Because, of course, Christmas shopping is JUST like this, isn't it?
As someone who is reasonably widely travelled, it never fails to amaze me at how consumerist British society is. I occasionally used to go shopping at my local 24-hour Tesco at 10 o’clock at night but eventually gave up because it was always just as busy, no matter what time I went. Even the Americans, widely derided as the shopping-est people on the face of the earth, don’t have the same sustained commitment to Wal-mart and K-mart that we do to Tesco and Sainsbury. Every morning when I drive past, the parking lots at my local shops are full. All year long. I can’t really understand how retailers don’t make money, because the shops are always heaving.
And woe betide us all when the shops dare to close for a day or two. Shelves are emptied by people preparing for a nuclear winter, not just having the shops shut for a couple of days.
Here’s a little experiment: in the week before Christmas, have a look at the number of apparently sensible people who will walk out of the shops with more than one loaf of bread. It really is like they’re stocking up for Armageddon: candles, mountains of bread, cartons of cans and more food than you can eat in a month. All, apparently, because the shops will be closed for two consecutive days.
And then, after Christmas, while we’re all still rolling around from a turkey overdose, the sales start. Just when you thought buyers couldn’t crank it up any more, they really let it all hang out.
When I look at this, I only have one question: why?
Why are people always in the shops?
Why do they go berserk when the shops are closed for a day?
And why (oh why!) do they follow up the pre-Christmas shopping frenzy with an even bigger one?
This isn’t a maudlin call for a return to the true meaning of Christmas or anything as hackneyed as that, but why, when we, as a nation, are so completely on our uppers, are throwing money we don’t have at things we don’t want or need?
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Two sweeping generalisations: They don’t build homes with pantries any more. People do not budget and plan any more. Spend until the card stops working. A lack of self-control? Shopkeepers are a canny lot too – discount any old crap enough and people will buy it, even if they don’t want or need it, because they think they have got a bargain.
This is the world of John Carpenter’s They Live. Consume. Obey. That is what we are being taught from an early age.
Speaking as an online retailer who is able to shift just about anything on e-bay no matter how damaged it is I fully concur with this;
“Shopkeepers are a canny lot too – discount any old crap enough and people will buy it, even if they don’t want or need it, because they think they have got a bargain.”
“Why do they go berserk when the shops are closed for a day?”
simple- because they can’t get out and go home for christmas……
My favourite part of the Christmas trade period, (when I was on days), was standing at the doors at closing time on Christmas Eve and stopping people coming in.
‘But I’ve got my food shop to do’, they would wail.
‘Twenty four hour garage down the road’, I would say.
Honestly, last kick on 24th Dec and the numbskulls expect to do a full food shop. Idiots.
Bah Humbug.
Even ten years ago, Sainsbury’s in Bury St Edmund’s would ring a bell in the store on Christmas Eve as the day’s turnover hit the one million mark.
I can remember hearing it at 10am one year. Frightening. Just one store that had only been open for two hours that day.
A million quid in two hours? Sorry, that’s physically impossible, a checkout bank of around 30 tills flat out could drag in maybe 40 or 50k an hour and that’s pushing it.
Maybe the bell was rung when the weekly sales reached £1 million. That sounds about right.
I believe immediate gratification is the reason many people shop endlessly. For a moment we justify our long hours at work or compensate for failed relationships by spending money we often do not have.