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anna

New Miserable Experience

by anna at 11:03 AM on December 23, 2004

I don't mean to complain. Really, I don't. I don't mind the sales clerks' listless "Happy Holidays." I don't mind that they keep malls so hot it feels like visiting an old folks' home in a down parka. I don't mind being bowled over by single-minded shopping moms' double strollers. I mean, look at the towering achievement they've wrought: managing to get pregnant, gestate a baby or two and then enduring the torturous C-section labor. They have every right to treat me like road kill.

The only thing about the shopping experience that is slowly, inexoraby driving me insane is the goddamn music. Incessant, everywhere-you-venture holiday music. Even pumping gas we're subjected to the inane torture. It wasn't half as bad when they would pipe in traditional Christmas ditties like Silent Night or The First Noel or Away in a Manger or something. But those numbers have religious overtones and that is a major no-no. So we're inundated with Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer , Jingle Bell Rock or my absolute non-favorite, Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree. These types of songs must have been cranked out with some general objective in mind, but for the life of me I can't fathom what it might be. Maybe just to piss me off.

I really do hope that grandma gets run over by a reindeer.

comments (4)

WHo the hell is PARSON BROWN? I mean really? a Pastor?

...I've kicked the Audio Invective further on www.tradinganddrugs.blogpost.com
...please, listen to the voice of the porcelain doll... she will save you one day...

.............111111122223333333 5555555 888888 13 ....... 23.6---------76.4

161.8

by LOCKHEED at December 23, 2004 11:21 AM


I don't mind the songs you've listed... I can complain about them as readily as you have upon walking into the store, but as I'm carting the trolley around I'll only catch myself whistling or nodding my head, so I tend not to say anything. If I say, 'I hate this song' at any time, be sure to pick up on my tapping foot and remind me of what I said.

Wal-Mart bought out ASDA over here a few years back, and the immediate changes to the stores were horrible. Seeing twenty or so staff members gather in a circle - with a watching crowd of shoppers grinning stupidly - only to chant, "Gimme an 'A', gimme an 'S'".... And so on… Until: "What have you got!? ASDA! Yaaaaaay." Grinning shoppers disperse, and staff members are scorned when not at work but are immediately recognised as being willing bitches to: 'The man'. I asked a couple of ASDA staff whether they enjoyed doing it, and they told me, "We don't have to do it, but management appreciate it." ... lol. Visions of ‘Not one step back’ the Stalin command sprang to mind.

I convinced one of my friends to stick with me for a while, and we used every customer comment leaflet available, and in the lil section asking: “What would you like to see?” We added "n't" to 'would' and wrote: To see staff members earning the national minimum wage degraded more than is necessary. NO MORE CHANTING!

They don’t do it anymore… Not in my local store anyway. Maybe you should use those same leaflets to have the music changed… Marilyn Manson, or Queens of the Stoneage… Cradle of Filth? Hire a guy with Tourette’s syndrome to do the customer announcements and you’ve got quite a shopping experience. :)

by Ex Crimson Guard NCO at December 23, 2004 1:10 PM


I am proud to say I have never set foot in Walmart. Costco maybe once or twice when wife drags me along. Love the food samples, go back for seconds. Hey, where is Ezy, Jean and Lucy? Hello! Are you out there?

by anna at December 23, 2004 1:36 PM


And it's weird to visit my in-laws in Jackson Heights, Queens. No Home Depot, no McDonald's, no Walmart. But drive out to Long Island and there it is again, the ubiquitous corporate culture, only in miniature. Once we went to brunch there after the christening of my godson. I eavesdropped on the ladies gathered there. Their conversations were the most superficial I've ever heard. All about shoes and dresses and makeup and money and plastic surgery.

by anna at December 23, 2004 1:45 PM