h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Okay. Now I don't normally go to Walmart.

But due to certain pressures, I found myself in the audio-visual section of said future of retailing today. Here's the conversation I had with a very helpless but good-spirited "associate":

can I help you?

I'm not sure. Is there some sort of order to these videos?

Yes. These ones on the "New Release Cube" are fairly random, but if you go two aisles over . . .

Did you say "two miles over"?

no, two aisles over. Like all the Disney ones are together and . . .

so, nothing to do with the alphabet, perhaps.

well, eight feet of them are alphabetical.

yes, I was over there. Alphabetical by "producer", perhaps? by "editorial assistant" maybe? Certainly not by title.

what were you looking for?

I'm looking for the Mole Sisters.

the what?

the Mole Sisters. Children's show. Canadian. advertised on TV. Now available at Walmart.

oh.

do you perhaps have a stock control computer of some sort on which you could do a search?

Well, we do have a database, but it's only searchable by UPC number.

Oh.

It's really set up more for our "vendors".

not, heaven forbid, for your customers?

no.

and this is the future of retailing?

yes. yes it is.

Well, thank you for your help. I'll just take my catapault and head off to the next WTO meeting.

So familiar to me, but from the (Chapters) clerk's point of view.

-"Do you have a book on HTML?"

-"We have a number of books on HTML. We have 1 over in C++, 2 over in "General Computer Books", 1 over in humour, 1 in the cookbook section, and 15 in the HTML section."

-"Why aren't they all in the same place? Like, say, in the HTML section?"

-"Because some moron in head office accidentally put the location into the "system" as, say, the souffle section of cookbooks and we have to shelve the books where some moron in head office says they go, rather than in the logical place, wtire the error on a list which supposedly gets sent to head office to change but never does, and then look in the computer to find the books before taking the customer to wherever in the store they have been placed according to "the system"."

-"Would it not be easier and more sensible to put the books where they should go and let the clerk use his brain to tell him or her that an HTML book would be in the HTML section in computer books rather than, say, in the souffle section of cooking?"

-"Yes. Yes, it would. But then the moron in head office wouldn't be able to justify his existence, and no one would be able to yell at me for being too slow at helping the customers."

The bane of my existence was having to look every frikking book up on the computer before shelving it to make sure it was going in the correct section instead of shelving it where it SHOULD go.

The worst was having to take grieving parents over to the "Pregnancy and Childbirth" section to show them the books on miscarriage or SIDS which were mixed into the book for welcoming new babies.

I kept lobbying for a section on miscarriage and SIDS, but the "powers that be" didn't want "to depress the customers".... You have a section called "Death and Dying. Is that not "depressing"? Personally, I found it worse than depressing to have to look in amongst the happy baby books for the few books on miscarriage, myself, so I was pretty sympathetic to the other grieving parents having to do the same.

A friend of mine has been a produce manager at a large grocery chain (I'll take the safe way, and not name the chain) for years now. He's taken to complaining lately that not only decisions on what he stocks, but also on where exactly in the store they are displayed are now made - no, not by the manager in the store - but by some putz in the U.S. So, he gets loaded up with produce he knows will rot on the shelf while he spends his days trying to explain to his customers why he doesn't have any green beans (to pickle for Zoomer's Caesar recipe) again today.

Ohhhh so familiar....

We used to have shipments of 300 copies of a really crappy book on C++ which no one wanted but we couldn't order the ones people actually wanted. As well, the huge shipments were a "deal" that some idiot at head office made on condition that they were unreturnable. That meant that those 300 copies would be sitting on the shelf until Kingdom Come, while I had customers who couldn't even get their personal order for a title they actaully wanted filled.

And then, we would get sh!t for not "selling" the crappy book to unsuspecting customers. The problem was that the morons at head office were retail "experts" but not book experts and didn't know that selling books wasn't like selling shirts. When a customer wants a pink shirt, pretty well any pink shirt will do.... When a customer wants the brand new Visual Quickstart Guide for "whatever version 6", they are not going to settle for The Crappy Guide to "whatever version 2".

... and don't get me started on the software we had to try and sell!

