Why Retail is Sucking Away My Soul

I think the time has come to take a serious look at how retail affects people. For today we will look at how retail affects the Customer, an important, but annoying factor of the shopping experience.

RETAIL!

1. Retail makes people suddenly and completely devoid of a brain.

Customer: How much does this cost?

Me: Um....$9.97 (said awkwardly while pointing to the giant sticker that says $9.97)

2. Retail makes customers view cashiers as non-people

Customer: Excuse me, I want you to give me this giant stack of stuff for free and then I want you to wrap it, carry it to my car, and be my slave. Can you help me with that?

Casheir: No.

Customer: Uh!

3. Retail makes people FREAK OUT! and want everything now, now, now, or they'll have an epileptic seizure and DIE!

Me: If you give me your number I'll ask my manager and then call you back.

Person: But I need to know know. I'm getting ready to go Now.

Me: Well, I just told you he's on the other line, so... If you give me your...

Person: But I need to know NOW, or I'll blow your face off.

Me: Riiiiight, now that you've repeated yourself three time, I will listen whole-heartedly to you.

4. Retail makes people stare at you....

And then you stare at them back...

...wondering what on earth it is they want.

5. They will also invade your space, telling you ridiculous stories you could never even begin to care about...

"Look at my doll collection!"

6.They expect you to have magical powers...

Customer: What do you mean you don't have thirteen of these very specific hard-to-find books?

7. And they will call you a fish

"Fish!"

Coming Soon! How Retail affects You.

P.S. Yeah, I feel like I should put up a disclaimer: None of these pictures are mine. That's what google is for, right?

Post Number One

So, I can't think of anything to write about, so in honor of the title of this blog I will do something random to generate a topic. First I will pick a book at random off of my shelf. "The Lightning Thief" by Rick Riordan.

Now I will open to a random page and read the first word: "I'd." Okay, bad word, but let's roll with this. Now I will open another window and google.

"The blogger is somewhat of a free-roaming analyst, at liberty to write about any topic, from any perspective, without any obligation to corporate requirements." Tom Johnson (found at: http://www.idratherbewriting.com/)

Now, I know nothing of this website, so don't kill me if it offends you. Of course, it would be difficult for you to kill me considering you probably don't know who I am or where I am. So it would be most surprising if you did find a way to kill me. Anyway.

It is true that bloggers are supposed to be sort of, I want to say soul-vomiting, but I know just how wonderful that sounds. Ah well, too late. So bloggers are known to be as people who "soul-vomit," which consists of being honest about what they are writing about. A fake blog is the equivalent of of a man who has lied to you for five years and you thought he was a man and he turned out to be a gnome and he was just waiting to jump out and attack you at any moment. That is not a nice thing to do. And secondly, it's just not something that happens. Ever. Now, if somehow you have been attacked by a gnome in this matter please let me know so that I can laugh at your face.

Next: This reminds me of a thought which I thought with my brain the other day at work. I was organizing the section of books about parenting when (quite randomly) I thou... Oh wait! This is all wrong! I was organizing the section of Love & Marriage and I saw this book about eHarmony, or something, honestly I can't remember. But it was a book written by some dude that has put together this internet thing where you can meet people and fall in live and all that. Which is when I discovered how tempting it would be for me to go on to something like that and pretend to be someone else and just play around with some poor unsuspecting person (like some creeper you read about) and it reminded me of Pendragon, LifeLight, and Gloid.

Gloid is describe here: http://hallawiki.a.wiki-site.com/index.php/Gloid and would look something like this:

And the fact is living in a virtual world, whether through a game, through a book, or through a dating website, is a very seductive thing. Like high heels and fish net stockings.

So it was very disturbing, looking at that book while sitting on the floor at work, realizing that I really am insane. Very much insane. And then I was very glad that I grew up in a family where I was taught that it's NOT a good thing to go around pretending you are a thirty-pound dog when really you are a little girl.

Which leads me to believe that one should be careful of losing one's mind to a world that does not truly exist. Like Middle-Earth...

YoVille:

Naboo:

Gaia Online:

Ooh! Ooh! Which reminds me! I've been going on Gaia Online to make avatars. Which I actually do through http://www.tektek.org/dream/ and it is so much fun! It's a great way to create characters that are not real. And I think it's a healthy (as long as I'm not doing it for days on end) way to create characters that aren't real that I can pretend are real.

You see, this is the reason that I am a Writer: because if I wasn't I would become a creepy stalker person.

*P.S. I know Middle-Earth is real, but there are those who don't believe and I feel a strange urging to cater to their whims.