Paul Meier reading

Shopping Cheap

by Alan Harris

Empty-feeling in this full-discount store, I notice others trancing by, glaze-eyed, behind their clinking lop-wheeled carts. Lured, are they, by the hook of free? Hypnotized by the hype of cheap? I wander hapless and mapless through thingful, clerkless aisles and chafe inside at where things aren't. PA speakers storewide announce who-cares specials, demand urgent price checks, summon somebodies to the front, then resume happy snippets of schlock Santa tunes. Ah! A rare tagged homo employus-- I'll catch him and be out of here. "Where are the picture frames?" I ask his back before he can escape. He gives robotic directions to Aisle 5, cinched with a "Can't miss 'em." Remember when store clerks would ask if they could help you, and lead you to your product, then stick around to make sure it was really what you needed? Remember customers? Service? Within this barn of bargains harried service-counter girls refund to waiting lines for slipshod quality, murmuring memorized apologies to jaded ears, then "Step up, please." Remember quality? Cordiality? Absent is any quality counter to make up for poor service at the service counter. Employees hired here for ho-hum per hour evade frazzled shoppers who, from all different wealths, squander the numbered heartbeats of their lives to search for bargains planted cleverly near high-margin impulse racks. Remember joy? Hilarity? Blindly, the free market (an oxymoron to the credit-card poor) ratchets money up to our finely-computered investors who downwardly squeeze more work for equal pay out of fewer desperates who hate the jobs they have which earn the scratch they need to take out bigger loans. Remember philanthropy? Altruism? No picture frames found in Aisle 5. Did miss 'em. Aimless now in Aisle 7, I stop my cart to ask within: How might people market goods with love instead of greed? Is selfishness the ultimate? As if an angel had the mike, the PA system broadcasts "Follow the blue light…", crackles, and goes silent.

From the book Flies on the Ceiling (1999)

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(Paul Meier)

(Alan Harris)