Matrix

I shop online more and more now. There are numerous reasons for this, the most obvious being total convenience, of course. I can shop in the wee hours, still in my pjs, sipping my morning coffee or late at night, long after most retail stores are closed. Several days later I get a package delivered right to my door. However, there is another more subtle reason I avoid walking about in a brick and mortar store, pushing a wire cart with wobbledy wheels, then waiting in line to be checked out. Unfortunately, I can't buy everything online so I am forced to perform this grueling chore from time to time. I dread it like dental surgery and put it off until I can't any longer. But it isn't the time consumed, or the energy expended that I hate; it is the check out process whereby I am accosted, every single time, by a clerk who asks, "Do you have our savings card?"

When I say no I don't, that sets off an exchange that makes my blood pressure creep up and my temples start to throb. I fear that one day I'm going to blow which will reveal my ugly side. My last foray into the outside world of shopping left me wondering what is happening to us. Am I the only one who sees red flags here?

I started my most recent shopping day at Big Lots, well known for its bargain basement prices on odds and ends like a garage sale only with unused merchandise. If you can find something you want, you are probably going to get a good deal there. I picked up a few items and ambled up to the check-out. I wasn't expecting "the question" from the girl at the register. Not at Big Lots. I don't know why I was shocked, this is now a standard part of the buying and selling process but, caught off-guard, I wasn't all armored up as usual. I hesitated and then recovered enough to give my stock reply, "No, thank you." She responded in kind, "Oh, you have to have one, you can save sooooo much money, it only takes a minute...."

I cut her off and replied with my second stock answer, "If I had a customer loyalty card from every store that wants me to have one, I'd need another wallet to carry them all." Apparently this was a signal for another stock rebuttal, "Once you are registered you don't have to carry the card, I can look up your number." I stiffened. "No thank you," I say with the tiniest little edge I was working diligently to suppress. And then, sensing that I might win, she boldly tossed down the humiliation card. "Don't you want to save money?" She retorted without speaking the implied point, what is the matter with you. Her edge was distinctly sharper than mine. "No tha--nk you." I ended it with my firm Mother-is-now-aggravated tone.

As I drove off, I played it all back in my head wishing I had responded, "Why don't you just give me the very best prices you can offer and that will make me a loyal customer naturally?" But I didn't and I doubt I ever will because I know no one is going to listen to my rationale on this topic and really, all I want to do is pay for my merchandise and get out as quickly as possible; I don't need to do verbal battle with a stranger over my name and vitals listed in yet another database so that I can be inundated with advertising.

The day had not begun well and from there it went downhill. Before I could escape back home, I had two more tense check-out incidents. First at Toys R Us, where the clerk, a man more senior than I, gave me a similar hard time about not wanting the saving card. His argument was that it was free. I held my own and did not say what I was thinking, "You, sir, are clearly old enough to know that nothing is free!"

My last stop of the day was Kroger. I've been to Kroger before so I was ready, or so I thought. When the clerk asked me for my Kroger card and I said I didn't have one, she blindsided me. She said she'd just use this one, and then deftly passed a card over the sensor before I knew it, announcing gleefully that I had just saved $7.14. It happened so fast, that's when she trumped me by shoving the card into my hand with my change, telling me I might as well keep it. Apparently there's no choice anymore, you vil haf zee card!

I threw it away when I got home, which gave me a lame sense of control, but I knew that I am on the losing end of this war and it is a war you know. It's not about customer loyalty anymore, it's about taking prisoners and locking them up inside a matrix where the membrane that holds everything together is about selling, selling, selling and even worse, collecting what is supposed to be useable information about personal buying habits so selling can tap into deep psychological weakness. What I don't know is why no one else seems to object to this sinister dynamic that is seeping in and around us in everything we do, read, touch, watch and wear. It's no longer just about being mobil free advertising for designers and manufacturers by sporting their names and logos on our clothing, shoes and accessories under the guise of being "stylish". It's no longer the quest to make a product identity an embedded part of our daily household vernacular. It's certainly no longer about making a good product, offering it at a reasonable price, and then hoping the buying public will like it. Certainly, it can easily be argued that in this anemic economy the battle for waning shopping dollars, both by makers and sellers of product, has caused a ramping up of the strategy quotient to entice buyers to come. One could compare it to a bazaar in a third world country where the merchants shout out and tease passers-by to come look, come look, good value here, shop here!

However, the comparison to a quaint bazaar and putting your name, address, phone number and email into dozens of databases ends at a very dark door. Even as I shop online I know my purchasing habits are banked and studied and put into digital spreadsheets that give the merchants and Lord knows whoever else, opportunities to fine-tune advertising directed specifically at me, little ole me. Amazon does it and I know it. But at least I don't have to defend myself every time I click to check out. When and/or if that happens, I know we will be close to the end of civilization as we have known it. My resistance is actually quite futile.

Personally I think we have already gone too far and way past the point of no return. My cell phone tracks my every move apparently. But do we simply shrug our shoulders and let it get worse? We are inundated in every waking hour of every day with advertising of some kind. It has almost become an alternate reality and we seem to be completely numb to it all. My concern is for what is left of logic and reason and what replaces those values once the transition is final. We are already so accustomed to lies as the norm we hardly recognize truth. We (most of us, anyway) know that mascara does not make our lashes look like black feathers. We know a single solar cell will not afford us the luxury of getting us off the grid. We know drinking orange juice will not cause airlines to bump us to first class and flight attendants to feed us grapes. The problem isn't that we believe what we are told in every single medium, both in print, on TV and online. We are being slowly desensitized and reprogrammed to accept that everything is a lie therefore nothing is real. In the Matrix, you cannot discern what is real and what is not. Nor can you make individual choices that step outside of the predetermined boundaries.

If you do not believe that the desolation of the right to anonymity/privacy and the amalgamation of individuality into a stream of homogenous mindless thinking is the final conquest of evil intent, then you'd probably make a great check-out clerk. Big Lots is hiring.