Argos
The future of shopping is here.
It involves catalogues and little neon signs.
The shop is called Argos, and to say shopping there fucked with my rality is putting it accuratley.
It’s not a store in a conventional way, you can’t wlk around, there are no aisles of produts.
Instead there are catalogues, and you browse through them, find your product, write down the code, go the the machine with your code, put the code in the machine, see if the item is in the storeroom, pay for the item using the machine and your plastic card, the machine spits out a receipt with a special number on it, then you sit down on plastic chairs, you wait for the neon sign to show your special number, then you go to the front counter, where there is no line, just a long counter with various people holding their little bits of paper with their special numbers that have been shown on the neon sign, you wait there for some time, until the one person behind the counter takes your receipt checks the special number with the packages behind them and either gives you your package or tells you to wait longer.
This all takes about 15-20 minutes.
And you don’t get to see the item until you have gone through all this process.
It does seem counter-intuitive.
Think of it like doing internet shopping, out of your home, with the chance to look at porn, without the huge savings, with other people around, but with a 20 minute wait, not a 5-11 day wait.
I am sure Argos would explain it as a way for them to keep their rents down and passing the savings on to you.
I got the feeling if i went to a proper store, found the department I wanted, found the tiem I wanted, went and paid for it, it probably would have been quicker.
And being that it was a toilet seat I was buying, i could have road tested it as well.
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The formal name for the Argos catalogue is actually ‘the Laminated Book of Dreams’.
It is not.
the comedian Michael MacIntyre has a skit about Argos, about how they’d decided that this was the future of shopping and how the other shops said “erm… nah”. He also comments on how the index [which, by the way is shit] is right at the back of the laminated book, so you have to do a complicated bench-press manoeuvre to flip the whole book over to read the index.
I used to love reading the Argos catalogue when I was younger. We would pick up a catalogue when we went into town, and I’d look at the toys, the big makeup sets (it was obviously a transition point in my life) and the Elizabeth Duke jewellery.
Argos’s payment plans also gave me my first lessons in avoiding needless consumer credit, as the catalogue indicated clearly on each item how much more I would be spending by paying over 20, 50 or 100 weeks.
I went there yesterday to get some shelves for the bathroom. I had forgotton how utterly ridiculous the process is.
Miriam is onto something with the catalogue though. Its full of shit you never even knew you didn’t need.
I must admit, I almost bought a guitar, because it was in the catalogue, and how many times do you see guitars in the same catalogue as an electric toothbrush.
Wheelchairs (no longer the reserve of the weak and infirm): also in catalouge.
I now need a catalogue immediately.
It’s easy (very easy) to laugh about Argos, but for the busy working person the website does have Saturday delivery on a lot of items, on which you cannot put a price. Well, you can, it’s 5.95 I think, but you know what I mean.