Potemkin Village

“Wondering what you thought of this farce.”

-Inspector Yeti

…

Photo of a four-foot section of shelving entirely empty, save for a mat photo poster of spices hanging in the front, with signage of 4 for 5 dollars on the front of the phantom product display. The left hand of the yeti investigator is pulling the sheeting away it reveals clean, empty standard 20 inch deep shelving cut around a roofing support pole. It seems that the next section down is also a poster rather than stock.

By the time this article posts it will be early January and folks will be adjusting to shortages of certain items. The thing to look out for is shortages of commodities: grains, eggs, milk, chicken, beef, pork, beans, coffee, sugar, etc.. But the current focus is on cheap toys and gadgets from China, which is suffering a year of famine.

Below are two links to articles about why freight is not being moved in trucks in California. Basically, the phony global warming bullshit has been used to pass laws that outlaw the movement of goods by truck. The idiot sites reporting on this may call the practice of planned shortages “political insanity” based on the fantastical utopian ideal held by conservatives that some government at some point in history ever existed to benefit its people. Political insanity would be the use of government to elevate the human condition, to encourage critical thinking and to cultivate creative living.

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Now, to the poster of food hung in front of empty shelves in a Maryland supermarket, I have two thoughts:

-1. That this is a photograph of what should go where on those empty shelves once the stock becomes available. This used to be done by

“planogram.” But, the ability to translate a horizontal layout to a vertical set no longer exists in the unmotivated mind of the labor pool.

-2. The fact that the four-foot section being covered with a poster is built around a support pole, which is a spot you always want to reserve for shallow fills and not high volume items, shows that the retailer is having trouble filling their set and that the manufacturer—rather than lose space to some other line of goods, is providing money and face-saving posters to cover the space.

To a large degree any good clerk, such as myself, was skilled in visual farce, making a section look full that was almost “blown out.” This had two purposes, tricking the district manager who only walked the perimeter and glanced down the aisles into thinking that he was not about to lose projected sales because you forgot to order the Campbells pork and beans while you were gawking at the cashier's fine ass bending over as she stocked candy to your left, and triggering the horn of perceptive plenty.

It is a real fact that when a food buyer sees evidence of plenty, of massive stock, that they will buy more, that they will be infected with “confidence” and the suggestion of supply. If I have 60 cases of 64-ounce Lipton ice tea canisters to build a display, and I park that 5-foot high pallet, I will get X-amount of sales. But if I take those 60 cases and use display blocks set in tiers, with stacked milk crates behind, and build a display that has a 4-foot front tier, a 5 foot middle tier and an 7-foot back tier, people will buy more. Ideally, I get 20 pallets of tea and don't use blocks until the end of the sale week as I hollow the display out. But the fact is that mass appearance encourages buying, just like I'm a sucker for longer hair, bigger tits and fatter asses at the strip club and once had to face up the entire soup section because I had been forgetting to hit the enter key when I looked sideways after punching in each code to savor a view of Lisa's giant ass.

The perception of plenty sells as much as the reality of scarcity.