a future disturbing look at another society . . .or shoppers drugmart

yesterday I went to eat breakfast with a few friends downtown, the restaurant was in the entertainment district and right near this new shoppers drugmart. When one of the girls goes on about how great this one is I easily go allong with a trip there, I am a fan of the shoppers. When we walk in I do a double take, I feel like I just walked into max the day when edward was becoming ginger and needed makeup. It was so high class, the make up area was not a small booth inbetween the creams and perfums. It was its own seperate section with the high end brands listed on the wall the way the Bay organises their makeup. This section was complete seperate from the rest of the shoppers, in hopes not to intaminate it with the normacy of the rest of their products. The major section of the store had the same products as anyother shoppers, but made it look a bit more upscale. Then their was the food section which included veggie burgers, soy milk and flax oil. I was impressed, I started to think the logo 'everything you want in a drug store plus more' was going to their head and soon shoppers drug mart would be talking over major corporations, that it would be at par with lablaws having its own babysitting.

On the way out I was drawn to the 'gift idea' section near the cash, they had a full wall of cd gift certificate size packages hanging up. this is when the level of disturbance went through the roof. This wall was seperated into three section. Romance, adventure and pamper. The first one I picked up under the romance section was almost four hunderd dollars. It was one night at this hotel, 1/2 a bottle of champaing and 6 chocolate covered strawberries. The next one under adventure I believe was again near 400 and it included a 24hour car rental of some fancy car, with 100 km. Then there was another one around 400 in the pamper section that was a full body wrap, a thai massage and spa treatment.

Its true I picked up the most expensive one in each section, the prices ranged from 100-400, but that is not the point at all. What disturbed me is how these major purcases were put next to the cash with the chocolate bars and gum and tabloit magazines for those last min bordom percases while you wait in line. That romance and adventure could be marketed in a single 4 by 4 inche paper and cd slip. How it felt the next step would be a pill, red for passion, blue for adventure and yellow for relaxation. That these were gift ideas. As if 400 is something you buy at shoppers last min when you relize you forgot your partners birthday or your anniversary. How there is no real thought of what you the person would really like. Not to mention the max amount of time with all these was 24 hours. Maintaining that you can have a break from reality and still be back in time to read the sunday paper and ignore your family before going back to work and having your job suck out your life energy until once again you need to run to the 24 hours drug store to get your fix.