When I recently visited my favorite craft store, I was confronted with a challenge at the checkout station. The clerk had decided to keep boredom at bay by utilizing two cash registers at once. She would scan your items, and as the automated cash register was adding everything up and you were either:
A. digging around in your purse for your wallet B. looking on your phone for coupons C. reading over the calculations on the touch screen Ms. Clerk would sashay over to the next register and begin helping the next person in line. And as they were engaged in said actions above, Ms. Clerk would allemande left right back to you, hand you some bags, and tell you to: A. bag your own items, B. slide your credit card, C. and sign the scanner. After all instructions were given, she would return to the second register, and repeat the process with the other customer. All of this while the line of customers continued to grow. I had stood there for quite awhile waiting my turn. It did not seem that Ms. Clerk's antics were helping any of us exit the store any faster. And, when I was at last next in line, I could not help but notice that the woman in front of me was broken down to tears and yelling at Ms. Clerk. I don't even remember what she yelled and cried about, but I know it was painful to watch a paying customer exit a store in this manner. The air, charged with her negative psychic energy, set me on edge. And I had been feeling friendly just prior. I asked Ms. Clerk, politely, what the kerfuffle had been about. She replied as she scooted on down the line to the second cash register, "Oh, she just didn't like me waiting on two customers at once." When she returned to me, I asked, "Why do you?" "Do what?" she asked. Then danced away again. "Wait on two customers at the same time," I said, when she waltzed back on over. "To make you get home just a little bit faster." I left it at that. But I could not get the image out of my head of the woman in front of me who had been clearly upset. And I, too, somehow felt cheated out of something. Perhaps the crying lady just wanted validation. What if she had been buying ribbon for her wedding? Or tulle for her little girl's dance recital? There were any number of scenarios in my mind where a customer might want some kind of feedback, anything really, as she finalized her very important choice. "Wait a minute!" I thought. "What about all of that stuff that is there for you to peruse whilst you wait your turn to pay for your purchases? What about all of the buying and reseach that went into the store format so that a customer does not easily get to exit the store, but must wind down a path full of cold drinks, magazines, games, holiday knick-knacks, gum, snacks, and all manner of last minute small items? Someone went to college and got a four year degree in marketing in order to arrange items just so. What about all that?" The customer is never meant to get home just a little faster. The longer you stay in a store, the more items you are likely to purchase. This is a well-researched fact. Ms. Clerk was clearly off her rocker. Given her youth, my best bet is that she just found it more challenging to operate as two people at once. Given my shopping experience, my best bet is that she did not understand her role as the last line of defense between her company's customer and her company's competitor (of which there are many). Given all of that, I could not let it lie. I have come to realize as of late that my first name, #Karen, has garnered much attention. The bob-headed blonde boomer who always asks to speak to management is in my DNA, apparently. Is that such a bad thing? Where would the world be if management was not called in from time to time. So I did what my name told me do. I sent an email to head of this corporation inquiring into their check-out strategy and what kind of research went into it. I got a response rather quickly thanking me for my time and attention. They let me know that their intent was never to have one cashier working two cash registers at once, hurrying people out the door. They were going to talk to the local shop which I had visited and assured me that would never happen again. I was justified. And for anyone who may be wondering why I went to all of this trouble over a purchase of a couple of spools of thread and some elastic, I have something to tell you. The transaction is what it is all about. The transaction at the close of a sale is the only thing holding humanity together. It is the same the world over, whether at an open-market, bazaar, small shop, or yes, even a chain store in modern America. Especially now in this time of social distancing. A simple purchase could be a customer's only contact with another human all day. It's the transaction, dummy. It is just so much the transaction. And I will not allow that simple thing to be tinkered with.
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When You Realize That Your Cultural Allusions Have Become Anachronistic In one of my previous posts, I mentioned a character from a long forgotten television series, "The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet." The aforementioned character was the televison dad of the series, "Ozzie Nelson." This T.V. series may have been one of the first reality T.V. series out there. They were a real family, Ozzie (the Dad) and Harriet (the Mom) were really married and were the parents of two real boys, David and Ricki Nelson, who appeared in the series as themselves. The series ran from 1952 to 1966, a fourteen year span. It was broadcast both on radio and television. I don't remember much from this series since I was a really little kid when it was on, except that it was one of my grandmother's favorite shows. I remember the Nelson's living room which expanded into their dinning room which then poured across into their kitchen. It was a great house to grow up in, from the looks of it. Then there was the stories I heard about Ricki Nelson from my mother. Apparently Ricki Nelson, as a teenager, was a real heart throb, with a band, 30 Top 40 hit records, and all of the fans to prove it. And as I child, I remember my mom telling me the story behind his final hit, "Garden Party" in 1972. I was eleven years old when we would hear the song blasting through the radio of her Chevy Chevet. She told me the story of Ricki Nelson, and he sounded like someone I would read about in my Tiger Beat Magazine. However, since my mom was grown up and all--explaining her memories to me--and I was a mere child of little more than a decade old, totally grounded in reality, NONE of this information about the Nelsons had any real effect on me, what-so-ever. Then one day, years later, in a store, I came across an old dvd titled, "Christmas with Ozzie and Harriet." It was cheap, seemed inoccuous, maybe even fun for the family. Later when I showed it to my family, they soon lost interest and went their separate ways. However, I enjoyed it very much and have been known to play it more than once during the Christmas season. Why did everyone lose interest so fast? Was it because they were more grounded in reality, could see past the ridiculous plot conflicts, the perfect family, the perfect home, and the foolproof way the plot ended up teaching a lesson at the end of each episode? It is all lost on me, the way my very own family failed to appreciate the hypetrain that made up this television series. So, when I posted in one of my blogs that a certain recorded message at the Social Security Offices sounded to me like Ozzie Nelson, the dad of the series and the politest man of all time, I was using a cultural reference that is lost to many readers. The Nelsons, as a media presence, have become a cultural allusion that has lost its meaning. And since I used them as a cultural reference, the question that remains unanswered is the everlasting question of ALL TIME and ALL ETERNITY. It shall not be answered here. It shall not be answered today. It shall not be answered at all for fear of what I may have become--a living anachronism. I should just start Going Ape, I guess. But I just don't want any more Bad News. Time for this Hep Cat to Make Like a Banana and Split. Hello Friends,
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Things That Chap My HideFrom time to time, modern life can just be too, too much. Here is where I tell you why. Archives
June 2020
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