shopping

someday soon i hope to be able to go into a store maybe it will be a local business not a chain store, that would be nice, anyway the local businesses don't normally treat people the same as the big chains but i digress. i won't name names but since it is the holiday season i have been in some stores and i am tired of being treated like a potential criminal. in one store i went to purchase a camera since the two we own the older one being maybe four years and the newer one being no more than one point five years but both broken, the older already having been repaired once. you know what the fuck they don't make anything worth a damn anymore why even bother to buy something expensive? i spend a hundred dollars on a camera today because i want to take some pictures of my family you know? my other cameras are broken and obsolete. so i'm not buying anything but the hundred dollar model because i know that in about one year the damn thing will be either obsolete or broken or both. so it's not like a big decision anymore even though by all rights you should be able to purchase a product like a camera and expect to own it and use it without incident for five or ten years or am i just old fashioned? i guess so well whatever i remember when...

so i go to the store i have purchased other things there before like laptops and ipods so i'm what you might call a customer but i am treated like everyone else -- a likely suspect for shoplifting. yes the store is jam packed with displays of videos and music and electronics products many tens of thousands of dollars of merchandise all set up on the displays so tightly organized and crammed into the damn store that the many employees and customers have to walk single file excuse me pardon me bump excuse me wait wait bump shift step aside wait for help. oh hi i would like one of these cameras. ok sure i have the key the cameras are locked in a cabinet because they must get stolen yes i see but *i* am not about to steal the god damn fucking camera i would just like to purchase the piece of shit so i can take pictures for a year until i have to buy another piece of shit camera to replace it ok? well fine so she gets the supposedly valuable piece of shit camera out of the locked cabinet but she can't put it in my little shopping basket because i might *still* steal it you see so now i have to tell her if i'm done shopping. um YES. i'm done i can't wait to get out of this fucking hell hole store please ring me up. she rings me up and i put my new junk camera in the disposable plastic bag over my hand and head for the exit bumping and excusing my way single file past the copious display of merchandise so much merchandise that you need a damn bread crumb trail to find your way to the door with the theft-protection detector sensor thingamabob gauntlet devices at the exit. and yet there's still an employee there oh hi thanks for shopping here could i please just check your receipt?

are you people fucking kidding me????? i have already been treated like a criminal twice in ten minutes -- once by having to ask for help to get the camera out of the locked cabinet and a second time by not being trusted to shop with the thing in my basket and yet that is not enough. i must be subjected to yet a third humiliating personal security check to make sure the thing in my plastic bag matches the receipt before i walk through the securitized gates -- the fourth check.

oh i'm sure the management does this to keep costs down mm hmm so they can pass it on to you and me. yes that explains how i can go in there with my such-a-good-customer coupons which looked so promising when i printed them off although there did seem to be a lot of fine print but i went shopping to drop a couple of hundred dollars on electronic crap that will break in a matter of months. but my coupons gave me ten percent off the lousy accessory so that i saved a whole three dollars. goodness gracious thank you so much that will pay for a school lunch. i guess i will not make a turkey sandwich for one of my children one of these days and i'll be sure to snap a picture of my child with my new hunk o'crap camera on the morning that he or she leaves for school to buy school lunch with the three dollars i saved from shopping at the store with such diligent anti-shrinkage/customer humiliation policies that they could afford to pass on a three dollar savings to me, a good customer.

so i just looked at the guy with this look i don't know what it was but it felt like if there was a thought bubble visible over my head it would say something rude or at least contain a WTF. but since it would be rude to say what i'm sure i was thinking at that moment and i really to try not to be rude to people because i understand they just find it so random seeing as this type of behavior -- meaning treating customers like potential criminals -- must be the height of good management best practice kind of stuff, so i just looked at him a little fiercely and left. and i'm sure he was thinking 'what a bitch' as i walked to my car. ha.