Boo Hoo, You Greedy Stores!

How do you talk to a store? Not the people in it—who run it, but the store itself. Not sure I know. Oh well, here goes.

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Dear _____, (fill in Wal-Mart, Macy’s, etc.—You who are in the news)  See December was a cold month for retailers

I hear you are closing some of your branches, some of your stores. And the reason? People didn’t spend enough in December. Whoa.

Have you heard that Christmas giving is about love of one’s friends and family, not the economy? For years now, some have been declaring that Christmas is too commercial.

Have you heard the advice most of us received (but fewer followed) concerning spending only what you can afford? Part of the reason people are in trouble is that they have charged too much in the past. Now some are trying to change bad habits.

Have you noticed the economy is headed a bit south? Do you know what that means to the average family?

Well, I’ll tell you, it means many folks (Main Street folks) are either spending less (saving money or refusing to spend money they don’t have) and/or making more careful choices about what they buy. The number of people who have lost their jobs is growing.

And despite the fact that you put seventeen sixteen page full-color flyers in our newspapers and mailboxes between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day (Hello, people who refuse to call this the Holiday Season. ) with prices at “rock bottom,” we aren’t buying it. Show me a blouse that is actually worth the $72.99 regular price you dropped the price from, Department store. I laugh in face of any clothing item sold at less than 50%. That’s the new “regular price” for me.

So you lost 9.2% in December. How do you think people survive who loose jobs while the cost of gasoline, natural gas and groceries go up by leaps and bounds?  What about folks who didn’t get a raise while the cost of living escalated?

One bad month?  Suck it up. We’re all in this together. It’s called capitalism. In America. LOL. Only stores and banks and big corporations get bail-outs, while people just have to spend less money. So get over it. I don’t care what your “overhead” is; I don’t want to buy your store. And I’ll be spending less money there until I get back my investments, which according to some authorities may be years (or never) but was what average people were “told” to do with their retirement funds.

You have had one bad month, Retail Store. Boo hoo.  You quit selling, but people quit retiring, buying, going to college, having things that they need and want.   Sadly, many think you stores are more important than people.  Totally untrue.  But your closing stores take away the jobs of people.

Have you heard that people without jobs are spending less in stores like you?

Sincerely,
A real person

Stepping Over Our Wounds by Henri Nouwen

Sometimes we have to “step over” our anger, our jealousy, or our feelings of rejection and move on. The temptation is to get stuck in our negative emotions, poking around in them as if we belong there. Then we become the “offended one,” “the forgotten one,” or the “discarded one.” Yes, we can get attached to these negative identities and even take morbid pleasure in them. It might be good to have a look at these dark feelings and explore where they come from, but there comes a moment to step over them, leave them behind and travel on.