Why do stores treat customers so poorly?
Retail has become retail warfare.
Loblaws’ plan to force people to scan their receipts to unlock a gate that lets them leave the store is a bridge too far.
It really is. Arnhem Bridge in 1944. The Allies couldn’t seize the bridge, a bit of a pickle as it left them unable to cross the Rhine and speed their way to victory.
Holding me in a Loblaws store after I did them the courtesy of entering their increasingly wretched emporium would give me claustrophobia, me, Galen Weston Jr.’s prisoner. If he sells Holt Renfrew, we are done, sir.
I’ve already fought in the trenches over the enemy’s (i.e. Loblaws’) supply-chain obstacles: underweight chip bags, the attempt to end the 50 per cent discount on older food, the mystery of the “ungraded” beef and the storied shrinkflation strategy.
But this? Having almost immediately lost the receipt, all I’m trying to do is retreat. You’d think Loblaws would rejoice at getting their revolting customers out of the store faster.
I see a pattern. Retail used to be a seamless recreational experience. We saw beautiful and useful things and made them ours.
But now we’re on a wartime footing. Rationing approaches. You take what you’re given.
When brick-and-mortar stores try to repel customers and we fight back by: a) being extremely unpleasant; or b) shopping elsewhere — Amazon becomes our best friend. Ultimately Amazon is no one’s friend but we lack choice at this point.
I won’t mention Loblaw-owned Shoppers Drug Mart, overpriced, understocked, its leonine pharmacists forced at gunpoint to source “MedsCheck” that cost Ontario $75 each. The Shoppers’ website won’t let me check out. I’ve tried 25 times. “It’s our fault,” it pleads, but the tone is “Get out.”
In-store there is one cashier, at the lottery ticket desk. You clumsily pack your own bag of toothpaste, bubble bath, cheese, nail clippers, jerk sauce, contact lens solution and mangos. They watch you, smirking. Can I leave now? Can I call my family? My lawyer?
I boycott retailers like the Body Shop, which recently repelled its customer base by calling women “menstruators” in its advertising. Now it’s gone under. You’re welcome.
Speaking of retail warfare, I can’t shop at Indigo Books. Thanks to the owner’s longtime “charitable” support of foreign “lone soldiers,” no matter how many pillows and Michelle Obama slurpy wisdom manuals are on offer, it still feels like shopping at an Israeli Defence Forces commissary.
Retail isn’t reviving quickly. Bloor and Bay is empty, and the excellent local Pusateri’s, Yorkville’s version of a corner store, is shutting down. Bay and Yorkville was always the rudest intersection downtown, with new money — anxiety-ridden people with flash cars — having beefs and deadly car accidents.
Online retailers keep emailing. How ARE you, Heather? They ask a dozen followup questions, rated from one to 10 by degree of happiness with my new purchases.
Under interrogation, I say nothing but my name, rank and purchase record. I never return goods. I eat my mistakes. I do not snitch. I am clam-level happy about everything.
Loblaws has never asked my opinion. For then I might think they care, a piece of candy they would immediately snatch away. “It was a trick question. Our hostility is eternal. Never doubt it.”
I used to shop. Now I prep for retail scouting missions. I wear boots and carry emergency supplies, a camo purse like a military backpack. I have eaten my ID. I brace for staff hostility, street screamers, handcuffs, blood on the tiles.
I shop alone, an army of one.