As promised I've stopped talking about games and moved further afield to have a gripe at a culture which is slowly forgetting books.
I left a certain chain store which boasted to be the 'biggest stationary retailer in the UK' last week. I was only a morning girl, but every time I walked into the shop it would fill me with dread and despair. And here are a few reasons why.
1. They used to make me wear a huge bright blue shirt with 'OMG LOTTERY, BUY YOUR DAMN TICKETS NOW YOU CRETINOUS PAUPERS!' or something along those lines scrawled in huge letters across my chest so a. every damn customer were coerced into buying a ticket and b. made it acceptable for creepy old men to stare at my chest as I counted out all their pennies for them.
2. Over the years the store which once was a tidy, civilised place to browse through books or pick up a few paintbrushes had started to resemble a huge bric a brac sale. Everything is loud and gawdy, the shelves are heaving with so many folders and papery shit they have dominoed and are left strewn across the gummy floor. Nothing is ever where it was supposed to be, hell even I could never find things for the customers!
3. Customers are ruder than ever these days, if a transaction isn't done at lightening speed then it is your fault. If the queues are long, if products are overpriced, if it's too cold, if it's too hot, if a certain shaped bag has run out, if the lighting isn't atmospheric, if the books don't dance off the shelves and nestle into the customer's arms singing soothing lullabies, then it is YOUR fault. I once had a man morph from a gentille old dear out shopping with his wife into a screaming, vein bursting scarlet faced gimp simply because the gift cards we sold did not come with envelopes. Of course you get the lovely chuckly customers who talk about the weather or the kind of day they are having and that's nice, but sadly single celled organisms floating at the bottom of the ocean get more respect than you do.
4. Since when has paper become so damn expensive? 'oh a writing pad, that will be 4.99, that tiny, slighly sparkly greeting card, that's 6.99' - wha?? Paper is so overpriced in these stores it would be cheaper to chisel 'Happy Golden Anniversary Deirdre and Bert' into slabs of marble and send them to respective loved ones, prefably not by post.
5. What counts as 'books' these days stretches far beyond the realms of sanity. I don't know whether to blame the general public for dumbing down or the media/retail corporate bastards for shovelling flavouress celebrity gruel in our throats, but top sellers consist of autobiographies of has-been tv stars and pop tartlette nonsense like the bloody Twilight Saga. It fills me with a great sense of despair, and it's saddening to see good fiction go to waste when entities (I reject the notion that she's a person but figure of media imagination) like Jordan get into the top ten for crappy stories about twee little ponies that are not even written by he/she/it.
6. I don't like the idea of a stationary shop selling so much frigging chocolate and foodstuffs. My counter was microscopic enough without towers of dairy bars swaying recklessly each time a customer breezed past. You couldn't walk anyway with tripping over a half opened box of 600 Guylian belgian shells. Thank God I left before Easter.
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