What the Mall Does to the Marketplace of Ideas

According to Douglas Groothius in the very helpful Truth Decay,

“The public space of settled communities is replaced by the giant, impersonal strip mall, which serves as a surrogate for the older ideal of a marketplace of ideas. But no ideas are present, because truth repeatedly succumbs to “the evil genius of advertising,” in Baudrillard’s phrase. The mall simulates everything—with high-tech glamour and promotion—and represents nothing, outside of consumerism and commodity.” (55)

We can easily demonize various aspects of our commercial economy and miss their benefits. Strip malls, for example, may not look very nice, but they do provide us with a variety of services in one location. Where else, for example, can you do your laundry for cheap, get some takeout, and schedule a flight to the Bahamas? With this said, though, it is useful to consider what strip malls and malls in general represent in our culture. Raw, unfettered, uninhibited consumption. This does not mean that everyone who visits the mall falls into such a pattern of thought, but the mall environment does make it easy to do so.

I can see a point in my own life when I realized that I shopped for fun. I saw then and believe today that such a posture was not helpful economically or healthy spiritually. Beyond this, those who buy into consumer culture on a wholesale level often seem to trade in their mind in the transaction. That is, people who focus on things--on clothes and digital gadgets and hairstyles and cell phones--often seem to lose an interest in the life of the mind. Think about it--how many techsters do you know who genuinely enjoy reading philosophy? Not many, I'm guessing.

This is not to say that everyone who enjoys tech stuff necessarily becomes thoughtless. Some of my friends love gadgets and also love theology. But in the broader culture, where many people are separated from intellectual disciplines, materialism has taken the place of study and contemplation. To have a full life today in the eyes of many is not to read widely and think deeply but to possess fully. The person whose life is full is not the "renaissance man", but the expert consumer who has what everyone else wants. The people we look up to are increasingly not known for their mind or mental talents, but for their physical and social exploits. These cannot be good developments, especially when considering that Christianity is a decidedly mental faith.

We need to stand for truth, to be careful about technology and how it threatens to transform us, and to reverse the mass cultural exchange in which one trades in one's mind for material goods. We can be a counter-cultural witness by trading in material goods for the life of the mind, for study of what matters, for devotion not to goods but to God.

Aggressive Sales Tactics and the Fear and Loathing They Create

Have you been shopping recently and found yourself not so much helped by store staff but accosted?

My wife has had this experience a number of times in past months. She's gone out to the mall, browsed in a few stores, and had upwards of ten store employees stop her in the span of about twenty minutes to ask her if she needs help, wants information, or can't find something she wants. The first few times she's thankful and a bit impressed by the helpful spirit of the store; the last ten encounters leave her cold and make her want to avoid the store and its products at all costs. What's interesting, as well, is that many of these businesses do not pay their employees a commission for sales, so that motive for such hyperactive attentiveness is not in play.

"I have that problem with the "Disney Store" in our local shopping mall. The sales clerks have orders to greet every customer as the come in the door. I have tried to slip by on the opposite side of the entrance, but have been chased down and greeted. Why can't I just have a quiet shopping experience?" (A customer from the This is Broken blog)

I'm blogging about this because I'm wondering if anyone else has noticed this in their shopping. Being an armchair theorist, I have constructed a conspiracy theory: that the prevailing ethos in the retail world nowadays seems to be that it is best to be as aggressive with customers as possible. I wondered if I was the only one who had observed this phenomenon and so googled for "aggressive sales" and "aggressive sales clerks". I found the following links: 1) a story from the Seattle Times, 2) a blog chock full of comments about pushy sales clerks, and 3) another story with a survey about overly aggressive employees. This in about two minutes of searching. Clearly, there's some kind of prevailing ethos out there that emphasizes as much contact with customers as possible due to a belief that this will yield a maximum of sales. Of course, not every store practices this mindset, but many do. These businesses seem to think that an overwhelming level of friendliness provides the maximal shopping experience, but I could not disagree more. Better to make the customer at home, be available for help, and then leave them alone. If I wanted to talk to twenty extremely friendly people in fifteen minutes, I would have have gone to a (big, fat) Greek wedding.

I don't know about you, but if my armchair hypothesizing is correct, these stores (Crate & Barrel, Godiva Chocolates, various cell phone kiosks, offenders all) can count me out from making purchases at their stores. Okay, that won't amount to much of a loss, because I'm not exactly sunken by debt at Crate & Barrel these days. However, as one trained by my rural Maine upbringing to be private and uninvasive, I can say that this sort of "aggressive sales" leaves me cold. Stores that practice this type of model--and it is a model, as Google has instructed me--may win some sales, but I'm guessing that they lose others. They treat customers not so much as people but as targets. I saw this during a job I had with a cell phone company called The Mobile Solution that sells T-Mobile phones in malls. Though the malls in which the company worked had very strict policies against hounding customers, we trainees were instructed to "greet" people, which translated into salespeople yelling at shocked passersby, whistling at them, and generally harassing them. I thought in my first day on the job that I was going to be sick. The next day, I quit. Though I'd like to think this offensive company is the exception, I'm afraid it's the rule nowadays.

It's great for a store to engage a customer; it's another thing altogether for fifteen people to ask you if you need help in the span of twenty minutes. Or, as my wife has experienced a few times, to have a salesperson rope you into some sort of spiel that takes fifteen minutes of your time. Who on earth is telling their employees that this is a productive way of making sales? Of course, this probably is a productive way of making sales when one considers the bottom line. Some customers don't mind a high level of aggression from the stores they patronize. I, for one, hate it.

This all prompted a bit of reflection on how our churches interact with visitors. My wife's consumer experience makes me as a church member want to go out of my way to welcome visitors and make them feel at home. However, I don't ever want them to get the thought that they are nothing more than a target, a small percentage of the bottom line. Let's pursue connection with unbelievers and with churchless Christians, but let's not do so by adopting the current numbers-obsessed mindset of our local department stores. I suppose that this thought could have implications for Christians working in sales as well--we need not confine thoughtful treatment of others to our churches. In a world of inauthenticity and greed, Christians and the local churches they serve should stand as a beacon of authenticity and genuine kindness. We're desperate for sinners to be saved and Christians to flourish spiritually, but we're not desperate for recognition, numbers, or a successful but impersonal church. Where our world marches increasingly to a consumerist bent, let's stand out for being those who do not sell aggressively, but who love aggressively.