The Mega-sized Shopping Mall: A 20th-Century Artifact?

Between 1956 and 2005, fifteen-hundred (indoor) shopping malls popped up across America. Then through 2013 at least, none had been built since 2006. The interstate highway system helped usher in the mammoth malls like Mall of America in Minnesota and Woodfield Mall in Illinois; the cold climes made the indoor expanses of warm air particularly alluring during the long winters. The two landmarks among malls would likely fare better than most in staving off even their own respective stores’ cannibalistic online-sales charms at least for a while, absent an upward-revision on global warming forecasts flashing relentlessly on smartphones, tablets, and laptops. The leap from the pedestrian innovations at Selfridge’s department store in early twentieth-century London to Amazon’s Cyber Monday during the 2010s, a silver century later, would seem to be  all about the computer revolution digitizing distance that had once been viewed in terms of social class and then gradually succumbing to closer physical distance, as in Selfridge’s accommodating store.[1]

Even as housewives on a budget joyfully discovered that bargains could be found even in a service-oriented department store without being thrown out just for browsing, aristocratic women returned to the store to purchase fine gloves or perfume astutely advised by a polite, attentive clerk—an antiquated idyllic image of “shopping” a century later in a world saturated by Walmart’s “warehouse” (or barn) mega-department/grocery stores.[2] Indeed, the king himself requested a private showing of Selfridge’s out of curiosity regarding the new thing known as “shopping” and to show himself to be a man of the people (of various social classes). Few people a century later would pause to ask whether the foray of online purchases would make the term shopping obsolete.[3]

Moreover, the sliding eclipse of the hackneyed American mall harkens back to the truism hardly remembered amid all the technological distractions that the world of yesterday is not nearly as everlasting as implicitly promised in its hay-day.

In the last quarter of the twentieth century, the display of Christmas decorations before Thanksgiving, earlier and earlier each year, attested to change in progress. The relative insignificance of this fixation would come to hide the "macro" or "meta" change concerning the mall itself in the first two decades of the next century. 

While the little mall marketers scamper about, scrambling to do the twentieth-century department store one better in terms of a “one stop experience” by highlighting entertainment on top of the “same old, same old” heterogeneous product types being under one roof, no one hardly bothers to imagine the mall itself (not to mention the acutely structured department store) as being of another era—a world already gone—a bygone time somehow vicariously still with us—as if the artifice were a squashed bug mistaking its flinching movements for still being alive. The temporal illusion lies in the extremely slow “squashing” noise of register-less electronic sales. As the niggardly management of Target can attest, the silent killers can be the most devastating, even if the extent of the cyber fingerprints are only fully visible in retrospect.

Amid the wrecking balls eating up memories left and right, the twenty-first century stood wide open for the technological imagination to form. Amid all the excitement, it is no wonder that people who came of age at the mall will look around one day, as if suddenly awakened by nothing in particular, to find that the ‘70s show has indeed gone off air due to low ratings.

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[1] Rejecting the “premium” vs. “cost leadership” business strategies, Selfridge used sales-items to draw in business from cost-conscious consumers (not “guests,” as in the artful lie played out on Target’s stage by functionaries whose superiority over the dictionary gives their stores a rather odious odor). Unlike the managers at Walmart and Target a century later, Selfridge did not view the continued presence of refined yet simple sales clerks as mutually exclusive with extending the product-lines “down” to lower priced items (supplemented by relatively broad sales).

[2] While at a Walmart store to buy underwear, I noticed a few plastic bags containing product had been open. An employee was then passing by me so I asked if she knew about it. “How else are customers going to be able to try them on unless they open the bags?” she replied. The sales associate had no doubt concerning her “knowledge” of retail. Had I pointed out trying on underwear violates OHSA regulations, the employee would in all likelihood have dismissed my “opinion” in favor of her own “knowledge.” Doubtless a European aristocrat would not return to such a store again.

[3] To the extent that “shopping” includes browsing, being able to “google search” a product may mean that searching is already replacing shopping; by implication, going to a “brick and mortar” store to purchase or merely pick up the product does not involve shopping. Yet how hard old ghosts fall; it is as people use terms generally without bothering to verify that the respective meanings still apply. In other words, we may speak without thinking more often than we suppose. In fact, some of the herd animals may succumb in weakness to their urge to “push” their meaning as a weapon of sorts. A young assistant store manager at Target once corrected me in demanding I acknowledge that I’m a guest rather than a customer. The cocktail of ignorance, arrogance, and the primal urge to dominate is as toxic and dangerous as it is ubiquitous in American business of the 2010s (not to mention American society). 

