Tuesday 16 March 2010

So, I'm confused...

I was thinking in the shower today. I do that, you see. I know I should instead busy myself with, y'know, showering, but I can't help myself.

Anyway, shopping days. I'm pretty sure we all have a designated shopping day or market day; the day we run around and stock up on the things we need. Mine is Saturdays, primarily because I work during the week and the covered market(where I prefer to go for produce/fish/etc.) is closed on Sundays. If for some reason my Saturday is tied up, it means I'm stuck getting everything at Sainsbury's. This means I end up paying more for stuff of lesser quality and don't have the ability to really nose through and select everything for myself. It means we eat for another week, yes, but it's not half as satisfying.

The weekend is also when I end up putzing through shops picking up things that it has occurred to me during the week that I need. Again, should I find myself otherwise engaged at that time, this gets put off usually until the following weekend.

This got me thinking... the vast majority of us work. Of that vast majority, a vast majority have your standard M-F 9-5 day job. Most shops are close around 5ish or 6ish (I recognize that this is slowly changing, especially with grocery stores, but generally this is still the norm). This means that, during the week, those who work have little chance of going to said shops and picking something up. The only people this schedule of opening times works for are those who do not work.

I find this funny. A society as consumer-driven as we are is set up so that 80% of the time they are open for business is when the majority of the consumers aren't able to drop in and consume. Seems a rather poor strategy, doesn't it?

Furthermore, these people have to cram their consuming into the weekends, meaning they're stuck spending time shopping as opposed to perhaps doing something more leisurely with their only two full days of freedom from work.

I wonder if that's the idea? Kind of a materialistic bulimia; deprive deprive deprive so that, when the opportunity finally does present itself... WHOOOSH! We dive into the stuff-lust with reckless abandon. Who knows?

Now, far be it from me to propose a solution to this. There are many ways of looking at this situation. For example, later opening hours would mean that workers would be stuck working them (although, if things were switched around, it means they'd have their days to themselves). I can't quite tell if this is a product of faults in work schedules, shop schedules, or some combination thereof.

I dunno. I did think of this in the shower, keep in mind.

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