(ThatKidInTheCorner :: It's The Act Of Purchasing That Counts)

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March 20, 2006

It's The Act Of Purchasing That Counts

Just because retail therapy works (every time) doesn't make me a bad person

For a wide variety of reasons, I was feeling a little bummed out on Sunday afternoon. By 3 pm, I just really wasn't feeling it. I didn't really have much of a plan for the rest of the day, and while I was happy to have some time to myself -- especially on such a clear and sunny day -- I still felt a little anxious. Sure, I could futz around, take some photos of junk food, maybe work on my imaginary soccer team(s), but was that really going to be enough? That's when I decided that I was, in fact, worth it. I was going to buy something. Something marvelous!

Yeah, it doesn't remotely fit I got on the walkie talkie with a buddy, and within minutes we'd hatched a plan to facilitate some emergency money-spending. Maybe it was the uncommon sunshine, or maybe it was just my overwhelming desire to char and consume fish and animal flesh on my own terms, but I decided that I wanted to buy a grill. A quick consultation of the Internet revealed that I would do pretty well for about $200 at most of the generic big-box home improvement chains.

The plan was to go to Home Depot. Home Depot had the distinction of being the location of my one previous grill purchase, way back in 1999 in Austin, Texas. (The one right on the 183 just north of the Mo-Pac.) I was confident that I would do well at the Home Depot. Also, I really really like the Home Depot jingle. There. I said it.

We bought nothing at Home Depot on Sunday. We made a left instead of a right onto SR-99 and went to the Lowe's on the other side of the intersection instead. Gene Hackman would be so proud!

Lowe's did us just right. Got the grill (at my predetermined $200 price point), some grilling tools, a propane tank, and even a little houseplant (the impulse purchase on top of the other impulse purchase). The nice sales associate gentleman even helped us get it into the car -- no small feat, considering we had to take it out of the box, line the seats to avoid killing the leather, and make sure we didn't lose any of the little pieces. The dude wouldn't even take a tip for his trouble; he mumbled something about "it's not a problem" and "commitment to service." Looks like somebody's gunning for a promotion!

Following a quick run to the supermarket to acquire meatstuffs for the initial charring, we got the thing home and into the apartment. The big plan was that the grill was going to go out on my little balcony. And when I say little, I mean little. I knew that I probably didn't have a ton of room for a full-on gas grill (like the one I'd just bought) but I figured I'd be able to make it work. I had even consulted my lease and attempted to parse the C@L City Fire Code to see if this was all chill. Also, I noticed other balconies in my hood with gas grills on them, so I imagined it was mostly okay.

Anyhoo, so we get things spread out on the floor and begin to consult the manual. It looked like a lot of parts, but the manual promised that total assembly time was only 40 minutes.

Uh huh.

About an hour and a half later, we had the thing built and ready to produce fire. Assembly was a little dicey at times (we sort of lost one of the screws down the drainpipe), and the fact that the sun went down midway through didn't help anything, but we got it done in plenty of time for cooking and Sopranos. By 9:04, I was digging into a preposterously large steak and demanding revenge killings from the TV gangsters. Done and done. I was a happy dude.

The moral of the story is, of course, that retail therapy doesn't just work. The moral is that retail therapy works every single time. Usually I can get off the hook with $30 worth of music, but I have to say that the sunshine inspired me to bigger and more aggressive purchases this weekend. But the basic mechanism is pretty much the same. Feeling down? Buy something and smile. It's not your fault that it works. How could it be? You've spent the past x years (where x = "the number of years you've been exposed to media and advertising in the developed world") participating in a classical conditioning experiment designed to produce precisely that response. All the commercials, all the ads, all the media support the scenario where "buying something" changes the way you feel. Most high-end advertising can be reduced to "buy this and feel better." Sure, some marketing is meant to alert you to features and capabilities that differentiate Product A from Product B, but building a better mousetrap doesn't get you fat margins. Selling people an aspirational fiction gets you fat margins.

This is all a long way of saying that I don't really feel too guilty for spending money on the grill. I know I'll use it, I know I'll enjoy it, and the act of buying it made me happy. Is it really my fault that I've spent the past 30 years watching TV commercials where people hand money to cashiers and smile? If anything, we should all take comfort in the fact that retail therapy is as close to foolproof as these things come. We should celebrate its reliability! Forget what Big Pharma's trying to sell you -- the real magic pill is the $30 purchase at Circuit City or the trip to Costco (at those prices, how can I afford not to buy it!). Think of retail therapy as one big positive externality from mass-media-fueled market capitalism, and rejoice!

(Also, I promise I'll let you know if my landlord clamps down in re: the grill and the balcony. Fingers remain crossed.)

Posted by thatkid at March 20, 2006 10:37 PM under Biznass , C@L

March 20, 2006

It's The Act Of Purchasing That Counts

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