Friday, April 01, 2005
The Raunchy Registry...
I recently had an encounter with the fascist inspired method of gift procurement, commonly known as the gift registry. I was introduced to this diabolical system during an expedition to purchase a gift for a baby shower. I was told the mother-to-be had registered at a local “Babies R Us”.
My fiancée and I entered the store and immediately found the registry kiosk. We entered the necessary information and nine pages of registered gifts were spewed from an embedded laser printer. My initial impression was positive. Here is a convenient way to purchase a gift; no guesswork, it eliminates the potential for duplicates, its efficient and clean. This got me into the efficiency mindset, and the fiancée and I divvied the work between us. I set out with half the list and her the same.
I briskly walked down the aisles passing bibs, onesies and pacifiers. A smile materialized upon my face as I imagined the baby playing with all these multicolored rattles, mobiles, and pliable plastic teething rings. I decided to get back to reality and leave the fantasy for later. I took a look at the list to decide on which item to search out. The toner wasn’t melted to the page so it was flaking off, obscuring most of the text. I was still able to make out the description and manufacturer but not the SKU number. The first item on the registry was a butterfly rattle. I assumed that finding this toy would be an easy enough task.
I started out in the toy section. There was nothing there by the listed manufacturer. I moved on to the newborn section. There were dozens of rattles, several in the shape of a butterfly, but once again, none by that manufacturer. I wandered the store looking for any rattle in the shape of a butterfly. I spent about 20 minutes searching in vain before I swallowed my pride and asked a clerk for assistance. Noticing my frustration she told me quite nicely that the manufacturer’s name was changed to "Carson" and that I could find it by the Gift section of the store. After searching through the gift section, finding nothing that looked like a butterfly, I was ready to give up. Much to the clerk’s credit she came over and showed me the location, a seven-foot tall display attached to a pillar adjacent to the Gift section.
These toys resembled neither rattle nor butterfly. The clerk asked what the SKU number was and I showed her the sheet with the partial numbers. She said that the first three numbers of these products were always the same so we only paid attention to the final three. She thought the number at the end of the sequence was a 3 I thought it was an 8. There were no rattles with either number at the end. The clerk decided to leave, stating a phone needed answering.
I decided to approach this dilemma logically. A pregnant woman wouldn’t want to squat or climb upon something in order to reach a rattle, so that means that the toy must be within her arm reach. The mother-to-be is only 5 foot four, 64 inches. The head is approximately 10 inches with the neck at 4, making her shoulder height at 50 inches. Her arm length was probably18 inches in length, implicating the rattle in question as being within 20 to 70 inches off of the ground. She also doesn’t know the gender of the coming baby so I ignored all gender specific rattles (ie. shades of blue or pink). There were two potential rattles at this point; a yellow one and a green one. I looked at the SKU numbers for each; they ended in 1 and 6 respectively for the yellow and green. There was no way that a 1 could possibly be confused with an eight or a three so the green rattle was the obvious choice. Deduction my dear Watson!
This fuzzy, small winged, plush beast stole over a half an hour of my life besides the $10 price tag. All the other items followed suit, after an hour and twenty minutes in the store I only found 3 items. I decided to stop there with this gift scavenger hunt, and go find my girl. She had similar luck, however she was happy and enjoying experience, while I was frantic and anxious to leave. We purchased what we found and left the store.
In the car we had a conversation about registry shopping. I presented sound arguments to support my stance that a gift registry is pure evil. The people purchasing the gifts need not know the recipient anymore than by name alone. Why don’t people just have a wedding or baby shower months before hand and demand a gift of solely money? This would prevent the purchaser of the gift from feeling that they are acting as a delivery service.
Having a registry can feel insulting to the purchaser. It assumes that they don’t know the recipient well enough to make an informed decision. And if that person doesn’t know the recipient that well, then why the hell are they invited to a wedding or baby shower? Answer: as a provider of a gift, no more! Where is the intimacy? Where is the honor? Where is the goddamned element of chance?
This registry experience was one of sterility and frustration. Leaving the store I felt like an automaton. I could’ve programmed that entire incident without the need of a random function. There’s absolutely no organic nature to a registry. It’s pure evil…Satan in kiosk form.
I assume that a registry is in the advantage of the store. You have the bride or mother to be coming around and shopping for future gifts and while they’re there they probably make impulse buys. Also when the final purchaser of the gift comes to the store they also end up making personal impulse buys, increasing revenue for the store and placing more money in those big corporate fat cats’ wallets.
The registry experience has divided the fiancée and I. She is pro-registry and I am passionately against it. She asserts that a registry ensures no duplicates in gifts, however, I have heard horror stories from people where the store failed to eliminate an item from a registry list and the recipient ended up with several of the same item. So a registry can just as easily increase the likeliness of receiving duplicates. So where is the benefit? There is none other than following an arcane tradition of malevolence.
