Sure They're Singing It,
But Where's My Rickards Red?
For the most part, I really don't understand consumers. Oh, I certainly will acknowledge I'm one of them, though generally speaking my tastes and purchase proclivities are rather specific. There's also the fact that I was never big on mall-trawling, and my time in working in a retail mall has only amplified that particular distaste. (These days, I only enjoy checking out different malls simply because they're different; I don't care about the stores, but it's fun to walk in and cheerfully think, "I have no idea where anything is in this place! I love it!" And yet...it's rather sad too.)
What all of that rambling means is, despite being a consumer, I really am utterly boggled about the consumer mindset. Consider yesterday, a Saturday: a day in which the weather alternated between pleasantly cool but cloudy, to flat-out downpour. Now I've been in the retail game long enough to know that during days of periodic showers/storms, the time between such rainfalls is immediately seized by people who want to go out but not get wet. We like storms since they tend to keep people away from the mall, but fear when the rain ends: once that moment hits, we have about 20 minutes to gird our loins before a sudden onslaught of people in the mall.
Yesterday was an altogether maddening anomaly. Sure, between the bits o' rain we had sudden jumps in customer traffic...but why is it that even during the periods of rain we had even more people showing up? It was like half the people were thinking, "Gee, it's raining. Let's go out somewhere instead of relaxing at home! I bet no one's at the mall right now!" And then the other half were thinking, "Hey, the rain's stopped. Let's go to the mall, I bet no one's there right now!"
Idiots.
We were practically wall-to-wall busy, from the start of the day right until the end. (And even then, I still ended up getting out late due to some last-minute customers who were still around even 10 minutes after we'd closed.) The worst part of this is that, despite the crowds, everyone was ridiculously cheerful and friendly. They were pleasant, they were courteous, and worst of all, they made it impossible for me to curse any of them under my breath.
Why? Why won't the customers let me hate them?! This upsets my entire consumer paradigm! Life has lost its purpose and meaning to me!
[We interrupt this little bit of nowhere due to
unnecessary, whiny bitching on the part of this blogger.
We apologize for any inconvenience.]
Le sigh....
In a way, I suppose I should have expected Saturday to be that level of batshit buggy. The ominous portents were all there. I mean, come on: when a choral group just plunks themselves down in the foodcourt, and begins an impromptu acappella performance of Carmina Burana's "O Fortuna," you know the day's going to hell from there.
You may think I'm joking about O Fortuna. Amazingly enought, I'm not. Not only were they belting all the parts out loud enough that I could hear them down the corridor and recognize the song, but they were doing an incredible job without any accompanying music (and having to also outsing the muzak being pumped out by the mall speakers).
Admittedly, a part of me wanted to run up and shout, "Play
Freebird!" once they were done.
So, huzzah for unexpected O Fortuna. Boo-urns for the wrath their song descended upon my store. Yes, you read that right: I'm blaming O Fortuna for how busy we were. Let me savour this one moment of pithy selfishness!
[We once again interrupt this little bit of nowhere due to
even more whiny bitching from this blogger.
We apologize for any inconvenience.]
Dammit.
Labels: Carmina Burana for the Customers, O Fortuna ruined my store
posted by Phillip at 8:31 AM
