Museum shops | truth2020

Shops that think they are museums!

In yet another example of: ‘Spot the brain cell’, ‘the ritual humiliation of the old and greedy’ as it was mentioned in a Monty Python sketch, some shops act as if they are museums with their tidy and downright (common) senseless displays.

Superdrug and, I dare say, other such shops ‘face up’, as it’s known, their shelves of stock at least once a day, usually before the store closes and while customers are still in the shop and deciding what to buy, which is what makes it pointless and these type of shops the perfect candidate for ‘Spot the brain cell’.

So, what is ‘facing up’, you ask, unless, of course, you’ve worked for a shop that employs that ridiculous of practices?

Facing up is when all of the stock on the shop shelves, depleted by customers buying the products, is moved forward, ‘facing up to the front’ of the display shelf etc:

All that’s missing is a sign saying: ‘Do NOT touch the Exhibit’.

Although, yes, the display, rather like that of a museum’s display, looks nice and appealing, it’s wholly irrelevant to one single, ongoing fact. People, the very customers the shop relies on to buy the items they display and sell, have not 1% of interest in the display. Notably, and unlike a museum, they can and will touch any item they want as they select the items they want to purchase and subsequently mess up the display.

Thinking of something to compare it to, I’m reminded of Julia Roberts’ character in the film ‘Sleeping with the enemy’.

In the film, Roberts’ plays a woman married to a man who is a total control freak with violent repercussions when she lapses from something as simple as ‘facing up’ tins and packets of food in cupboards. Having escaped his violent clutches and moved away to somewhere new, in the scene where she opens the food cupboard in her new home, she pushes the items around, untidily.

Superdrug et all, are very much indicative of Roberts’ husband, while their staff are indicative of women like Roberts’ character. And it’s totally uncalled for and unnecessary.

Footnote: Having published this 26 years update of the original printed TRUTH from and since 1994 to the internet, the TRUTH has contacted, by e-mail, one or more of those named in this article.

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