Lord, what fools these mortals be.

Before we begin, it’s imperative that you click here and put this song on loop. Don’t ask; just do.

Have you really done it?  It’s important.

Okay, good.

This post is especially relevant in mid-December, as we are at the zenith of festive retail ambiance. Thank God we have something to listen to while trying to locate: [] holiday cards, [] Christmas lights, [] Greta Garbo movie (*any, DVD, widescreen), [] yet unread Gabriel García Márquez works (so, basically, unpublished manuscripts procured via the literary black market), [] miscellaneous other bizarre and way-too-specific gifts that we should’ve ordered online in advance, [] small pile of iTunes gift cards, [] world peace, and– what the hell– one of those silly little lawn elves, you know, just for shits and giggles… if we happen to pass by one.

OMG. Don’t even forget the [] for-entertaining munchables.  And those [] M&Ms (red and green only) that we’ll put in a candy dish under the pretense that they’re for company, but we know there’s always most of the bag left over.  And we look forward to that.

I mention the holidays, but those really just account for factors 1 & 2 on my list of Irksome Facets of Retail Time-Suckage.  I needn’t mention modern society’s growing affinity– nay, enthusiasm! for “one stop shop” establishments (like… Walmart), but I do anyways.

1. Wham! (if you followed my initial instructions), and other holiday favorites.  [I should qualify that Wham! is the lesser of many evils here. Also, holiday soundtracks are clearly not a cause of Retail Time-Suckage, unless you stand around to listen to them, which is just weird. They're just too legitimately, however cliché the mention is, annoying to omit.]

2. Aisle congestion & longer check-out lines.

3. The Never-Ending Megastore (Walmart, Target, etc.).  You can check out (if you can find the check-out), but you can never leave.

4. And in a fit of non-substantiated factor-analysis, I postulate that unintuitive store layout is the primary underlying cause of Irksome Retail Time-Suckage (as it also correlates positively with high scores on factors 2 & 3).  And it’s something we can celebrate year-round!

After it took me in excess of 20 minutes, some months ago, to find fizzy flavored water and a package of Q-tips at my local grocery store, I learned to relax, and try to reserve these trips for when I have time to really relish the store layout experience:

I wonder who decided that fizzy flavored water is such a different beast from regular bottled water that it should be housed 5 aisles away.  Why are protein / energy bars considered “pharmaceutical” and not “grocery” items?  Why must Kashi products only exist in the special natural foods aisles?  Could they not be tagged generally as “cereal” too?  God forbid some common Fruit Loops catch on the branches of my Kashi GoLean crunchy fiber twigs. In the vast expanse of deli-region, I was so sure that somewhere near 20 varieties of pita and a plethora of spreadable toppings, hummus must be around too, but it was lurking on some inconspicuous end-cap clear across the store.  And about a week prior to Thanksgiving, a 5′3″ vegetarian could be seen standing on the refrigerator case ledge, looming over a trough of turkey carcasses, to reach the meat substitute products stocked on the shelves above.

The Megastores are a whole different blog.

Even for the sloppiest human beings, “contiguous” order is natural.  Some stuff just outta go next to certain other stuff:

This is a map of the human sensory / motor cortex (homunculi) in the brain.  [Since hands, feet, lips, & genitalia (absent here) have more sensory neurons, they are emphasized in the illustration.] So, if someone were to reach into your head (your brain has no sensory neurons of its own) and poke it with a finger, down the line, you would feel a sensation in each of these corresponding regions of your body, progressing through you in a surprisingly orderly manner– shoulders, then elbows, then wrists, then fingers, and so on.  Therefore, spring water should be located next to fizzy, fruity water. If evolution can do it, so can your grocery store.

For the purpose of reducing Irksome Retail Time-Suckage year-round, and for deterring consumer-related violent crimes this holiday season, I propose that all retail establishments consider the hire of an Intuition Architect to correct flaws in unintuitive store layouts.  Ideally, this person would possess [] average (or above) common sense and [] “mock trial” shopping lists (comprehensive, a dozen or more) which he or she would utilize in actually engaging with the wild, untamed landscape of physical Retailatia from a consumer perspective.

[You may disengage from Wham! now. If you want.]