The Joys Of Big Box Retail Outlets

Jeff over at the Shape of Days has discovered the “joys” of shopping provided by big name electronics stores (in this case, CompUSA). As regular readers will recall, I’ve had my own experiences with big box retailers, although not CompUSA specifically.
Jeff lays out his experience with painstakingly amusing detail. A snippet:

But those pathfinding and gathering skills that were etched into your DNA by a hundred generations of plains-dwelling ancestors are no help to you today, because all of that is based on the assumption that you’re in a rational, natural and internally consistent environment. If you were in the woods, you’d be fine. But you’re not in the woods. You’re in a CompUSA. And it’s not a natural environment. It’s an environment that was designed, over a period of several years in a series of all-day staff meetings so lengthy and boring that it made the Thirty Years War seem like the seventh-inning stretch at an Astros game, to be as baffling and overwhelming as possible. Which explains why the mobile phones are right next to the printer paper which is right next to the energy drinks.
What follows — and you’re not proud to admit this — is thirty seconds of pure, unadulterated stymiedness. You look this way and that, which is fine; but then you look back, as if hoping that you might catch the item you’re after lurking there behind that stack of discount DVDs and pounce on it like some kind of modern-day suburban leopard.
Finally the realization sinks in. It’s not where it should be. You need help.

Go ye and read the rest and, as has become the rule when reading Mr. Harrell’s recent writings, mind the naughty words, mmmkay?

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