The Wanganui Chronicle SATURDAY, OCTOBER 16, 1937. ON SHOPPING

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 80, Issue 246, 16 October 1937, Page 8

The Wanganui Chronicle SATURDAY, OCTOBER 16, 1937. ON SHOPPING

CHOPPIXG is an interesting experience, particularly lor those 0 who arc not used to it. People of no consequence, and more particularly those who think that they are not being regarded at their true estimate, find in shopping a stimulus, for temporarily they enjoy a sense of power. In a retail establishment it is the customer who is king. It is his to command, and willing feet go lienee and come thither at the near run. The whole establishment is fashioned to please the customer. Over each department entrance is_ inscribed in letters of flame: “God Save the King.” Hany kings certainly need a lot of saving. , • » There are two philosophies of business, the Skin ('in aloe, and the Bring ’em back alive, and ns in other walks of 111 e there is keen competition and much contention between these two schools of stalking the customer. The Skin ’em alive establishment takes all it can get out ot the customer on the well-founded appreciation of the fact that no one but a fool would twiec enter that establishment. To sell a garment made of perished material is, therefore, to be commended, to extract as much as possible from the purse of the customer, no matter what is given in return, is the apex of desire for the skin ’ems. The Bring ’em back alive school believes in offering plenty of ground bait, delightful windows, comfortable rest-rooms, charming tearooms, even for the non-eustomer’s use. . The idea is to make the customer think and feel that he or she is at home in the palatial emporium. The thick carpets have been spread for him and her; the lift is waiting to convey all who will to other floors; light and novelty surround everyone who enters the becoming portals; Aladdin’s lamp has been nibbed before the wish is even formed. An emporium is really one of the modern wonders, for it has collected, in anticipation of the wishes of those who enter there, all of those things which, be they made at the ends of the earth, can be collected in one place. It is really a temple of commerce, in connection with which millions labour to gratify unformed wishes. The greatest problem of all is that while too many people engage in wishful thinking, too many engage in thoughtful wishing, consequently commerce must parade its wares and generate desires. It follows, then, that in going to the shop one really goes to school to learn what this modern world has accomplished and what it has to offer. Educationists are usually thanked but never highly paid. Even university professors to-day learn less than a moderately successful mat artist, and the industrial educationist is no exception to the rule. Pupils are seldom appreciative of the efforts of their teachers, but oh! if the pupils only knew what their teachers sometimes think of all of them, and always think of some of them, they would be much more modest oven in their hours of power when they are spending a few shillings. There arc some people who, when they go shopping, forget that there are two sides to a shop counter, that the attendant on the selling side is an expert in the study of human nature. All the trumpery little tricks of the upstart are so often met with that the tricks only bore, they never impress. Some people think that their clothes proclaim them, and so they do—in a way, but the way in which they buy them proclaims them with a greater certainty. There are, naturally, different kinds of people on the selling side of the counter as well as on the buying side. , There is that gentleman who should have been in the diplomatic service, had his parents been sufficiently wealthy, for he impresses by giving one a sort of balloon feeling, one is so important, he is so desirous of giving one the very best thing that the shop contains that one has a feeling of walking without touching the ground. Then there is the queenly creature to whom it is unfair to ask to take one’s money because she, is not for this mundane world, and before whom one feels like a piece of frozen mutton. The apex of shopping is to meet the individual who dispels doubts with reason, giving to the buyer a sureness of judgment that permits even a sober banker wearing a blue shirt, a red tie and a green hat and yellow shoes, and not only going out once as a sartorial Joseph but coni inning fast in the Faith and scorning lesser minds.