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Here are to snapshots of modern American retail business:

1. “Are you a member of the store?”   Major bookstore chains, including Borders and Barnes & Nobels, refer to the customers who have registered for a discount card as “members of the store.”  Once while ordering a mocha at a Borders cafe, I was stunned when the clerk asked me if I was a member. "A member of what?" I asked. "Borders."  Stores have customers, not members, I thought to myself.  It seems presumptuous for retail sales clerks to think of customers as members, and elitist to distinguish members from non-members.  Moreover, it sounds fake to say that members shop; it is as if the people working in retail in are pretending that their store is somehow more than a store. It is the twisting of language here that is particularly of concern to me. As Borders faced bankrupcy and the closure of at least 200 of its stores in 2011, it occurred to me that part of the company's problem might be the way the stores were managed. For example, on another occasion while ordering a drink at a Borders cafe, the clerk asked me if I wanted a Borders reward card. I said "no thank you," but the clerk proceeded to ask me again, as if he had not already asked me.  He explained to me that the manager of the store had instructed the cafe employees not to take "no" for an answer until at least two. Ignoring the customers' answers if they are not what you want. Nice. So beyond the linguistic "creativity," I suspect that modern retail management, at least as evinced at Borders, has derailed into something rather toxic based on an excessive desire to manipulate not only language, but also human beings.

2. “Thinking outside the Box.”  The promotional statement going with the $4.99 cheeseburger and fries deal at Applebees.  If coming up with such a deal for a burger and fries represents thinking outside the box, I would hate to see what conventional business thinking is like.  I think it’s time that the blinders be returned to the horses.

Putting these two little case-studies of marketing mentality together, one might ask whether viewing customers as members represents thinking outside the seller-customer box.  Perhaps it does, but not by much and the box is pretty small. Moreover, supervening the club or social organization paradigm onto an impersonal store context seems contrived and ill-fitting.  That the seller ignores the contrivance just adds to the fakeness and underlying sordid character. Either it doesn’t represent thinking outside the box because it is a case of “overreaching” instead, or it must be admitted that thinking outside the box is not in itself a laudable quality.  Were I ever to be asked by a store’s clerk whether I am a member, I would reply, “no, I am a customer.”  Of course, I would probably then be asked whether I want an “upgrade.”  I understand that at Starbucks clerks refer to ordering a larger cup of coffee as an upgrade.  I suppose a window-seat is not included.  Anyway, I don’t think that pretentiousness makes for good selling, but that won’t stop the overreaching any time soon.  It is perhaps engrained in the modern sales psyche.