That is why I refuse to support the raunchy registry!
My fiancée and I entered the store and immediately found the registry kiosk. We entered the necessary information and nine pages of registered gifts were spewed from an embedded laser printer. My initial impression was positive. Here is a convenient way to purchase a gift; no guesswork, it eliminates the potential for duplicates, its efficient and clean. This got me into the efficiency mindset, and the fiancée and I divvied the work between us. I set out with half the list and her the same.
I briskly walked down the aisles passing bibs, onesies and pacifiers. A smile materialized upon my face as I imagined the baby playing with all these multicolored rattles, mobiles, and pliable plastic teething rings. I decided to get back to reality and leave the fantasy for later. I took a look at the list to decide on which item to search out. The toner wasn’t melted to the page so it was flaking off, obscuring most of the text. I was still able to make out the description and manufacturer but not the SKU number. The first item on the registry was a butterfly rattle. I assumed that finding this toy would be an easy enough task.
I started out in the toy section. There was nothing there by the listed manufacturer. I moved on to the newborn section. There were dozens of rattles, several in the shape of a butterfly, but once again, none by that manufacturer. I wandered the store looking for any rattle in the shape of a butterfly. I spent about 20 minutes searching in vain before I swallowed my pride and asked a clerk for assistance. Noticing my frustration she told me quite nicely that the manufacturer’s name was changed to "Carson" and that I could find it by the Gift section of the store. After searching through the gift section, finding nothing that looked like a butterfly, I was ready to give up. Much to the clerk’s credit she came over and showed me the location, a seven-foot tall display attached to a pillar adjacent to the Gift section.
These toys resembled neither rattle nor butterfly. The clerk asked what the SKU number was and I showed her the sheet with the partial numbers. She said that the first three numbers of these products were always the same so we only paid attention to the final three. She thought the number at the end of the sequence was a 3 I thought it was an 8. There were no rattles with either number at the end. The clerk decided to leave, stating a phone needed answering.
I decided to approach this dilemma logically. A pregnant woman wouldn’t want to squat or climb upon something in order to reach a rattle, so that means that the toy must be within her arm reach. The mother-to-be is only 5 foot four, 64 inches. The head is approximately 10 inches with the neck at 4, making her shoulder height at 50 inches. Her arm length was probably18 inches in length, implicating the rattle in question as being within 20 to 70 inches off of the ground. She also doesn’t know the gender of the coming baby so I ignored all gender specific rattles (ie. shades of blue or pink). There were two potential rattles at this point; a yellow one and a green one. I looked at the SKU numbers for each; they ended in 1 and 6 respectively for the yellow and green. There was no way that a 1 could possibly be confused with an eight or a three so the green rattle was the obvious choice. Deduction my dear Watson!
This fuzzy, small winged, plush beast stole over a half an hour of my life besides the $10 price tag. All the other items followed suit, after an hour and twenty minutes in the store I only found 3 items. I decided to stop there with this gift scavenger hunt, and go find my girl. She had similar luck, however she was happy and enjoying experience, while I was frantic and anxious to leave. We purchased what we found and left the store.
In the car we had a conversation about registry shopping. I presented sound arguments to support my stance that a gift registry is pure evil. The people purchasing the gifts need not know the recipient anymore than by name alone. Why don’t people just have a wedding or baby shower months before hand and demand a gift of solely money? This would prevent the purchaser of the gift from feeling that they are acting as a delivery service.
Having a registry can feel insulting to the purchaser. It assumes that they don’t know the recipient well enough to make an informed decision. And if that person doesn’t know the recipient that well, then why the hell are they invited to a wedding or baby shower? Answer: as a provider of a gift, no more! Where is the intimacy? Where is the honor? Where is the goddamned element of chance?
This registry experience was one of sterility and frustration. Leaving the store I felt like an automaton. I could’ve programmed that entire incident without the need of a random function. There’s absolutely no organic nature to a registry. It’s pure evil…Satan in kiosk form.
I assume that a registry is in the advantage of the store. You have the bride or mother to be coming around and shopping for future gifts and while they’re there they probably make impulse buys. Also when the final purchaser of the gift comes to the store they also end up making personal impulse buys, increasing revenue for the store and placing more money in those big corporate fat cats’ wallets.
The registry experience has divided the fiancée and I. She is pro-registry and I am passionately against it. She asserts that a registry ensures no duplicates in gifts, however, I have heard horror stories from people where the store failed to eliminate an item from a registry list and the recipient ended up with several of the same item. So a registry can just as easily increase the likeliness of receiving duplicates. So where is the benefit? There is none other than following an arcane tradition of malevolence.
That is why I refuse to support the raunchy registry!
# posted by T.S. Idiot @ 7:37 AM 
