If I can’t shop
- and I mean
really shop –
I don’t know
who I am
hang on in New York are seriously kissing their customers’
asses now. “Can I get you a cappuccino while you shop? How
about a soda or sparkling water?”
You’d think this would make a shopper feel appreciated,
but oddly it seems to have the opposite effect. “A cappuccino?
Is that all? Where’s my discount? My foot rub? The offer of
a date with the best-looking of your cousins?”
Making everything just that much worse is social media:
the bad Yelp review because a salesperson glanced at her
nails as you told her you could buy whatever she’s selling
much cheaper online. The vengeful tweet because the store
was out of your size. That’s the most destructive machine
of all – the computer. It got worse still when it shrank down
to a phone, and they stuck a camera on it.
For 35 years, my best friend Ronnie has managed a shoe
store in San Francisco. It used to mint money. Now, people
come in and ask if she’s got a particular style in a size 6. She’ll
fetch it, the customer will try it on, and then ask if there’s a 6½.
“Let me check,” Ronnie will say. She’ll run into the
stockroom, hoist her 63-year-old body up a ladder, find the
6½, and return. Size-wise, the new shoe is perfect. The issue
now is the colour. Does it possibly come in black?
Back to the stockroom, and then to the customer, who’ll
try on the black and stand before the mirror for a while,
doing that thing with her face even though the mirror only
shows her from the knees down. “Now this is good,” she’ll
purr. “This is what I’m talking about.”“So, how would you like to pay?” Ronnie will ask.
“Oh,” the person will say, “I’m going to get it online. I
really just wanted to check on the fit.”
“Why did you even tell me that?” Ronnie will ask. Then
she’ll get a bad review on Yelp for being snippy.
Go into a bookstore nowadays and all you see is people
taking photos of things they’ll order on Amazon, now that
they’ve skimmed the first paragraph or felt the novel’s weight
in their hands.
I said to a clerk at The Tattered Cover in Denver not long
ago, “The thing is that they’re so shameless about it.”
“I know,” he said. “The least they could do is type the title
into their phone. But they’re too lazy to do even that.”
I want to ask these online shoppers, “What are you
going to do in 2030 when all the stores and businesses
are gone? You’ll have the money you saved by buying
things on Amazon – an extra three dollars here or 75 cents
there – but you’ll also maybe have a gastrointestinal virus
or irritable bowel syndrome. You’ll be out on Main Street
or Madison Avenue, willing to trade anything for a toilet,
but oops, that was in the shuttered department store or
the hotel that’s gone now because everyone books rooms
on Airbnb. The good news, I suppose, is that after you
soil your trousers you can pull out your phone, order a
new pair and have them delivered the very next day!
Right to your door! And at such a good price! How
clever you are.” QVIEWPOINT
12-19-FOB-Viewpoint-DavidSedaris.indd 133 03/10/2019 13:05