Whatever came in had to go on the shelf, no matter how crappy and offensice. You would not believe some of the stuff the supplier slipped by the buyer. I would accidentally "lose" the really graphic porn ones we got in when the manager was afraid to pull them. I'm not a prude, but we had no way of keeping small kids from getting hold of it, and, quite frankly, this stiff was disgusting.

Oddly enough, it kept getting stolen from my hideaway which was nowhere where a customer would have found it. I know it didn't sell, so which employee took it, I shudder to think.

Green beans for a caesar recipe???


az

Mudhooks:

"this stiff was disgusting"?

You really have to read it over before you hit the "post" button.



Az:

It's Zoomer's recipe. Didn't I post the link before? A3116620

Somewhere or other here, you can find Zoomers Caesar recipe calling for green beans.

I though I had

Oh - the cocktail! I thought you were referring to caesar salad and couldn't imagine green beans even remotely involved.

I'll shut up now . . .


az

They should design the keyboards with bigger keys and bigger spaces between the keys... perhaps I should not have bought the Freudian Keyboard?

Oh, man... I would so hate to work in retailing, especially WalMart, which we mercifully don't have here. What a place! I have yet to hear anything good about it.
I hope you eventually found what you wanted.

No. I didn't find what I wanted. And I'm glad. I don't want to give blood money to that foul place. Plus the line ups at the cashiers were just too long to face. Aparently there are a lot of selfish Judases out there in the shopping world.

I'd rather pay a few more cents to get the Canadian product at a Canadian store. Not that there are many of those anymore.

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There are still a lot of NZ stores here, but they are being edged out by the big Australian or American chains... some of the Asutralian ones being American in origin anyway! In the '80s, McDonalds blitzed local fast food businesses, and then along came Burger King... Economic and cultural hegemony.

God bless the corner store. Otherwise known here as the Chinese grocery (before PC). The family tends to live above the store with the children helping out by manning the till while they do their homework for their MBA or Masters in Quantum Physics. Grandma and Grandpa tend to help as well, with the wee ones translating for them. A cultural classic! If you want a can opener, they have *one* which they will restock the next day. If you want that thick oyster sauce that you only seem to be able to find there, they have three brands. If you want TP, diapers, frozen pizza, one lime, two potatoes, and a 110 volt circuit tester, they have them. A joy and a pleasure. Mine brought in Schweppes Tonic Water last summer instead of Canada Dry- just for me!

Ah yes the family -owned corner store...no such thing in japan as the big chains run everything, but as sterile as they may be, the "combini" is a cornerstone of life in Tokyo. They handle package delivery orders, phone and utility bills, have public restrooms, sell entire packaged hot meals (bento) that are fairly tasty, beer, wine, liquor, sake, gifts, cigs, magazines, underwear, fresh fruit, imported cheese, videos and DVDs, hats, batteries, film, sewing kits, lightbulb...you name it. All stocked daily with a scientific marketing index that decides everything sold on the basis of how long stuff sits on the shelf. If the corner 7-11, Lawson's, SunKus, or whatever doesn't have it --- you don't need it! They are the Star Trek matter-fabricators of the retail world.

The corner Depanneur in Montreal is a similar kind of monument in the opposite direction. When I was there, most of them seemed to be run by Sikhs and in addition to beer and cigs and the usual assortment milk/bread/candy/magazines carried the most unique and often bizarre assortment of stuff one could never need. Ceremonial swords, homemade ceramics, Indian incense, light fixtures, doorknobs, dust-caked artifical flowers, ten-year out of date canned goods, eight track tape cartidges, magic kits, industrial cleaning gear.....the true pantechnicon

Why did Wal-mart have to happen?

Suppliers creating demand?

Until recently there were three little corner stores in my neighbourhood, such as have been described here (with allowances for cultural differences - for example, instead of three brands of oyster sauce there were three kinds of chorizo). One by one the people who owned them retired and - aaaaaaaaaaaaaarrghh! - they were replaced by horrid souvenir shops all selling totally useless ALL THE SAME stuff.

It's sad that the centre of Seville has turned into such a tourist trap over the past few years. All the little things like corner shops - the things that made it feel like a *real* neighbourhood - are rapidly disappearing.


az

In Ireland, the family-run corner shops are doing really well. They're all run by Chinese families.

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Soulless it may be, but very convenient!