New Birds of Prey in Modern Retail

In a dysfunctional organization, the shared pathology fortifies its defense mechanisms with an obstinacy that appears rock-solid. Lines such as, “Unfortunately, the product cannot be returned” can be seen as part of an egg shell that seems to be durable until it is cracked open. By analogy, cracking the egg entails parsing such lines as are typically dished out to outsiders. Let’s take a look.

First, the word cannot is incorrectly used in the sentence, for a store’s return policy is not a law; whereas a business is subject to a law, no such requirement pertains to a company’s own policies. To treat the latter as tantamount to laws is essentially to vaunt the self-importance of the company, store, and even the employee enunciating the policy-law. “Your policies are not laws; of course you can make an exception, even if your supervisor is the person who can do it.” The word cannot serves the organizational dysfunction by giving the impression externally that the company is more than it is (i.e., a state of sorts with its own laws). At the employee level, the devise is essentially a power-grab—a distended or exaggerated urge to control others being a typical symptom of insecurity borne of underlying weakness.

Substituting may not for cannot gives the customer at least an implied opening that from the standpoint of the organizational pathology could prompt him or her to push through the defense mechanisms and trounce the core weakness. Were an “upper” manager to even consider such a linguistic change, an underling would likely contend that every customer would be returning items. The fallacy in this reasoning goes by the wayside in the mechanizations of the organizational dysfunction. Indeed, ignoring or dismissing logical fallacies is itself one of the defense mechanisms!  This is arguing with such an employee or manager is apt to be an exercise in futility.

Notice the "exchanges accepted" instead of "accept exchanges." The passive voice extends to "are revised" and "are shipped," suggesting an underlying mentality of weakness. Also, the forcefulness of the "must" (as one might expect pertains to a law) is belied by the inherent subjectivity in "mint condition." Finally, the blood-red color, as well as the black background color, suggests a certain passive-aggressiveness in line with the use of "must" for what is actually a policy (rather than a law). (Image Source: omgmiamiswimsuits.com)

Second, the use of the passive mood also hints at the underlying weakness in the dysfunctional organization because the action is sidestepped. “We do not accept returned items” highlights the action (i.e., the refusing) of the company’s employees/managers whereas “cannot be returned” omits the actor entirely! The latter phraseology matches the insecurity that naturally manifests out of weakness. Besides implying that the power of the actor to act is in some way compromised or enervated, the passive voice hides the actor and thus protects him or her from being confronted. The actor’s underlying fear here is that a head-to-head clash would not end well for the actor, given his or her own and shared (i.e., organizational) pathology.

Third, just as the choice of the word cannot and the use of the passive voice both involve a manipulatory fabrication (i.e., lying with a hidden agenda), so too does the addition of the unnecessary adverb, unfortunately. For the stealth actor (i.e., the non-supervisory or managerial employee), the policy is hardly unfortunate; otherwise, the policy would not be “on the books.” Lest the adverb is intended to refer to the customer [rather, lest the policy’s formulator or the employee mouthing it is referring to the customers]—as though the fact that the customers would have to keep ill-suited products were unfortunate—the policy itself indicates just how much its formulator and implementers really sympathize, especially since the formulator can change the policy. In other words, the use of the word is a lie designed to give the customer the false impression that “the store” really cares and that unfortunately the policy cannot be changed (and by whom?).

Even the tactic itself in such a line is a lie in that the pathogens are utterly unwilling to tolerate the very same tactic directed back at them. A customer wanting more than a glimpse of the sickness need only reply, “Unfortunately any refusal to accept back the deformed item will have to be turned over to small claims court.” Even though the particular employee would have no involvement in such legal proceedings, and thus no rational reason to bristle at the customer’s stated policy/law, he or she would be too accustomed to dictating terms to customers to let that privilege lapse without at least a spike in anger and attempt to regain the upper hand. “You are free to do so,” an employee might retort, as though he or she were granting or allowing the freedom. In fact, the implication is rather arrogant, again as if the company were akin to a state rather than being a mere counter-party in a commercial exchange. 

The hidden agenda becomes apparent by realizing that the statement is duplicitous or redundant, as the customer obviously already knows that he or she has the liberty to sue. The employee knows this of course, either consciously or unconsciously, and is not really informing the customer that he or she can go to small-claims court. “I don’t need you to tell me I can do what I’ve already told you I know I am free to do,” an astute customer might retort in turn. 

The exchange of words is really a control battle stemming from an organizational pathology’s attempts to defend itself against potentially interlarding intruders. The threat is of course over-stated—hence the exaggerated intent to “nail down the hatches” to weather the perceived storm. Yet the “new birds of prey”—Nietzsche’s label for those among the weak who can’t resist their urge do dominate (even the strong)—are not content to merely defend, for they must have the upper hand in order to feel sufficiently protected.