Retail

I remember the first time I learned that savvy businesses were using sexual imagry and allusion to subconsciously sell me products. Although I am sure the intention was for me to be incensed at this revelation, to a pubescent male the notion that retailers are creating and distributing sexually suggestive materials in order to entice purchase doesn't seem like a soulless manipulation of the unsophisticated masses by a callous institutionalized capitalism -- it seems like a charitable pursuit. Even if you don't buy anything, they keep showing you.

And now, a couple of decades later, it is somehow disconcerting that my customer relationships have progressed logically to the "next step" I once dreaded; I can no longer just get a juvenile thrill from my vendors, careless of their feelings. They send me catalogs when I haven't ordered from them in a while that actually say that they miss me. They give me ultimatums about taking me out of their mailing list (the commercial entity's version of deleting my number from their cell phone, I guess). They beg, they wheedle and cajole, and they offer to do those dirty things they used to when our relationship began, like free shipping and handling.

I even discovered that two of the catalogs I'd been with recently were subsidiaries of the same company; even their websites were identical, if you know what I mean. In my youth the prospect of two retailers at once (twins!) would have been exciting, but now all I could think about was that I would never be able to order from both of them for long without going bankrupt or crazy, but I didn't want to let one of them down gently and risk fucking things up with the other one. And you know they talk to each other all the time; they're related, and I didn't opt out initially.