What working retail taught me about brand loyalty and the emptiness of the modern shopping experience.

After turning 40, things started to bug me that hadn’t bothered me a bit when I was younger. I felt the urge to pass judgment on things I have years removed knowledge of. Over a decade ago, I worked for a popular (and absolutely horrible) office supply store. It was a strange time to be in retail as the Internet was there, you could buy stuff online, but you paid a premium and all transactions carried a sliver of doubt that they’d be fulfilled and if they did make it to your doorstep they’d be bait for porch pirates. The concept of having to wait for a delivery service to attempt a delivery was such a hassle that people were fine, and counted on the dopamine hit of getting it now, to come in and browse a store.

Those first years were much like the generations of big box stores before them in that we had crazy door-busting sales after Thanksgiving with people lined up outside like a bloodthirsty mob ready to crash through the gates once the opening bell rang. Of course it was exciting, and you really couldn’t do anything other than get out of the way and make sure nobody got stomped to death over a half-priced printer. As the Internet gained ground, mostly from the Amazonian mammoth that promised to get it to you in two days, the clientele changed drastically. Gone were the everyday shoppers who would peruse the aisles, maybe ask a few questions, but generally they could read the boxes, tie their own shoes, dress themselves in the morning. Sure, they might throw a tiff if they didn’t understand return policies, but overall they were white-bread-eating normals. But once that crowd figured out they could get a better deal online, avoid the traffic and skip the lines, well, things got weird

The new breed were needy, pensive, and alive with unfulfilled desires to make other people feel as shitty as they did. There was still the expectation that you, as a salesperson, would need to engage the person adorned with the puzzled look. You’d walk up to them to ask if they needed help, but only because if you didn’t, they’d seek you out and hold a grudge that they had to initiate this dance.

So instead of taking my word for it, they’d point to the in-depth review of the router by user fartbox42069.

Meanwhile, the internet was taking off and instead of listening to store clerks like myself, the rest of the world was settling for the star-ranked reviews of anonymous users. So instead of taking my word for it, they’d point to the in-depth review of the router by user fartbox42069. As customers trusted online reviews more than in-store advice, the pressure on us to push products didn’t go away; it just got heavier. That was fine with me, but the pressure to sell more products only increased, a pressure that made being a Sales Manager even more of a drag. With this pressure came a slew of new marketing tactics. After most failed, stores settled into a practice known as “Brand Blocking” inside the retail industry, but might be better understood to consumers as “Brand-Based Merchandising”.

Instead of having a headphone section, products were going to be grouped by brand. Companies touted this concept as a way of promoting brand loyalty as if that were an actual thing. Sure, there are people who prefer a brand over others, there are some that even go as far as swearing by certain companies to provide quality, but the reality is a lot of these products are made in the same factory, by the same machines and workers, and the differences are minuscule which is probably a lot easier to spot when all the products are organized by type.

Such an absolutely dystopian concept, brand loyalty, but it goes with the same vibe modern commercials come with. These companies not only think we’re morons, but they create advertisements on the assumption that we view their products as things that enable our lifestyle. Executives drinking the koolaid cooked up by coked out marketing consultants that divide their time between huffing exhaust pipes and getting kids addicted to corn syrup. I don’t catch too many commercials because they depress me immensely, but when I do, I can’t help but imagine a guy standing in front of a long table of rapt attention-seekers, asking the suits to ‘imagine this…’ as they give a spiel about hemorrhoid cream bringing peace to the Middle East.

These are the people who have brought this incredibly inconvenient concept to last of the brick and mortars. Because of their ingenious and misplaced pride in their products, I’ve got to wander around like an idiot back and forth comparing items to make sure I’m getting my money’s worth.

The most frustrating part is that, since COVID, the whole corporate world seems to be churning out low-quality products, refusing to pay a living wage, while reviews are just bots flooding websites with generated opinions. And like during 9/11, when every television channel brought out a table, a stack of papers, and put a tie on an intern to run 24/7 news, COVID showed us that every store was capable of grabbing stuff, putting it in a bag, and leaving it in a box outside where you could pick it up without making conversation, let alone eye contact.

Now, with inflation, shrinkflation, and corporate greed on steroids, there doesn’t seem to be any light at the end of the tunnel. Are we supposed to give up the capitalistic drug of buying worthless shit, or are we destined to wander from aisle to aisle looking for headphones?

Or is this all just what it’s like to get old? You stand there shaking your head, wishing things were as simple as they had been, even though deep down you know things were still horrible back then, with exploited workers making our TVs while barely being able to feed their families.

Maybe things are never better or worse, just different. I keep hearing more and more from people in my generation that something strange is going on in the world, or that there’s a movement toward a new world, but I can’t get myself into that way of thinking. It is never a feeling of things are moving in the right direction or that we’re on the precipice of something good. No, it is always the doom and gloom that things are going to get worse before they get better (if they do.)

With companies showing off their products as essential pieces of our identities, Millennials, some of the hardest hit in the economy, might have a chance to redefine our dependence on consumerism. Rather than wandering around the store or asking where the headphones are, we could just walk out and never come back. That’s what I do when I ask, ‘Where are your headphones?’ and the answer is, ‘Aisle 12, 15, endcap on 18.’ I give up.