RSSFriday B.S.: Deals in the New World Order
Dec 26
Society and Culture Christmas, Holiday, Shopping Comments Off
So the deal mania has begun. Returns Friday is here and early bird deals were starting around 6am today. The stores, complaining about the lack of consumer spirit this holiday, are literally doing anything in their power to get you, the shopper, back into their store one more time before the end of the year.
In a way, our dumpster diving mentality for shopping deals has plunged to an all-time, unspectacular bottom. As stores get more creative, er, desperate, for business, they are willfully ignoring their own store manuals and making all sorts of hasty new policies, like refunding you on the price difference between what you paid months ago and what the cost is now on the same item. They are throwing coupons and discounts at customers like ninja stars, hoping to hit as many people as possible in a wide slaughter. Stores are extending hours, open until midnight one night, open at six am the next day. And customers are becoming inhuman monsters, anything for a deal, dickering on a price, returning items just to buy them again for a few bucks cheaper, crowding the stores and pushing past people to grab that bargain before it’s gone.
A new world order has erupted as the economy tanks and unemployment rises and people are upside down on their homes and their cars and credit card debt is on the rise. The landscape has empowered consumers to find the best deals, and stores to stretch their resources trying desperately to get people to shop. And as far as I can tell, nobody benefits.
If nothing else is clear about the current environment of consumerism, it’s that most of us haven’t learned our lesson. If you couldn’t afford it before, there’s a pretty good chance you still can’t afford it now, whether it’s 10% cheaper, 50% cheaper or 60% off of the retail price. So let me ask you, you have less money than before, you have to stretch it further (except for gas, just about every necessity comes at a higher cost this year) and you’re going out of your way to buy a stack of gifts just to have something to open on Christmas Day?
There is a notion this time of year that Christmas gifts (or Hannukah gifts, if you will) are the vital harbinger of good cheer. That perpetuating the tradition of gift-giving is essential to embracing the holiday spirit and fighting the downer of our current economic climate (stores love to encourage this). That somehow, if you don’t rush out on Christmas Eve and finish your Christmas shopping, the crush of negative energy that results from such unfinished business will wipe out good will until the end of 2009 when you get a chance at redemption. Bullshit.
On the news on Christmas Eve was a nugget of a story about how people who still need gifts are literally left shopping at the twenty-four hour drug store. One woman being interviewed was positively aglow with the books, toys and novelty items she could buy at CVS. Really? First, you didn’t shop all year, and now, an hour before Santa comes down the chimney, you’re rushing to the drug store to stock up on nail polish, snowglobes and Tylenol for your family?
The point of gifts should never be about fulfilling some ridiculous obligation that represents holiday tradition. You give gifts to express how important the person receiving them is to you. That lesson is even more vital during these hard times than ever before. Not only should you not be spending the money yourself if finances are tight, but to encourage someone else to spend money on you when they cannot afford to, that is simply criminal. Especially in the name of holiday spirit.
There are other ways to embrace the holiday cheer than just spending on money on a stack of gifts to go under the tree. You can downsize gifts, which many people have done with Yankee swaps and Secret Santa exchanges. You can spend time among family and friends hosting a nice holiday potluck, which is as good for holiday spirit as any gift. You can make crafts. Sure, a handmade gift isn’t a new 16GB iPod Touch. But more than ever, we seem to have forgotten it is the thought that counts.
Because we willfully discarded any sense of fiscal responsibility this season in the name of a sale, a new world order has developed in holiday shoppers. The new bully culture among consumers is deeply disturbing. Retailers should be disturbed. Not only are stores ignoring basic business sense in order to make sales by extending hours and deeply discounting items, they face the scary reality that the bully culture isn’t going to blow over just because it’s no longer Christmas. This mentality is here to stay.
But consumers should be disturbed too. Because in the wake of a disastrous year where few people escaped unscathed, the most apparent thing about this holiday season is that things have changed for the worse. Stop looking for the best bargain on stuff you don’t need and can’t afford, and start creating new traditions for the holidays, ones that promote the same joy and good spirit that reside within us, not inside a box packaged in wrapping paper.
