department store and buy the new things they saw featured on their new televisions.
I am generally an enormous fan of innovation. Legitimately new things are exceedingly rare, and when I come across them I am more often than not dazzled. The wheel, for instance, was a fantastic idea. So were toilets, and so was television, and more recently, the Internet.
But department stores aren’t new innovations. They’re more annoying versions of the street bazaar, which is a very, very old idea.
I like street bazaars. Sure, they’re noisy and smelly and crowded, but they’re also held outside, which is nice. And I know how they work. I probably have more experience as a consumer than any man alive, so I know how to find a bargain and how to negotiate one. But department stores are not designed for someone with my talents in mind. Specifically, when I went into one for the first time—I believe I was purchasing a shirt—I attempted to haggle.
Haggling is a wonderful thing that nobody does any more unless they’re buying a car. When I asked the salesman what the price of the shirt was and he told me, I naturally assumed the price was too high, and then counter-offered a price I thought was much too low. What should have happened was that he—after a lengthy discursion on the subject of the remarkable quality of the shirt, no doubt—would give me a lower price. I would then insult the shirt and the salesman’s mother, and counter with a slightly higher offer.
Eventually, we would arrive at a price we were both willing to accept, I would give him the coins and get the shirt, and that would be that. I’d walk away feeling I had gotten a good bargain, and the merchant would feel satisfied that he had made a sale that preserved a decent profit margin.
This is how the world is supposed to work.
But in the department store—this strange indoor bazaar, just as crowded only now enclosed in a suffocating fluorescent nightmare—the price of the shirt was the price of the shirt. The salesman had no say in the price, because he didn’t own the shirt and had no authority to negotiate. He also had no idea what was happening when I counter-offered, and I had to leave the store before security got involved. I also had to buy the shirt.
This is a terrible arrangement. I’m sure it’s nice for the conflict-averse—not everyone enjoys haggling as much as I do—but as far as I’m concerned a non-negotiable cost is the same thing as accepting the outrageous initially-quoted price in a street bazaar. Instead of me—the consumer who is looking to purchase X number of shirts with Y number of coins—having some direct say in the value of shirts, the only pressure the seller feels is from the other guy selling similar shirts down the street. I realize both shirt sellers should have an economic interest in outselling each other, but I don’t know if the two guys selling shirts aren’t also working together to determine a minimum shirt value of some kind.
Anyway, I like haggling, and I’m good at it, and it’s a skill I wish I could use more often.
Also, if that hasn’t been made clear yet, I don’t like department stores, so I was at a loss to explain why I went to Gimbel’s the following morning to meet up with Santa. Maybe it was that I had nothing better to do, although this sort of described the entire millennium. It could also have been the Christmas miracle of waking up without a hangover, or just the novelty of discovering an imp in New York City calling himself Santa.
Whatever it was, I put on my suit, the shirt I paid too much for, and a tie, and headed downtown. (This did not mean I dressed up. Everyone wore a suit and a tie unless they were at the beach or on their way from the bed to the bathroom. We didn’t get t-shirts until the sixties.) Santa wasn’t surprised to see me.
“There you are, Stanley!” He greeted, waving me forward. His throne was on the
I am generally an enormous fan of innovation. Legitimately new things are exceedingly rare, and when I come across them I am more often than not dazzled. The wheel, for instance, was a fantastic idea. So were toilets, and so was television, and more recently, the Internet.
But department stores aren’t new innovations. They’re more annoying versions of the street bazaar, which is a very, very old idea.
I like street bazaars. Sure, they’re noisy and smelly and crowded, but they’re also held outside, which is nice. And I know how they work. I probably have more experience as a consumer than any man alive, so I know how to find a bargain and how to negotiate one. But department stores are not designed for someone with my talents in mind. Specifically, when I went into one for the first time—I believe I was purchasing a shirt—I attempted to haggle.
Haggling is a wonderful thing that nobody does any more unless they’re buying a car. When I asked the salesman what the price of the shirt was and he told me, I naturally assumed the price was too high, and then counter-offered a price I thought was much too low. What should have happened was that he—after a lengthy discursion on the subject of the remarkable quality of the shirt, no doubt—would give me a lower price. I would then insult the shirt and the salesman’s mother, and counter with a slightly higher offer.
Eventually, we would arrive at a price we were both willing to accept, I would give him the coins and get the shirt, and that would be that. I’d walk away feeling I had gotten a good bargain, and the merchant would feel satisfied that he had made a sale that preserved a decent profit margin.
This is how the world is supposed to work.
But in the department store—this strange indoor bazaar, just as crowded only now enclosed in a suffocating fluorescent nightmare—the price of the shirt was the price of the shirt. The salesman had no say in the price, because he didn’t own the shirt and had no authority to negotiate. He also had no idea what was happening when I counter-offered, and I had to leave the store before security got involved. I also had to buy the shirt.
This is a terrible arrangement. I’m sure it’s nice for the conflict-averse—not everyone enjoys haggling as much as I do—but as far as I’m concerned a non-negotiable cost is the same thing as accepting the outrageous initially-quoted price in a street bazaar. Instead of me—the consumer who is looking to purchase X number of shirts with Y number of coins—having some direct say in the value of shirts, the only pressure the seller feels is from the other guy selling similar shirts down the street. I realize both shirt sellers should have an economic interest in outselling each other, but I don’t know if the two guys selling shirts aren’t also working together to determine a minimum shirt value of some kind.
Anyway, I like haggling, and I’m good at it, and it’s a skill I wish I could use more often.
Also, if that hasn’t been made clear yet, I don’t like department stores, so I was at a loss to explain why I went to Gimbel’s the following morning to meet up with Santa. Maybe it was that I had nothing better to do, although this sort of described the entire millennium. It could also have been the Christmas miracle of waking up without a hangover, or just the novelty of discovering an imp in New York City calling himself Santa.
Whatever it was, I put on my suit, the shirt I paid too much for, and a tie, and headed downtown. (This did not mean I dressed up. Everyone wore a suit and a tie unless they were at the beach or on their way from the bed to the bathroom. We didn’t get t-shirts until the sixties.) Santa wasn’t surprised to see me.
“There you are, Stanley!” He greeted, waving me forward. His throne was on the
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