Convenience store revisited
For a few months, not too long ago I took a part time job in a convenience store. It was kind of nostalgic for me because as a teenager I worked in a convenience store and in college I co-owned one.
After a few weeks of working there a great sadness came over me. This was once the intitial rush of learning a new job set it -once i had time to do my job with ease and think about what was going on. let me explain.
I think a convenience store is an indicator of how empty a life we are living.
All day long hundreds of people rush in and rush out. THis is what they buy: Cigarettes, rolling papers, lottery tickets, crap in all kinds of endless variations, sugar and chocolate in endless variations, gasoline.
I used to look at the cooler where we keep our drinks and a great sadness would come over me. The cooler was the length of the whole back wall and about twnety five feet long with multiple glass doors and it is filled with junk. But it is all junk that is carefully created to appeal to somebody. Want to be more sexy? Buy this drink. Are you a go-getter? Buy this drink. Need more energy? Buy this drink. Chic? Buy this one. It was a thousand variations of the same thing -sugar water.
All these drinks are carefully marketed to make you think you are making a statement about yourself. What statement are you really making?
Taking a careful look around the store one day I tried to assess what in the store was sizzle and what was steak - what had real value and what was intrinsically meaningless and this is what I came up with. About 97% of all the items in the store were meaningless junk.
If I were to take a guess at revenue I would say that 99.5% of all sales came from the meaningless things. -sad
There were cans of wholesome food in the store, but they rarely sold and every week I would have to dust them off. I never had to dust off a box of candy bars.
After a few weeks of working there a great sadness came over me. This was once the intitial rush of learning a new job set it -once i had time to do my job with ease and think about what was going on. let me explain.
I think a convenience store is an indicator of how empty a life we are living.
All day long hundreds of people rush in and rush out. THis is what they buy: Cigarettes, rolling papers, lottery tickets, crap in all kinds of endless variations, sugar and chocolate in endless variations, gasoline.
I used to look at the cooler where we keep our drinks and a great sadness would come over me. The cooler was the length of the whole back wall and about twnety five feet long with multiple glass doors and it is filled with junk. But it is all junk that is carefully created to appeal to somebody. Want to be more sexy? Buy this drink. Are you a go-getter? Buy this drink. Need more energy? Buy this drink. Chic? Buy this one. It was a thousand variations of the same thing -sugar water.
All these drinks are carefully marketed to make you think you are making a statement about yourself. What statement are you really making?
Taking a careful look around the store one day I tried to assess what in the store was sizzle and what was steak - what had real value and what was intrinsically meaningless and this is what I came up with. About 97% of all the items in the store were meaningless junk.
If I were to take a guess at revenue I would say that 99.5% of all sales came from the meaningless things. -sad
There were cans of wholesome food in the store, but they rarely sold and every week I would have to dust them off. I never had to dust off a box of candy bars.
posted by Will at 6:55 AM
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