Herculean is the wrong word. The task is not Herculean at all—more Theseun. This destination past various fringe elements—yes, definitely fringe—is Labyrinthine in its scope. On roads that wind around, industrial roads, by the feel of them, it sits past various other megaliths that have bought up this fringe territory for the pittance that such outskirt land must go for on the open market and elevated it to that status of "destination"—re-centering the town away from town and drying up the old main arteries.
I’m no real estate agent. I’m just guessing.
My wife says, get in your left lane, that lane becomes right only, and then get back in the right lane because that lane is left turn.
The feeling is that of a street layout before the houses have been built in a suburb somewhere. Eerie in a way. Streets that are far too complicated that zig, zag and cul de sac in vacant lots. The houses will spring up around these arteries. The streets don’t go to houses, the houses go to streets. It’s the same out here. There is no plan, just roads that wind around vast lots taking us further and further from the main avenue. The main line of traffic merging right then left past complexes that now require their own turn lane to keep the traffic flowing around these businesses that will truck no local competition. The traffic flow suggests a democracy though amongst their own kind. This is the labyrinth. But in this case there are many native born sons of Asterion.
I try to remember how it was exactly that Theseus got out of that maze. Bread crumbs? String? Didn’t he only do left turns or something like that? Daedalus made the maze, right? Did Theseus actually meet Daedalus or was the flight of Icarus part one of that story. I can’t remember, and I don’t have my Ovid with me.
St. Daedalus, patron saint of Home Depot, Sam’s Club, Staples, Walmart, and Costco. The lots are full. We are miles from ANYTHING. We turn left to get into this labyrinth at a hotel which offers day rates. Years ago, this was a drive in theater or a flea market. It has that kind of aura. Now it is marked with signs. Religious in a way that say, “We allow our customers to take the carts into the parking lot for their convenience. We are not responsible for damage done to cars in the parking lot. Help keep your costs down by bringing the carts back to the door.”
Do your part. Become a part of this.
This is a quasi-religious experience—a tapping into magical energies that require communal involvement. Bringing your cart back up to the door is like being involved in the communion of wine and bread, or cool aid…whichever. The prices may go up—that is the danger. Because of law suits? No, there is no hurting Costco; they’ve posted a sign. It is the pittance of payment to some poor shmoe to round up the carts: that alone would be enough to raise the prices, to burst the bubble, to end the bulk purchase dream.
Lynn and I said goodbye to the Doulah knowing full well that we had only four hours of artificially conceived carefree adulthood. Four hours isn’t a long time, but it’s more than you generally get with a six week old baby at home. Normally, we take turns at this. I go, or she goes, but never ‘we go.’ The movement through errands or out and about on casual shopping is well nigh impossible with the baby for us now. We’re getting better, sure. We’ve got a bjorn and a sling. We realize now that it’s not always convenient to bring the stroller. We know that we’re kidding ourselves when we consider carting his car seat around. Still the crowded shops of New England filled with New Englanders and their inability to recognize personal space do not seem places to take a baby.
And besides, it’s a hell of a trip. And besides, who knows what we really want to buy. And besides, there’s breakfast involved, and a task that has multiple destinations.
One day, we will look back on this as naïve and a bit ridiculous, but for now, the baby comes shopping with us only when absolutely necessary, and a trip to Costco, well…that’s never absolutely necessary.
Still, it is the mother load in its way, isn’t it? No one goes to Costco with any sort of ideas about what one would like to buy unless one owns a restaurant or a convenience store. You walk in with dreams, aspirations, hopes, but not plans per se. You’ll look around. You’ll buy what catches your fancy. It doesn’t matter exactly, you’ve got a card, you’re a member, you’re part of the experience, you will save the money.
Because this is the primary tenant of the religion of Costco: the walls and shelving stripped bare of any personality, the cash registers unable to process credit card transactions, the stocking that consists of moving pallets around, the customer rounded up carts, the items sold only in sizes and quantities inconceivably clumsy is all endured the way that the world is endured Contmemptus Mundi—you endure the pain of the world because the after life is so much better. At Costco, you endure the wretchedness of the shopping experience because the payoff at the cash register is enormous.
I like to look through everything. I want to look at the Plasma TVs and the various tech items in their boxes. I want to see tool sets and gardening sets, and every aisle of food, and even the clothes bins and the DVD bins. I want to sample all the little snacks. I want to cover every inch of the store. Searching out bargains like I’ve just found a flaw in the Costco programming and if I just look in the right places I will find the woman who is handing out guaranteed to win lottery tickets. I am not the kind of person who wants to go to Costco, but when I am there, I delve into the experience.
My wife is more discerning. She abandons whole aisles because they lack a certain glamour. She knows that there is nothing for us on the aisle with the sugar or the flour. She does not go down the dogfood aisle in the hopes that there will be cat food there also. She avoids aisles of drinks and such, but then she isn’t pushing the cart—I am, and this ultimately gives me the power of veto.
Costco is not the head god of the pantheon, not for me anyway. The real gem of this labyrinth is Home Depot where I can shop for hours. I can take a day going through the plumbing section alone looking for little bits and pieces with which to construct the scenery for my Warhammer games. I’m a junky in Home Depot.
