags while you pay for them. For many years this was a great idea because it gave the otherwise unemployable a job they could do, and provided a decent service to the customer.

When your bread was at the bottom of the bag under your carton of milk, you thought "oh well, they are doing a good service to the handicapped, and it's just a loaf of bread." It was excusable because they are handicapped, they can't help it, and we should all help out in the community.

This was, of course, all before bread became almost four dollars a loaf. I tend to look like some crazy antiques collector when I buy a loaf of bread now, making sure the date is as far out as possible and the loaf is near perfect for four dollars.

Having mentally handicapped baggers crush that loaf of bread is no longer excusable to me. While it is not the fault of the handicapped person, it is the fault of the store for continuing to employ them in this capacity. Please note I said in this capacity; I am not advocating that the handicapped be fired or penalized.

While I don't really want to see them lose their jobs and while I don't think a loaf of bread is worth $4, it is clear that in the situation the price of the item needs to come back down. However, we can't expect the manufacturer and retailer to do this. It's not fair to the handicapped guy to lose his job and no supermarket would be stupid enough to let these workers go for fear of a lawsuit. So who is the loser in this situation? The consumer, of course. This is a good part of my belief that retail is now at the forefront of anarchy, that for the first time in history the consumer has a real need to fight back. We are not talking about snake oil or false claims; we are talking about bread and milk. The consumer has been abused for too long, and is passively taking it, hence the fact that we are in a consumer-driven economy.

Imagine if every customer who bought a loaf of bread that was smashed up by the bagger brought it back to customer service and demanded that it be exchanged for an undamaged loaf; you would see real change as a result of the losses to either the store or manufacturer. At first the price would go up, which would then create competition by the other bakeries and ultimately drive the price back down once they realized the baggers were the bottleneck. While it may be tedious and unpleasant, making such demands is required of you as a responsible consumer.

While I am extremely sympathetic to mentally retarded employees, I am less than sympathetic to those perfectly intelligent employees who choose to act mentally retarded; in fact, to them I am downright aggressive and nasty.

Moments ago, I received an email solicitation with the subject line that read simply "Hello Customer! Keep Erection Strong!" Without opening the email, I already knew what the solicitation inside would offer. That is more than I can say for the hundreds of solicitations I receive every day with the names of obscure sales or the ubiquitous "Friends and Family" sale in which you always have to open the email just to find out how much of a percentage discount will be offered. It fascinates me that one person with no budget and a questionable command of the English language can advertise their penis enhancement product more effectively than a major corporation with a marketing budget.

It's the same thing that is wrong with the cashiers at one of my grocery stores. They are painfully lazy and couldn't care less about anything but their paycheck. Why are they so lazy? They're unionized, and the store is required to keep them employed unless they want to go through the intolerable process involved in negotiating with the union over letting one of them go. Now I have nothing at all against organized labor; I think the concept is completely on the right track and useful. However, when you have a really big union and a group of the employees decide to use it as an excuse not to work and the others don't say "hey, you're making us look bad," then organized labor may appear to both the employers and the customers to be a negative thing. In my case, everyone in that store decided to be lazy and none of the other union members seem to be telling them to shape up or ship out.

I absolutely hate this idiotic mentality retail employees have as if they are some sort of authority figure over you the customer. You can't blame them since the retailers all are starting to think this way now and encouraging it as part of the corporate culture, but that's okay. You can still fight back, you can still stick it to them, and you can still prove to them that no matter what they seem to think, they are a small piece of the overall retail puzzle, and that you have recourse—lots of it. You have more recourse than they have sense.

Now go to the register, pay for this book, use one of those frequent shopper coupons they email out every week (if you forgot it, that's okay, buy it anyway, because by the time you're done reading you will never forget one again), and bring it home so we can sit down and get to the "soup at hand."

Thank You.