sorted out my complaint, which is the closest I’ve ever come to feeling like a VIP, or Michael Winner. Nice for me, annoying for anyone reading about it who hasn’t been afforded that kind of treatment, i.e., you. Perhaps, if I was principled, I’d have yelled ‘I demand to be treated as a regular customer!’ and slammed the phone down. But I didn’t.
Still, if buying a big boring box from a big boring shop is a harrowing experience, isn’t it time retailers were honest about it? There’s no point in pretending to be fun, happy-go-lucky institutions. We’re British. We know the truth and we can handle it. Dixons is running a campaign describing itself as ‘the last place you want to go’, which is meant to be a clever reference to its low prices (i.e., go and look at it in Harrods, then buy it from us), but effectively describes every electrical retail chain I’ve ever visited.
Someone needs to go further and launch a chain called Shambles, where all the familiar shortcomings are actively promoted as part of the ‘experience’. The staff wear ironic dunce caps and vulture costumes; if you want to actually buy something, they walk to a stockroom ten miles away in a neighbouring county to check its availability, methodically harass you into taking out five-year cover using a subtle combination of CIA ‘extraordinary rendition’ psychological techniques and unashamed sulking, then arrange for it to be delivered at 7 a.m. by a surly man who’ll arrive ten hours late on purpose, deliberately bring a BD4437BX instead of the BD3389BZ you ordered, attach a magic hidden ‘hobbling’device that causes it to malfunction immediately before the next bank holiday weekend, screw your partner, scare your kids, wreck your life, and break wind on your doorstep as he’s leaving. All of which is heavily advertised as an integral part of the service.
It’ll be miserable. But at least you’ll enter the transaction with your eyes wide open.
Christmas time: here come the girls
16/11/2009
‘Yep, it’s that time of year again – and the Christmas adverts are already on the telly’, remarks a man at the start of this year’s B&Q Christmas advert, proving that the grand tradition of moaning about premature Yuletide ads has itself been absorbed by the Matrix and turned into a stick to beat us with.
Let’s hope this kind of jokey fourth-wall-breaking doesn’t become a trend, or before long we’ll all be moaning about the number of early Christmas ads that moan about the number of early Christmas ads, and then our moans about their moans will in turn form the basis of the next wave of ads, and so on and so on
ad nauseam
, until they’re producing intricately constructed navel-gazing meta-commercials that are actually more self-aware than we are: fully sentient beings with thoughts and feelings of their own. And they’ll rise up and strangle us in our beds. While humming ‘Stop the Cavalry’ by Jona Lewie.
Postmodernist intro aside, the B&Q ad is a fairly standard offering in which members of staff clutter the shop floor reciting lines about great savings and gawkily radiating a sense of forced bonhomie, as though the government’s ordered them to look cheerful in case the enemy’s watching. There is one startling departure from the regular formula: while most of B&Q’s woodentops are presented in situ, stacking shelves or manning checkouts and presumably praying for death, one is depicted relaxing at home, sitting on his sofa in a Santa hat, wiggling his socks in front of aroaring fire. Worryingly, even though it’s dark outside, he’s still in uniform. Perhaps all new members of staff have the outfit sewn into their skin when they sign up, as a permanent reminder of kinship – in the same way that members of a shadowy militia might each get the same tattoo. We won’t know unless they put a shower scene in their next commercial.
Come on, B&Q. We’re waiting.
Still, at least B&Q’s effort features
Still, if buying a big boring box from a big boring shop is a harrowing experience, isn’t it time retailers were honest about it? There’s no point in pretending to be fun, happy-go-lucky institutions. We’re British. We know the truth and we can handle it. Dixons is running a campaign describing itself as ‘the last place you want to go’, which is meant to be a clever reference to its low prices (i.e., go and look at it in Harrods, then buy it from us), but effectively describes every electrical retail chain I’ve ever visited.
Someone needs to go further and launch a chain called Shambles, where all the familiar shortcomings are actively promoted as part of the ‘experience’. The staff wear ironic dunce caps and vulture costumes; if you want to actually buy something, they walk to a stockroom ten miles away in a neighbouring county to check its availability, methodically harass you into taking out five-year cover using a subtle combination of CIA ‘extraordinary rendition’ psychological techniques and unashamed sulking, then arrange for it to be delivered at 7 a.m. by a surly man who’ll arrive ten hours late on purpose, deliberately bring a BD4437BX instead of the BD3389BZ you ordered, attach a magic hidden ‘hobbling’device that causes it to malfunction immediately before the next bank holiday weekend, screw your partner, scare your kids, wreck your life, and break wind on your doorstep as he’s leaving. All of which is heavily advertised as an integral part of the service.
It’ll be miserable. But at least you’ll enter the transaction with your eyes wide open.
Christmas time: here come the girls
16/11/2009
‘Yep, it’s that time of year again – and the Christmas adverts are already on the telly’, remarks a man at the start of this year’s B&Q Christmas advert, proving that the grand tradition of moaning about premature Yuletide ads has itself been absorbed by the Matrix and turned into a stick to beat us with.
Let’s hope this kind of jokey fourth-wall-breaking doesn’t become a trend, or before long we’ll all be moaning about the number of early Christmas ads that moan about the number of early Christmas ads, and then our moans about their moans will in turn form the basis of the next wave of ads, and so on and so on
ad nauseam
, until they’re producing intricately constructed navel-gazing meta-commercials that are actually more self-aware than we are: fully sentient beings with thoughts and feelings of their own. And they’ll rise up and strangle us in our beds. While humming ‘Stop the Cavalry’ by Jona Lewie.
Postmodernist intro aside, the B&Q ad is a fairly standard offering in which members of staff clutter the shop floor reciting lines about great savings and gawkily radiating a sense of forced bonhomie, as though the government’s ordered them to look cheerful in case the enemy’s watching. There is one startling departure from the regular formula: while most of B&Q’s woodentops are presented in situ, stacking shelves or manning checkouts and presumably praying for death, one is depicted relaxing at home, sitting on his sofa in a Santa hat, wiggling his socks in front of aroaring fire. Worryingly, even though it’s dark outside, he’s still in uniform. Perhaps all new members of staff have the outfit sewn into their skin when they sign up, as a permanent reminder of kinship – in the same way that members of a shadowy militia might each get the same tattoo. We won’t know unless they put a shower scene in their next commercial.
Come on, B&Q. We’re waiting.
Still, at least B&Q’s effort features
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