the shopping experience

by gail kavanagh

Today I had what I suppose was an average shopping experience. I stopped for lunch at a small sandwich bar and dutifully took my place among the people waiting to be served. After 20 minutes of being studiously ignored by the counterhands serving people who arrived after me, I wandered away lunchless. It was a hot Sydney day, so I decided to get an ice cream instead. I asked the girl for cookies'n'cream, one scoop, and she asked me, did I say boysenberry?

No, cookies and cream, thank, you, I said and she served me boysenberry. Two scoops.

It is not simply the appalling service that confounds me. Like most shoppers, I am used to it. Apart from the odd bout of counter or check out rage that I've witnessed, most shoppers take it as part and parcel of the Modern Shopping Experience.

And I suppose that answers the question that really does bother me; why don't the business operators care when you give up and walk away, or silently vow never to return?

Shopping has replaced religion, true love and If I can Help Somebody as I pass This Way as a reason for living.

No religion can give you the latest wide screen DVD that will make you the envy of your friends.

True love--well, we all know that's a gooey toffee-flavoured ice cream covered in chocolate thick enough to choke an elephant. You've seen the commercial.

And with so many people helping themselves these days, who needs a Good Samaritan?

Shopping is IT. Shopping is life, leisure, and the pursuit of happiness with a credit card. You'd think the retail sector would be so damn grateful they couldn't do enough for us.

Polite and efficient counterhands? Not a problem. Counterhands who treat your food with, hopefully, the same attention to sanitation as they treat their own food? That's not asking for the moon. People who listen to your order and give you exactly what you asked for? Why do you think we're still in business?

Instead it is we who are grateful that they even allow us into their emporiums, tricked out like a fantasy street in Disneyland, and feel guilty if we are caught just browsing with no intention to buy. How many items are purchased just because the browser felt they had to buy something in exchange for all this entertainment?

Of course, the retail sector doesn't have to give good service, or even better-than-nothing-service, when we are so pathetically grateful to be allowed to shop there at all.

Malls are patrolled by security guards who mean business, always ready to deal with a recalcitrant customer--but just try calling one if you are having trouble with a retailer.

Large notices stuck up outside the malls list possible misdemeanours on the shoppers' part, like no loud talking, no bad language, no pets, no skateboards, no coming in here just to sit and enjoy the air conditioning, but retailers have no set of rules to follow.

Unless you count the billboards that hang from the Mall balconies, promising the shopper unbelievably wonderful bargains, good service and a transcendental shopping experience.

The girl who gave me boysenberry instead of cookies'n'cream works so she can shop, and I work so I can shop, and so does everyone else. But I don't work in the retail sector. If I emailed boysenberry when the editor asked for cookies'n'cream, there'd be no ice cream for me this month. But the boysenberry was good. And I got a free scoop.

Copyright © 2001 Gail Kavanagh. All Rights Reserved.

Gail Kavanagh really likes boysenberry.