Bookshops should be realms of quiet adventure. You might enter with vague purpose, to satisfy a hankering for a taut thriller or complex history. And you might emerge later with an armful of volumes completely unrelated to your initial intent. Therein lies the appeal of browsing. You never know what treasures you'll unearth.
That's if you're left to own devices and not, as so often happens to me, interrupted by a shop assistant who intrudes upon your reverie to ask if you need help. If I did, I'd ask for it. Nothing gets me out of a bookshop faster.
The reverse is true for those maddening big box hardware stores, where you do need help to find the left handed widget YouTube has said is essential for that minor repair. Invariably these places are staffed by people with an uncanny ability to disappear the moment you require help locating said widget.
Should you be lucky enough to corner a shop assistant, chances are they'll say, "That's a technical question. I'll find someone who can help." Then - poof - they vanish too.
In a capitalist society like ours, shopping should be a pleasant experience. The whole idea should be to ease open our wallets and extract the money inside, greasing the wheels of the economy. So why do some stores make it so painful?
You're tempted by a new pair of sneakers which you see on special at a chain store. Trouble is, there's gangsta rap playing so loudly the assistant can't hear the size you want to try on. By the time she's understood what you're after and returned with the right size, you've been driven out of the shop by the noise. No sale.
Foiled, you try the department store. It's mercifully quiet and the shoes you're stalking are there, more expensive but at least you're spared the rap "music". You're also spared any service because there's no shop assistant to find the size you want. After 10 minutes, you're wondering if they're wearing an invisibility cloak. Or if you are. No sale.
That mission has failed so you console yourself with another by walking into an electronics shop. And there it is, the gadget you've been reading about all month. Bright and new and shiny. You pick it up, turn it over, feel its heft. Curious to know how it works, you ask the shop assistant. Less than a minute into the conversation, you realise they have absolutely no idea. With no sales pitch at all, and no product knowledge, any temptation to buy evaporates. No sale.
Of course, not all shops and shop assistants are created. Some possess the intuition to know when to offer help and when to leave you browse. Some have expert knowledge of the products they sell. And some have the ability to read your mood and know when to ask how your day's going and when not to.
Research shows that most Australians still prefer bricks and mortar to online shopping - 73 per cent of us, which is 14 per cent more than the global average. There's the tactile experience of touching and feeling a product that sways the decision to buy. We prefer dealing with a human over "conversing" with an online chatbot. And returning a product we're not completely happy with is so much easier.
Shopping is an important social interaction. Most of us have experienced the quick dopamine hit of "retail therapy", the sweet surrender of money in exchange for goods. The shops and staff that understand this, and make shopping pleasant, should be applauded. The ones that don't need to lift their game.
HAVE YOUR SAY: Do you prefer online or bricks and mortar shopping? Does loud music drive you out of stores? What can stores do to make the shopping experience pleasant rather than painful? Email us: echidna@theechidna.com.au
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THEY SAID IT: "The challenge of the retail business is the human condition." - Howard Schultz, former Starbucks CEO
YOU SAID IT: We might despise them but rats do important work like clearing landmines in former war zones. They can make excellent, if unusual, pets too.
"I had a pet rat called Nina who attended high school with me, nestled in my blazer pocket," writes Sue. "However her education came to an abrupt end when learning about the bubonic plague and Nina and I were 'dobbed' in. She was a great rat, with a great personality."
Arthur writes: "A place for everything and everything in its place. So true even for rats."
Murray has racing pigeons: "'Rats with wings', people say. Filthy things. But they aren't. Pigeons are actually very fussy, they only live in dirt if they are made to. They are extremely intelligent, up with pigs and octopuses and yes, rats. They can count and work out complex problems, and fly home from hundreds of kilometres away. Much maligned little critters."
"I adopted two green crested lizards when I was aged eight to10 years old and a pet crow that I acquired at 13 and had for seven years," writes Bob. "I caught the lizards in our garden in Singapore to save them from a cat. In time, they would come onto my hand and travel around on my shoulders like parrots. I found the crow as a small helpless fuzz-ball, waddling around a forest in Scotland. When it grew up, it had impressive problem-solving ability and could undo most latches. It liked tea and toast and would sometimes imitate my speech."
Peter writes: "Nice to see you featuring the amazing African bush rats that APOPO uses to locate landmines in Cambodia and elsewhere. They are quite large - you can hold one if you visit the APOPO information centre in Siem Reap, as I did last year - but light-footed enough for the job. And the job is enormously important. Unexploded ordnance is still a huge problem in our neighbours, especially Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam, often maiming rather than killing. We in Australia should be doing all we can to help eradicate this scourge."
"In the days before regulation of such matters, I caught two grass snakes and kept them for several weeks before releasing them," writes Maggie. "Their calmness and dignity was captivating. Although they were venomous, they never attempted to bite although I handled them frequently. (They were rear-fanged, less dangerous than front-fanged species.) They taught me to look beyond stereotypes and see their beauty."
Daniel writes: "I always enjoy reading an Echidna that teaches me something new. Rats being used to sniff out landmines was something I'd never heard of before. I, too, have chicken coops scattered around my neighbourhood. But the only rat I ever came across was one that made the bad choice of deciding to eat a little blue pellet (not placed by me). But my favourite rat was Manuel's 'Siberian hamster' that ran amok at Fawlty Towers. That stunned look on a visiting health inspector when Basil offered him a biscuit only to see the escapee poking its head out of the tin was priceless. Basil asks, 'Would ... would you care for a rat?'"
"Interesting correlation with the human(e) condition," writes Brad from Corrimal. "When kept in poverty and hardship, and then blamed for the resulting consequences, the 'negative' survival behaviours are more understandable as is the loss of positive potential mentoring can unlock. Always the goal of public education and accessible training. Just saying."