But we have limited time—certainly not enough to go browsing Home Depot, and besides, it’s shameful the way I shop that store. For the sake of my own dignity, I’d rather do it alone.
I turn down the drink aisle despite my wife’s assurances that we don’t need anything it has to offer. I turn less to prove her wrong, and more because we’ve passed three aisles already without turning. I’m antsy.
She’s right though: Diet Lemon Iced Tea Snapples and various sodas which I don’t drink. I did manage to pick up six gallon jugs of water, but not much else. I stop in front of the Coke flats. Thirty six cans for $7. I’m about to pick them up.
My wife stops me. “Is that really a bargain?”
Well, of course it is. We’re in Costco. We had to drive out to the middle of nowhere to get here. We have to buy flats of soda in order to get the deal. Everything about this buying experience is hard except for the price, that’s how you get the bargain. You endure. I’m enduring. Why else would people drive out here unless to save money?
I can normally pick up two twelve packs at the CVS up the road from my house for $5.
I am stopped every time my hand goes out at Costco. Every time I reach up to grab tomato sauce or cream of mushroom soup or kidney beans, or any of the other items that it is conceivable that we buy in bulk because of our use history and because they may be safely stored in our attic, I pull up the calculator in my mind.
A little voice inside me says, “that’s like $.98 a can. You could buy them at the supermarket for that much.”
Jesus was made with fish and loaves. Contrariwise, it is seafood which finally brings down for me the false idols of Costco. I am broken among the fish. I look down at the scallops: $11/pound. I can buy two pounds of scallops for that price at Stop and Shop, Big Y, or Serio’s…and Serio’s is neighborhood, i.e. expensive. The price is an absolute rip off.
I look back at our cart. We have ten or twelve items in it. Certainly not the spree one expects from a Costco venture, and I doubt we’ve saved twelve dollars. It probably cost five dollars in gas just to come down here. The doulha is about twenty dollars an hour. What a fucking joke. Maybe this wasn’t Theseun at all. Maybe it was Nietschien. The Costco god is dead.
But if there are no more bargains, then why do people still go there? Why did we go there?
Since my trip to Costco, I’ve thought long about this question. And I’ve come to two conclusions. First, the answer to the question. Why do we go there? Incredulity. There should be bargains. Every thing about the experience of shopping at Costco suggests that you will save money on every purchase. In reality, you’re lucky if you save .50 an item, and in some cases, you may actually get ripped off, but the reason that you are taken in by this ruse is because it is absolutely inconceivable, given the anti-aesthetic and inconvenience of Costco, that you shouldn’t save money.
You’re sneaking in the back door of capitalism. You’re on, if not the A list, then at least the B. No one expects to be let in through the alley only to find a bouncer there wanting just as much cover as the front. It just doesn’t make any sense.
But worse, Costco is beginning to become my metaphor for American non-internet shopping—a metaphor that extends beyond the labyrinth on the outskirts of town and into the malls, the mom and pop stores, and anywhere you might spend money. It is this: the luxuries of convenience, knowledgeable service, a friendly atmosphere, a clean shop, etc., are all abandoned under the auspice of streamlining the system. The assumption is that a streamlined system will save you, the customer, money. The truth is, however, that the lowered overhead only expands the profits of the “shop” owner. I put “shop” is quotes because I’m using the term rather loosely. The shop might very well be an HMO, the DMV, a university. This is our zeitgeist: give up your luxuries in the hopes of a lower price and then pay what you were paying before they cut your services. Higher tuition, more students per class. A centralized medical facility that won’t let you take the test. Dell’s award winning customer support and their inability to speak English. A president who sacrifices this nation’s youth in a war to help his oil business.
I suppose someone might say that in a perfect world you get what you pay for. But I’m not saying that at all. I don’t expect perfect worlds. Religious metaphors aside, Costco isn’t heaven, nor is Walmart, Kaiser, or the White House. There just places. The promise of getting something for nothing is long dead. You get what you pay for? No, that’s a step down, but it’s still not true. The truth is that, now, in the last days of the shop economy, you don’t even get what you pay for. You get what you paid three times too much for. The shop is closer now to Kafka’s guard at the door to the law. You pay somebody to get what you want or need, and they take your money, not because they plan to help, but because they want to make sure that you feel you’ve made a good effort at getting the help you think you deserve.
Here’s the good news: that system is dying. Already, people shop the internet around Christmas because it is more convenient to do so, and soon, it will be convenient to do so year round. I don’t go into Barnes and Noble anymore. What’s the point? If there is no such thing as customer service or the ability to comparatively shop in the real world. Then why not go online where customer service is never an issue, there’s never a line, and you can barter.
Avram, can you honestly tell me that you don’t think you’d be better served by a computer program designed to diagnose people with diabetes—a program that isn’t supplementing its income with funny money from drug companies and that has access to all your test results; that doesn’t ask you to give some more blood because it can’t find the results of the last test in your file; a doctor that you can access from home. I think it’s Heinlein’s
Friday, where people wake up in the morning, go to their computer and vote—how’s that for democracy. Then we wouldn’t need a congress.
But I digress. I’m off subject and complaining again. Time to stop.
