Relative Something

On the way to a movie yesterday with Cyndie, I tagged along as she visited several stores to return items. I think I have an allergy to consumerism. When we left the house, I felt fine, but after just few minutes of the returning process, I noticed myself sagging.

At the first store, I tried to help Cyndie pick out a different item from the same department, since that appeared to be the limitations offered. It wasn’t a refund, nor a store credit, but instructions to go right at that moment and select some other item. I watched as Cyndie was told that the toaster oven we selected didn’t equal the amount of the returned item. The clerk asked Cyndie if she would go find something else to add to the amount. Cyndie gladly picked some tube of cream from the display rack near the checkout lanes.

It seemed so illogical to me, and what made it somewhat sickening was how everyone around me seemed to accept it so comfortably.

At a next stop, while Cyndie was being assisted by one clerk, I was distracted by the interaction between a second clerk and customer, next to us. What first caught my attention was the clerk’s angry sounding query to the overly terse customer, asking if she didn’t have a smaller denomination. There was an incredible lack of evidence from either party for interest in helping each other achieve the activity in which they were engaged. It was heartbreaking.

Something about it, right or wrong, seemed to me a reflection of more than just that one incident. Maybe, in my mind, I was also reacting to the general feeling created by walking through these stores and the collection of customers and sales clerks. It all felt so adversarial. Something about this is not as it should be.

At this rate, thousands of birds could suddenly fall out of the sky, dead, and we would hardly notice, carrying on as if nothing were amiss.