cheapseats

So far, this is pretty much my experience: Price of fuel be damned, full speed ahead.

Some-not-to-say-all of the retail parking lots are somewhat less crowded, but the roads are not less congested. We are buying a few fewer things...as anyone with half a brain and a semblance of a conscience knows we ought...but we are clearly not embracing fuel economy.

‘Cept some of the truckers.

A devotee of rock star Obama, who was ostensibly working for John Edwards in Iowa, dismissed the time, effort and expense that I directed, as a civilian, to the Iowa Caucuses thusly, “Gawd only knows what you were doing in Iowa.”

Yeah, that’s me...no sense whatever of the way the wind is blowing. What folly, talking to truckers at the Flying J rather than preaching to choirs of politicos who validate one another at upscale bars and restaurants.

One owner/operator reported paying $480 to fill his rig, in December. More recently, driving from Destin Florida to Atlanta Georgia in March, I saw vacant lots...plural...with hulking clusters of 18-wheelers for sale.

I heard that truckers drove three across, slow, to block traffic on an East Coast turnpike. I heard that another group, Truckers and Citizens Unite, would drive up to the White House lawn in protest.

At the same time that people march, or drive, upon our nation’s capitol bearing grievances, department stores and movie theater complexes and high-rise office buildings still crank the air conditioning to the Arctic end of the spectrum. God forbid we should not be perfectly comfortable as we charge purchases we can’t afford.

After an apple tutorial at The Grove in Los Angeles last week, it occurred to me that I might accomplish a small but abiding retail challenge at Nordstrom, one of the shopping/entertainment mecca’s flagships. Chilly is not the right word...forget chilly. My small, abiding retail challenge lying in the bra department, I speak not arbitrarily when I declare the temperature in that store to be nipple-popping cold.

I asked asked the salesclerk about the election. She said she’s ready for change. Citing the store’s extravagant air conditioning as an example, I reminded her of the obvious, specifically that change doesn’t occur without change. She said she’d never thought about that but, it was true, it didn’t need to be so darn cold in the store. It was ninety degrees outside, and she was wearing a winter cardigan.

Because I know that most of us never actually make the calls/write the letters/take the stands about which we speak in impassioned tones, I contacted the store manager, one Candice Dolkart. Because I know that letters of opinion, concern and complaint go largely unregarded, I called instead of wrote to register my objection to their cooling that big building that drastically during an energy crisis...

“It cannot have escaped your notice that this country is in unparalleled trouble and that an energy crisis is front stage and center. Americans are willing to do their bit, you know? I do not need the temperature to drop by 30 degrees for my greater shopping comfort.”

“Hunh.” To be honest with me, no one had ever brought this up before.

“Do you have any idea how much it costs to cool or heat a building of that size? Compare your figures from a year ago and five years ago...your energy bills must be through the roof.”

She wouldn’t know about that, but she certainly does appreciate my concern. She thinks that the system has just always been pre-set to maintain certain temperatures. I remind her that these are far from ordinary times...we are at war, for starters...and that Business As Usual is not the watchword.

The store manager of the Nordstrom at The Grove in Los Angeles said that she’ll look into it.

But I am concerned that energy conservation may not stay on her radar. Not to cast aspersions on her personally, but I am concerned that management generally is overly focused on propping up sales of same-old-same-old in a flagging economy, rather than figuring out ways to build a better mousetrap.

I am thinking that she has her work cut out for her, what with blue jeans priced at $233. Nordstrom...not Saks Fifth Avenue, not Neiman Marcus, not Barney’s, not a Beverly Hills boutique...step-up-from-Macy’s Norstrom with a return policy that is the darling of conscienceless shoppers and the ruination of small vendors is charging $233 for blue jeans. Same-old-same-old...make up in unit price what you’re losing in volume. Tale as old as time.

I am concerned that management that fails to make a connection between extravagant energy bills and exorbitantly priced goods may not prioritize energy conservation. Top-down, top-down. Employees that work in the cold will crank that A/C in their cars and in their homes...it’s what they’re used to. Customers who shop in comfort will drive in comfort and sleep in comfort. Lead by example. If management does not display leadership, who in the organization will?

This is why I don’t like to go out so much. Inevitably, and I do mean every time, it generates more work for me and, ironically, more dis-ease. I will send Candice Dolkart an invitation to view this entry, another civic-minded suggestion to jump on the you-can’t-call-yourself-a-manager-and-be-oblivious-to-operational-expenses bandwagon, before I send the same invitation to these men:

Unfunnily enough, that’s how I remember the Retail Industry in which ladies’ clothes, accessories and other unnecessaries feature so prominently...women constituting the bulk of consumers, labor and middle management, men in the top spots.

There is another man listed among the Powers That Be who does not strike me as a logical recipient of the aforementioned invitation but, rather, as a person positioned to not much care about anything other than sheer revenue. The Credit Man, if national trends bear witness, cares about Sales. Period.

But what IS Nordstrom FSB?


To the full post "Chill" at:
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