“Oh,” I say. “Well…yes. It was great, thank you.”
“If you could grade it for us, we’d really appreciate it,” she says, ringing up my items. She hands me a little card, which reads:
MY SHOPPING EXPERIENCE TODAY WAS:
⎕ Awesome. (We’re so pleased!)
⎕ Only OK. (Uh-oh—any reason why?)
⎕ Terrible. (So sorry to hear that! Please tell us the problem!)
I take the pen from her and stare at the card. I should tick Awesome. There was nothing wrong with the store, and I got what I wanted. I have no complaints. Come on. Awesome.
But somehow…my hand won’t do it. I don’t feel Awesome.
“That’ll be sixty-three ninety-two,” says the girl, and peers at me curiously as I give her the money. “Are you OK?”
“Um…I don’t know.” To my horror, tears are suddenly trembling on my lashes. “I don’t know what to tick. I know I should choose Awesome, but I can’t tick it, I just can’t. I’ve fallen out with my best friend, and that’s all I can think about, and so nothing’s Awesome right now. Not even shopping.” I stare at her miserably. “I’m sorry. I won’t waste your time anymore.”
I hold out my hand for my receipt. But the girl doesn’t give it to me. She’s gazing at me in concern. She’s called Simone, I notice from her name tag.
“Well, are you happy with your purchases?” She opens the carrier bag for me to see them, and I stare at all the stuff, feeling a bit dazed.
“I don’t know,” I say despairingly. “I don’t even know why I’ve bought all this stuff. It’s meant to be presents for people. You know. Souvenirs.”
“OK…”
“But I don’t know what I’ve bought for who, or anything, and I’m only supposed to buy meaningfully. I went on a whole program at Golden Peace.”
“Golden Peace!” Her eyes light up. “I did that program.”
“No way.” I stare at her.
“Online.” She flushes faintly. “I couldn’t afford to visit. But, you know, they have an app, so…I was in big trouble, spending-wise. You can imagine, working here….” Simone gestures around at the shop. “But I kicked my problem.”
“Wow.” I blink at her. “Well, then, you know what I’m talking about.”
“ ‘Buy calmly and with meaning,’ ” she quotes.
“Exactly!” I nod in recognition. “I have that in a frame!”
“ ‘Why are you buying?’ ”
“Yes!”
“Do you need this?”
“Exactly! We had a whole session about that one issue—”
“No.” Simone looks at me directly. “I’m asking you a question. Do you need this? Or are you just trying to soothe yourself?” Simone has taken the snow globe out of my bag and is holding it in front of me. “Do you need it?” she persists.
“Oh,” I say, disconcerted. “I don’t know. Well, I mean, obviously I don’t need it. Nobody needs a snow globe. I thought I’d give it to…I don’t know. Maybe my husband.”
“Great! Will it bring him consistent joy and pleasure?”
I try to picture Luke shaking the snow globe and watching it whirl around. I mean, he might do it once.
“Dunno,” I admit, after a pause. “It might do.”
“It might?” She shakes her head. “It only might? What was your thought process when you put it in your basket?”
I stare at her, caught out. I didn’t have a thought process. I just bunged it in.
“I don’t think I need it.” I bite my lip. “Or even want it, really.”
“So don’t buy it. You want me to refund it?”
“Yes, please,” I whisper gratefully.
“These T-shirts.” Simone pulls them out of the bag. “Who are they for, and will they really suit those people?”
I look at the T-shirts blankly. I hadn’t worked out who was going to wear them. I bought them because I was in a souvenir shop and they were souvenirs.
Simone shakes her head at my expression. “Refund?” she says succinctly.
“Yes, please.” I pull out the dice necklaces. “And these. I don’t know what I was thinking. I’ll give them to my mum and her friend and they’ll wear them for five seconds and then they’ll take them off, and they’ll knock around the house and in about three years’ time they’ll go to the charity shop, but no one there will want them either.”
“Oh my God, you’re right,” comes a husky voice behind me, and I turn to see a middle-aged woman pulling about six dice necklaces out of her basket. “I got these for my girlfriends back home. They won’t wear them, will they?”
“Never.” I shake my head.
“I want a refund.” A denim-clad woman at the next register has been listening in, and now she turns back to her cashier, who is a red-haired woman. “I’m sorry. I just bought a heap of crap. I don’t know what I was doing.” She pulls a diamanté Las Vegas baseball cap out of her carrier bag. “My stepdaughter is never going to wear this.”
“Sorry, you want a refund?” The red-haired cashier looks affronted. “Already?”
“She’s doing it.” The denim-clad woman points at me. “She’s returning everything.”
“Not everything,” I say hastily. “I’m just trying to shop calmly and with meaning.”
The red-haired cashier gives me a nasty look. “Well, please don’t.”
“I love that,” the denim-clad woman says emphatically. “ ‘Calmly and with meaning.’ OK, so what else in here don’t I need?” She rootles in her carrier bag and brings out a Las Vegas hip flask. “This. And this.” She produces a dollar-sign beach towel. “This is going back.”
At the far register, I can see a third woman pausing. “Wait a minute,” she says to her cashier. “Maybe I don’t need that flashing Las Vegas sign. Could I get a refund on that?”
“Stop it!” says the red-haired cashier, looking more and more flustered. “No more refunds!”
“You can’t refuse refunds!” objects the denim-clad woman. “I’m returning this too.” She plonks a shiny pink photo album onto the counter. “Who am I kidding? I’ll never put an album together.”
“I don’t want any of this!” The woman in the far line empties her entire carrier bag onto the counter. “I’m only shopping because I’m bored out of my skull.”
“Me too!”
Down the lines, I can see other women listening in and looking in their baskets and taking things out. It’s like some contagious wave of unshopping has hit the crowd.
“What’s going on?” A woman in a trouser suit is striding to the checkouts and addressing the cashiers furiously. “Why is everyone taking stuff out of their baskets?”
“All the customers are returning their items!” says the red-haired cashier. “They’ve gone crazy! That girl started it.” She points to me with a mean look.
“I didn’t mean to start anything!” I say hastily. “I just decided to—you know—think about my purchases. Buy only what I need.”
“Buy only what you need?” The woman in the trouser suit looks as though I’ve uttered something unspeakably profane. “Ma’am, could you please finalize your purchases as quickly as possible and leave the store?”
—
Honestly. You’d think I’d been single-handedly trying to bring down capitalism or something. The manageress in the trouser suit actually hissed at me as she frog-marched me out: “Did you see what happened in Japan? Do you want that happening here? Do you?”
I mean, I felt bad, because it did start getting a bit out of hand. Everyone was taking stuff out of their baskets and dumping it back on the shelves and asking total strangers, “Why are we shopping?” and “Do you need that?”—while all the sales staff were rushing around in a fluster, crying, “Everyone loves a souvenir!” and “This one is half price! Take three!”