A Retail Rant

A Christmas Retail Rant

After reading hundreds of articles and news stories and witnessing the carnage on television, I have to speak my mind.

Nothing, no xBox 360, no $5 microwave oven or television, no iPod MegaNanoShuffle, is worth waiting in line or, even worse, being trampled in a mob! Nothing!

Retailers have now done everything in their power to turn shopping into a frenzy that compares to food riots in starving countries around the globe. As we say in the blogosphere...WTF?

Let me say it again....Nothing is worth waiting in line or being trampled in a mob!

You will not die if you don’t get the product. In fact, the chances of you dying, being robbed or being assaulted dramatically increase if you engage in this retailer’s dream of people fighting to give them money.

Retailers aren’t the only one to blame, though. What sort of perverted thinking drives people to endure freezing cold, pouring rain, unsanitary conditions and abuse for the “privilege” of buying a couple of hundred dollars worth of silicon and plastic? There has to be a thousand more interesting, more fun , more productive activities people could be engaging in.

Have we consumers really become so sheep-like that retailers need only dangle words like FREE, BETTER, or NEW to push us into a mindless riot? Are we hopelessly addicted to NEW, always looking for the next “fix?” How long before we kill to get what we want?

This has to stop! Any retailer or manufacturer that seeks to create “events” like those we have seen this year, should be held responsible for every injury, every assault, every robbery. Then, they should be charged with hundreds of counts of fraud for the seemingly inevitable “bait and switch” that occurs once shoppers get inside the doors.

The next time you, a friend or a family member is thinking about doing something ludicrous in order to buy a product, take a few minutes to contemplate the absurdity of your actions. Instead of queuing up, do anything else. Go see a movie, read a book, have a nice lunch with friends. Anything is more productive and enjoyable than corralling yourself with hundreds of other consumer zombies who seem to have lost all sense of reality.

I can guarantee you that the new product will still be there, days, weeks or months later...at a cheaper price. Sure, you didn’t get it the first day it was released, but what did you really lose? Is the experience of a new video game somehow diminished 2, 4, 7 days after its release. No, what is diminished is the shallow egotism that results from being “first.” A hollow victory, as best.