clavus

Congratulations. You have finally created the most obnoxious shopping experience in America, outdoing such notable figures as the Dodge dealer in Davis, CA; the Sears home-improvement jerks, and Sleep Train.

For a long time you followed the time-honored tradition of pumping Muzak at your customers. I’ve never understood the reasoning behind this. Do customers hear a “lite-jazz” rendition of Bridge Over Trouble Waters and suddenly toss an extra ham hock into their carts?

Have you ever, in your whole life encountered one single person who enjoys supermarket music? Me neither. Which possibly explains why you took the next step: punctuating the soundtrack of the mundane with radio ads imploring me to buy more stuff. Come on! I’m already in the store, buying stuff. Announcing the special on tampons between EZ-listenin’ Steely Dan covers is not going to make me dash to the feminine hygiene aisle.

Your audio assault used to be bearable. And the visual noise was tolerable too. After all, you plaster so many SPECIAL BARGAIN signs, stickers, and decals on your walls ceilings and floors that they blend together into a turgid miasma of meaningless of advercrap.

But the recent combination of audio AND video is too much to bear. TELEVISIONS in the checkout aisle?!?! It’s like some Orwellian vision of Hell.

I doubt the decision makers actually set foot inside an Albertson’s supermarket, so here’s a little exercise you can try at home. Turn on your radio. Point the tuner to the worst station possible. Now turn on the TV to the Home Shopping Network. Set the radio and TV to equal volumes. Obnoxious, isn’t it? Just think how bad it is when you subjected to this in line, fishing through your wallet, looking for your super-duper saver club card.

And one more thing, who’s brilliant idea was it to stock sports drinks in the spot formerly reserved for handing money to the cashier? Find this person and punch them in the crotch. Hard. Why erect a barrier right where I’m trying to push money at you? I’m not going to buy sports drinks just because they are in my way.

As bad as Albertson’s is, what I find most disturbing is where you are headed. You’ve come so far, I know you aren’t going to stop now. I’m sure it’s just a matter of time before you institute the following policies.

1) Having overloaded your customers’ senses of sight and hearing, you will pursue their other senses. Pungent (though competing) smells will be directed at the customers faces using high-pressure, floor-mounted blowers. Meatloaf, bananas, mouthwash, and dog food will be among the first “market scents” used.

2) “Advertising to touch” will soon follow. Customers will enter the store though a curtain of kissably-soft toilet tissue, and exit though a gauntlet of tough-but-gentle steel wool.

3) Über-perky “personal marketers” will follow customers around the store. They will suggest which products bear extra consideration and will hold sale items directly in front of the customers’ faces.

4) Unicycle riding transvestite midgets will careen around the store and bellow show-tunes into the faces of surprised customers. Once they are suitably distracted, the “personal marketers” will slip extra items into customers’ carts.

While there is little danger of me visiting Albertson’s again, I urge you to reverse course before it is too late. Your store is in danger if sucking so hard that it may collapse on itself, forming a vortex so powerful that not even light can escape.

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Ass, gas or grass. Nobody rides for free.