Department Stores

The way department stores have those registers scattered in different departments is annoying. I know they don’t have one big line of registers as a way of saying “We’re classier than Wal-Mart” but it’s just inefficient. Shopping for me is a means to an end so I want everything to be brutally efficient; I couldn’t care less about the atmosphere of the store so I think everything should be an assembly line.

I was in a department store recently to buy a gift card (after three other supermarkets and drugstores did not have said gift card) and it was aggravating because I got behind somebody who had a lengthy transaction. At the supermarket or a store with one big line, you could easily see which cashier had a shorter line and go there. But in a department store, you can’t see to the other registers scattered throughout so by the time you get there, the line could be even longer, and then your day is totally ruined.

It doesn’t help that the register at a department store is the site of the slowest business transactions that are physically possible. Nobody is ever in a hurry. People dump their on-clearance dickeys on the register and it’s a big, chatty experience of asking if they have a coupon or a store credit card and would you like to open a credit card and how the weather is and whatever else pops into your head. Would you like the receipt in the bag? May I hand your credit card back to your right hand or left? Both questions require deliberation to answer. Then the cashier, with the unhurried, ceremonial care of a soldier folding a flag and giving it to a widow at her veteran husband’s funeral, unfurls the plastic bag and puts the clothing inside.

Then I’m bringing up the rear with one item and my credit card already out and ready to swipe.

It doesn’t help that I’m always behind someone with some complicated return and since most department stores don’t have a separate customer service line, everyone has to wait behind them. Then the return takes as long as negotiating the Korean War peace treaty. I have one item.

… Look, I apologize. I know this was a dumb topic and it only reheats my consistent themes of being impatient with everyone around me and finding fault with everything. But what do you want? I’ve been writing for many years and I have no ideas lately. Nothing is happening with the adoption besides waiting and none of my shows are back to recap. I am lost.

What do you want from me?