Shopping

Shopping here can be a baffling ordeal. A lot of it depends on where you’re shopping, but each place has its quirks.

Most stores here are highly specialized–a corner mattress store here, a stand selling fresh potato chips there, five different places selling the same assortment of biscuits and Sprite all over the place, etc. Sony operates a couple of its own stores in town, and basically sells its stuff only at those stores. This is convenient in some ways, but can make it tough to find specific things. For example, I’ve had trouble findings a: a power strip, b: cheap plastic coat hangers, and c: an umbrella. This creates a demand, albeit a small one compared to the US, for larger one-stop-shops. I found the power strip at a place called Reliance Digital, run by a large Indian conglomerate called Reliance. They’re sort of a smaller version of Best Buy, and while there were almost certainly cheaper places for a power strip, hell if anyone knew where those were. For the cheap plastic coat hangers, I found something of a textiles bazaar that advertises, among other things “Export Rejected Door Mats, Rs.100/kg.” If only we bought door mats by the pound in the US. I still haven’t found the umbrella, but I haven’t had a huge need for one, either. The rain tends to be light and misty. I also need a capacitor, but let's not go there.

Check out can also be a pain. Most stores only have a few registers, and tend to have all of them open. Compare this to the dozen registers at Meijer that haven’t opened since Y2K. Like the 600 unused parking spots, they’re there because real estate is cheap. The problem with cheap labor, though, is that you get what you pay for, and the cashiers tend to be pretty slow. Invariably, with you or someone ahead of you, the cashier will either need a managerial override, a price check on something unmarked, or will run out of change. The latter happens ALL THE TIME. At Garcia’s, we’d start each day with hundreds in singles and would still occasionally run out. I don’t think these places have the foresight.

By far the biggest difference, though, is the ubiquity of assistance in the aisles. The stores run out of cash registers on which to stack people (space is expensive), but can stuff employees in the aisles cheaply. And they want to help. Twice at SPAR I’ve had people come up to me to encourage me to buy a larger size container of something “that’s on special.” One tried to get me to buy a huge bag of Tide, and the other was, I’m not kidding, trying to put me in a 5L jug of olive oil that was like $50. When I went shopping for sheets, I checked out a small sheet store, and from the moment I walked in there was a guy shadowing me. I took a step, he took a step with me, ready to answer any questions. This got awkward in a hurry. I never said a word to the guy, but I did find that the stuff there was pretty expensive, smiled at him, and walked out.

Perhaps I’m just crazy. Why should extra help be a bad thing? Perhaps I only find it awkward because I’m used to shopping in places where there is no help, and am therefore accustomed to finding my own way around a store. Indians seem to appreciate the guided shopping, even if it chased me out of the bedding store. Once I went with Sanju to a small place that sold books on child advocacy. Someone would show her a book, she’d thumb through it, and she’d either say “good,” or “no, we don’t want this” and hand it back. It was all very blunt. Not “this isn’t what we’re looking for,” or “no thanks,” but just “no, we don’t want this.” I found the whole display impolite, but again, I think that’s the American in me. Indians are used to having personal help in stores. They expect it. When I see it, I see an employee basically going out of his/her way to help, and I respond appreciatively. When I get back to the States, if any of you see me being a total douche to a store clerk, slap me. And if you ever see a Desi doing that, just imagine how pissed off they were that they had to do their own laundry today.