Merging shopping carts
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Merging Shopping Carts By Deborah Gale Once again I have failed, by choice, to participate in the annual feeding frenzy. Imagine, 75 %-90% off virtually everything, everywhere, if we had all held off just one more day! If the gloomy retailers are to be believed, it might have been well worth the wait but The English, in normal self-sacrificing fashion, see fit to give everyone one extra day of reprieve and the sales here don’t kick off until December 27th. Boxing Day, the day after Christmas, has status similar to Christmas in that everything remains firmly closed for one more precious day while ‘the servants’ get their presents. Nice idea, emanating from times when just about everyone had domestic staff and rather “v –ahhhh-st” amounts of time and money. In keeping with this theme I decided to wait and open my presents on Boxing Day, since I qualify as our domestic servant. I have a theory. Take your average foreigner and plunk her down in a mall, anywhere in the U.S. and tell her to have a good look around. The following day, take her to another mall, 2,000 miles from the first one. This time, send her out with some dosh (Anglais-speak for cash), a shopping list and a time to beat. She’ll return, early, with everything, begging for more. This is because while Americans may not make the “top of the pops” on the global charts these days, there is simply no question – we know shopping. Seasonal, retail, wholesale, outlet, pop into a 7-11 or grocery store run, you name it. The US is the land of idiot proof, omnipresent and simplified material acquisition. Ask any U.S. mall survivor and you will get universal approval. Why? Because U.S malls have been laid out identically, continentally by a squadron of retail placement experts. They have hoodwinked zoning boards everywhere into thinking they possess all the right stuff needed to predict shopping patterns demographically AND translate this data into chain store, profit margin magic. This is accomplished via their specialty offering - local business demise. Let me put this into perspective. Shopping in some form appears on every woman in the worlds daily to do list. Vacillating from daunting to fulfilling, depending on her mood, it is in the interest of the captains of industry to keep women smiling. Profitability, especially in our current, less than robust environment is no joke and significant returns have been achieved to date via the ultimate positioning of exactly the same stores, in exactly the same order from one shining sea to the other. I remember the days when Macy’s meant NY, Marshall Fields meant Chicago and Nordstrom meant Seattle. This is ancient history. If they didn’t decide to open up in every major metropolitan area across the U.S in the 80’s boom, they set up an e-business for internet shopping in the ‘90’s. Today we have 3,000 miles of Gap’s, Talbot’s, Ann Taylor, GNC, Bed Bath and Beyond and K-Marts. These get buddied up with a Home Depot, a Staples and a Walmart that have also been strategically placed just far enough out of town so that people have to drive. And drive they will, to any barren intersection of interstates and turnpikes where studies also recommend sticking the outlets. All this and more, good to go, sometimes 24/7, God bless America. Now, take another, average, unsuspecting foreigner (let’s make that an American in Britain) and plunk her down on the Woking high street one day and Staines the next with the same shopping list and see how she fares. I wager that she will still be looking for Karo, Eggo waffles and Lucky Charms having completely abandoned the search for Crisco in the time it takes to complete those scheduled road works I told you about once upon a time. Which reminds me, I frequent a local grocery store that managed to have their entrance designed by someone who may have once heard about grocery store entrances but had never actually used one. Things don’t get complicated until you are trying to leave. The sliding doors are set at an angle making it necessary to turn the cart a sharp 360 degrees, directly into the path of entering shoppers who have attained top speed in their rain shedding sprint from the car park. This is further muddled by the rows of shopping carts lined up just outside the door making it impossible for an entering trolley and a leaving trolley to occupy the same space simultaneously. Exiting in all cases and entering in most cases takes accuracy, strength, and patience in varying measures and can be dangerous. I witnessed several pile-ups there in the manic run up to Christmas when Christmas spirit went missing. Luckily, this challenge is almost worth it as they have seen fit to install electronic scanners, which are dispensed to mere mortals via an honor system. You are granted a scanner after participating in an extensive fifteen-second training session. Then, after your credit card has been successfully read, you are free to shop and scan and bag your own groceries. You are then entitled to leave the queues behind, scan one last bar code for good luck, pay with a debit card and you are away. The only downside is when you need cash back. If there isn’t an employee nearby when you are scanning out, you lose valuable time waiting for one to return to base. I recently blew my chances for a personal best due to this minor annoyance. Otherwise it is a brilliant system, in fact it is a game the whole family can play on a slow night. I find that the children make excellent scanners and they don’t mind weighing fruit and veg. Heading home I noticed a scary new road sign. It showed two arrows arcing into each other with the words “Merge In Turn”. No one seemed to know whose turn it was when I got there. Some of my fellow motorists were energetically signaling to each other with hand movements and though I couldn’t hear what they were saying, there appeared to be great enthusiasm. I think that sign would be more effective if it was moved to the grocery store. About the author: Deborah S. Gale is a Pennsylvania native, loving mother of five daughters aged four to nine including two sets of twins. Married to a classically cynical, witty Brit with whom she enjoyed DINKY status briefly. She hasn’t held a full time bill paying or spa treatment-covering job since the children and spent most of the '90's as an expat. wife and mother in Paris and London. After 23 years of calling Silicon Valley home, she bid adieu to the South Bay in December 2000 when she made a permanent move back to the UK. She writes a regular column for the American in Britain magazine. © siliconmom
