The Empty Halls of Retail
Was there some major television event last night at around 7pm that I don’t know about, cause the retail isles of our local Target Store were frighteningly deserted. Normally, I wouldn’t complain about not having to jockey my red cart racer through the the hordes of people desperate for a Diet Mountain Dew resupply, but last night, the store was so vacant of humans it was unsettling. Also, I noticed right away that there wasn’t any musak being played over the PA. No whitewashed Billy Joel to subliminally guide me towards the tool section. Is this something I’ve never picked up on before or does Target usually have some kind of musak playing? I think they do.

Even more than friends and families, we expect our big box retailers to be consistent in every detail. We expect there to be throngs of people that we must crawl over to grab one of the last (of 400) Mizrahi Denim Tablecloths (wtf?). And we expect to have some pleasant pop music cascading through the aisles when we’re gettin’ aggro’ for linens. And when there’s some hiccup in the system and these pieces aren’t in play…well, dammit that’s when people get scared?

Fortunately, the misses and I took matters into our own hands. We quickly located the aisle of music instruments (since when did target start carrying drum kits?), and revved up two of those Casioesque type synthesizers. The misses was in the mood for a samba so she selected rhythm 78 and turned it up real loud. I chose ‘Harpsichord’ on my machine and soon we were locked into a power jam. Unfortunately the instruments were bolted down so we weren’t able to take our jams on the road. But our micro jam served its purpose. I was back on level ground and soon began making all kinds of debatable purchases, like the brigade of type-stickers pictured above.