Attention Large Retailers!

             I have a bone to pick with you, Sooper Dooper (Food And More!). Your Club Card promotion, which allows customers to enjoy the lowest prices available, is unfair. Why make the customers jump through hoops just to get the lowest price, and, perhaps, a bonus pack of Skittles every six months? And think of the impact Club Cards have on your employees and administrators! They’re also jumping through all those hoops, scanning cards, signing people up and reminding the customers that particular sales are only valid for thirty minutes a week.  

            Imagine what I would think of as a moderately bad scenario which could occur from this constant implementation and obsession with Club Cards in your stores. Imagine ‘David in Receiving’, who holds a sort of floater position. Truck unloader, bagger, cart runner, customer helper. David is 28 years old, has worked there three years, and has been chosen ‘Employee Of The Month’ once. He’s an ‘up and comer’. But, the problem is, the manager’s name is ‘Dave’, and he’s the one who doesn’t have to wear a smock. So, David can’t be promoted far, since that would mean having his name shortened to ‘Dave’, and you can’t have two ‘Daves’! People would get mixed up during important, but rushed conversations. At best, fellow employees would call them both ‘Dave’, but with notably different tones! The medium, then, would be the message! ‘Dave’ would always have status. ‘David’ would always play second fiddle. Anyway, ‘David’ doesn’t know this. He isn’t all that acquainted with the ways of the world.

            Anyway, please imagine that.

            So, let’s say David is bagging one day and is called to assist a customer to their car with picnic and floral items. The customer is a big ‘Club Card’ member. Platinum. He gets special treatment. The checkers whisper to David as he helps the guy with his cart full of things:

            “…Premium Club Card Member!... He got a free pack of Skittles just yesterday!...”

            David wheels the cart out to the man’s car, but, as they are loading, the man notices fake rust streaks painted on a pot of mums.

            “Why, what the heck is this?” the man asks.

            “It’s distressing,” David answers.

            “It certainly is distressing! There’s rust on this pot! How could they try to sell something like this?”

            “No…I mean…” David tries to interject, but the man is already taking the pot back to customer service. David packs the man’s car alone, as it goes ‘ding…ding…ding… because he’s afraid to disengage someone else’s car’s open door notification system.

            The man returns without the pot, and all he says is that the Skittles he got for free the day before were sour.

            David relays the message to Patricia at register eight, and she laughs and laughs.

            “Skittles are supposed to be sour!”

            David doesn’t know if Patricia is laughing with him or at him.

            Later that afternoon, ‘Dave’ approaches ‘David’ with a friendly message.

            “There’s nothing ‘distressing’ sold at our Sooper Doopers, David. That’s not what we’re about. Remember that, and you’ll go far.”

            “No…but…” David says, but Dave’s rushing back to his office to put out a fire. Really. He left the coffee pot on.

             Actually, David’s answer to the customer was technically wrong, but it was accurate enough, and, who cares? No one was listening to David anyway.

            “…nothing ‘distressing’…” David mumbles as he clocks out. Then, he finds a wax pencil in his pocket, one he had used while he’d been filling in out back, assembling small furniture and lamps. So, he quickly scrawls a small anarchy symbol on the wall with it, puts it on top of the time clock, and goes home.

            And, who can blame David? With all the confusion and jumping through hoops that your Club Cards bring to the lives of customers and employees, the chaos which results in your stores would breed- anarchy!

            The horror.

            So, now, with the ‘distressing’ quip against him, and the obvious link between him and the anarchy symbol, David is demoted. Dave writes him up, and puts him on probation. He has David stay in the back room, assembling furniture, and David still has to cover customer assistance and clean-up calls. David’s still at thirty hours a week, ten less than he needs to get that nifty health plan that Dave and two others there enjoy.

            So, David assembles furniture in a large, dusty, dim back room six hours a day. He can hear mice scrabbling in the corner, so, at times, he lobs the little Allen wrenches, which come in the box with every furniture item, in their general direction as he works. Poor mice. Poor David.

            He does that over the course of weeks. Sometimes the Allen wrenches get caught beneath the wheels of a pallet jack. “Screech!” It brings the entire complex to a halt through pain and perturbation, and leaves a gigantic scratch on that shiny new wax job on the concrete slab.

            In desperation, David writes a poem informed by his unjust experience. A piece titled: “Go Get Carts”.

           

            Employee of the month, January 2018.

            I used the gift card to buy a ‘Be Humble’

            decal for my 2000 Civic.

            Omen disregarded.

            Now, there is uncommon weather in the produce aisle.

            Nozzles spritz the waxy cukes.           

            The brume, though thick, cannot sweep.

            “Who is the lonesome shopper?

            What is the salad mix?

            Is this best-by date improper?

            Where is Chex Party Mix?”

            The coffee grinder grins and beckons.

            Filled for laughs to the brim

            by scallywags

            with decaf peppermint beans. 

            “Can coffee kill?

            How does ‘Swiss Mix’ mix?

            Has everyone had their fill

            of shoestring potato sticks?”

            Patricia.

            Communing with magenta beam.

            She deigns to scan.

            I would give

            one pack bandages.

            diced tomatoes with garlic.

            reeses peanut butter cups.

            16oz pickled peppers.

            corn muffin mix.

            either way, fifteen items or less.

            “Who will bag?

            How many nickels?

            What’s in this mag?

            Why green popsicles?”

            The lizard-demons chuckle in my face.

            The Allen wrench strips

            the unwielding bolt.

            The speaker wails:

            “Clean-up in aisle five.

            Bring a bio hazard suit,

            welding gloves,

            and the large barbeque tongs.”

            The chorus laments.

            They cry

            o’er a gallon of juice, shards of glass

            and gherkins

            which flood the tile.

            Gum wrappers ride pungent whitecaps.

            Is the insurance exam the only answer?

            “Yes. I have a strong drive

            for substantial income.”

            Peace of Mind for only

            fifty cents a day.

            Piece of mind.

            Piece by piece.

            Dave hovers. All-seeing.

            Behind mirrored glass.

            My queries ignored.

            “Why do our best?

            Why play our parts?

            Why the sweater vest?”

           

            “Go get carts.”

 

            See? See how things can go? That poem is obviously a cry for help. I’m calling you out, Sooper Dooper! Your ‘Club Cards’ are likely to foster chaos and rotten poetry such as that! And, how ‘bout this. Imagine that David has a friend in some band, and they cut a track with his poem that’s kinda atonal singtalk, kinda Brechtian-through-the-back-door-growly-mumble. The result would be so obnoxious that they play it in a continuous loop on some FM radio stations! People’d be tooling down 4^th avenue with “Go Get Carts” blaring, and we’d all have to listen to it! That would be your fault, Sooper Dooper! And, not only that, David will become rich! He’ll never have to look at an Allen wrench again.

            What I would find especially upsetting is that David would then have more success than I’ve ever had as a writer. I suppose that would mean that there’s more to the poem than I think.

            (Hm. “...The nozzles spritz the waxy cukes…” Catchy!)

            Be that as it may, how ‘bout this idea, Sooper Dooper. Don’t have promotions, and pass the money you save through not having promotions on to the consumer through lower prices. There it is! The shop runs smoothly, and prices are low. Pass some of that extra moolah on to me, also, for the solution I have passed on to you, obvious though it is. If handing so much money to someone without credentials bothers you, just pretend that I went to Harvard Business School.