Yesterday a shop owner friend called to shoot the shit. She calls periodically to make sure she's not the only person crazy enough to own a store in this economy.
(Misery loves company)
Yesterday she told me a story of how a young couple came by the shop last weekend. The store was busier than usual since she was having a store wide clearance, but she noticed the couple was strategically itemizing all the products they liked on their IPhone, then comparing prices on the Internet, basically where they could get it cheaper.
I'm not sure how my friend didn't keep her head from exploding, but somehow she managed to keep her composure and address them.
She started off telling them they had every right to price compare. She acknowledged that they would most likely find the same items cheaper on line somewhere, if they looked hard enough. But was quick to point out that if all people care about is getting things at the cheapest price possible, small boutiques like ours will cease to exist. She tried to explained that online web-stores are able to sell the same products at a lower cost than brick & mortar shops because of their dramatically lower overhead. However, the consequences of only wanting the cheapest price is, eventually, only large big box retailers (like Target ) and Internet shopping will be left.
After we hung up, I immediately think of the scene in Idiocracy when Luke Wilson goes to the giant Costco, cause it's the only place in the world left to shop....
In case you haven't seen the movie Idiocracy...... which is a film (by Mike Judge) about two average people (Luke Wilson and Maya Rudolph) who participate in a top secret experiment that goes awry, and wake up 500 years in the future, to a world that has degenerated into a dystopia, where advertising, commercialism and anti-intellectualism run rampant and has resulted in a uniformly stupid human society devoid of individual responsibility or consequences.
It's basically Judge's version of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, but way funnier.
W and I make reference to it all the time......
The movie came out in 2006, and sometimes, I think, it's the best representation of the future to ever be portrayed on screen. Basically stupid people out breed smart people, consequently everyone is living in a sexually promiscuous, illiterate, alcohol induced, degenerated society. People wear cheap, synthetic clothing covered with corporate logos, water has been replaced by "BRAWNDO" a sports drink full of "electrolytes", the president is a former WWF champion, everyone is bar coded, and the English language is reduced to inaudible slang based vernacular.
(I know you're thinking...... isn't that how it is now?)
As small businesses slowly become victims of the "recession", I am forced to think who really are the idiots? The price comparing hipsters, so desperate to continue a life style they can't afford, they are devoid of basic manners, or us the business owners struggling to keep our doors open.
P.S. I'm officially jaded now.
