An ode to the Indian Retail Worker

This one is also dedicated. But in a very different way.

First consider this. I want to buy a photo album. I'll admit I had an ideal album in mind - I needed something where the leaves were transparent so both the picture and the caption written on the back of it could be seen. Hardly a very big demand, all things considered, you'd agree.

After trying a couple of stationery shops in vain, I made my way to the local Archies shop -- the Indian equivalent of Hallmark/Cardshop. In most countries, your ideal shop whilst looking for an album. What I get instead is to be sent to some vague (and uncomfortably hot) corner of the shop where the junior retailer dude has reluctantly opened the most massive wedding album. So when I suggest something a little smaller he grudgingly takes one out. Sure enough the leaves are not transparent. When I point out my ultra-fussy requirement he takes one second to comprehend it and another to say 'Yahan woh nihe milega' (You won't get it here).

I had endured this type of 'salesmanship' before (in one of the previous shops, the guy had flat-out refused to acknowledge the existence of said type of album!). So I persevered and asked him to take out a couple more of the literally thousands of other small sized albums. Disgusted and tired from all this effort, he was therefore APPALLED when I asked if he could think of any alternative ways to compile pictures. Perhaps a kind of binder that would hold them all together and let you flip through? 'Nope' he says while shooting me a look of how-dare-you-bother-me-so. Can he at least suggest some place that might do something on these lines? You guessed it, he doesn't know!

I have shopped, or rather tried, to shop in a lot of Indian cities. And I have found this definite common trend. If the store is not owned by the same person, i.e. his livelihood does not depend on it, he/she is not just reluctant to sell but often keen to drive you out of the place! In clothes stores (Lacoste, UCB*) where, being poor and miserly, I like to look at price tags before buying stuff, there's generally about 15 of these guys per customer who's job it is to stare you out and make you so conscious of this otherwise practical task that you are driven away. In huge books and music stores (Odyssey) the guy will often say matter of factly that he doesn't have a copy of the dictionary or ARR's greatest hits! I've been to a coffee shop (Deli 9) where the waiter guy swore on the fact that there is no difference between two cold coffees priced Rs 10 apart!

I feel I am entitled to rant (for once) as I have worked in retail before. As a junior under-paid, under-appreciated guy. Hell, I was in still in school for a lot of it so you can imagine I didn't really care so much about the huge corporate making an extra 20 quid profit thanks to me. Just as long as they paid me. But to be so uber lethargic and positively put off customers buying anything is another skill level altogether! I'm not exaggerating much when I say even the likes of Imelda Marcos and Blair Waldorf would not be able to pick up 2 pairs of shoes when 'served' by some of these guys!

So the subliminal message in all this? My theory is that all these stores are just fronts for money laundering, drug rackets, you name it. Of course the most worrying thing then is that like 95% of major branded Indian stores are all fronts! Oh how reassuring!

* The stores in brackets are ones that I've personally had a bad experience in, in the recent past. I don't mean to imply that other stores are going to be any better!