America can be a wonderful place, especially when you're looking for a fresh lobster at three in the morning. Run out of brie for a midnight feast ? Just pop along to Big Star, and the world is your oyster. Or fresh lobster.
I fell in love with this leviathan of American consumerism as soon as it
swept away the old A&P near my home. It was soooo excessive. 30 different
packages of milk were available - low-fat, no-fat, a-bit-more-fat, chocolate-
flavoured, acidophilous, sterilised, one-pint, two-pint, half-gallon, one-
gallon, and all the permutations. So one day when I was getting my weekly
workout by walking all the way round the mix-n-match salad bar, I was
particularly annoyed to see a fat old businessman holding a lighted cigar in
the same hand that held his bowl, and dropping ash in half the salads. I was
about to say something withering about his smoking in a supermarket when I
realised that I'd never seen a no-smoking sign, and, ever aware that I was a
guest in a foreign culture (hard to forget, in fact), I held my tongue.
And in fact, as the number one producer of tobacco in the US, North Carolina did indeed
allow smoking in most shops. Still, as I left I noticed a pile of complaint forms
(sorry, suggestion forms), and returned one with the following letter :
"Dear Mr. Big-Star, I must congratulate you on the opening of your Chapel Hill
store. I do think it's very important that we small-town dwellers should share
the opportunity to buy fresh lobster 24 hours a day, and I have been delighted
that you've now made this possible. However, I do wonder about your smoking
policy. Don't you think that it would give you an edge over the competition if
we could shop in a healthy, smoke-free atmosphere ? I for one was discouraged
from browsing your salad bar today because of the unhealthy environment caused
by a reckless smoker. Yours etc."
I expected no reply (hence the tongue-in-cheek wording), but thought that I'd done my bit. However, a week later
I received the following :
"Dear Mr. Harris, thank you so much for your kind words, but we're sorry that
you're not completely satisfied with Big Star, and so have forwarded your
letter to head office." Hmm. Polite of them to acknowledge, I thought. Then a
week later I received the following from head office : "Dear Mr. Harris, thank
you so much for your kind words, but we're sorry that you're not completely
satisfied with Big Star, and so we would like to invite you to discuss your
problems with our managers over dinner at the Europa hotel on such-and-such a
date." Hmm. Free dinner, I thought, shame it coincides with my Tai-Chi class.
But then I realised that I was unlikely to be alone, and that they would
probably be trying to woo back everyone who had filled in a complaint form,
and so all the most obnoxious, mean-spirited and whingey people in Chapel Hill
would be there. That I couldn't miss. And did the Europa hotel know the
scrutiny their restaurant was going to be under, I wondered ?
So off I went, suitably early to get in a few complimentary cocktails before stationing myself on the corner of a square of tables set for about 50 people. The main course was a rather fine steak, and my neighbours were a couple of middle-aged ladies, one of whom eventually worked out that I wasn't from those parts, but was surprised to find that I was foriegn. "England ! Oh, so how do find life in the west ?". Bear in mind that we were on the east coast of the country. It was a political divide that I had apparently crossed.
Several courses and limitless wine later, the managers started oozing at us,
reminding us how very important we were too them, and how very distressed they
were that we were not entirely happy, but we must realise that it was hard to
keep everybody happy at the same time. And then they took our individual
grievances one-by-one. Mine was far and above the most reasonable. One
objected to the placing of structural elements of the building; most missed
some obscure product line that the simpering managers defensively but
reasonably pointed out would take up space currently occupied by more popular
items. My objection was very sensibly countered by the suggestion that they
would lose more customers than they would gain by a smoking ban, but they
agreed to placing 50 "Please do not smoke" signs around the store. Fair enough.
Only once did the suits lose their cool, and that was with a displaced
New-Yorker who couldn't believe that they didn't stock the 10oz packets of
spoon-sized shredded wheat. "Don't we sir ? I thought we had the whole range
of that product ? Look, we have the 24oz, the 18oz, the 12oz, the 8oz. Oh."
"So are you going to stock it ?"
"Well, I doubt if they have such fine divisions..."
"They have 10oz in New York"
"But really sir ! We have 15000 product lines, FOUR different sizes of spoon-
sized shredded wheat. I think it would be a little unreasonble to expect us to
stop some other line in order to make space for the 10oz packets."
"I have coupons for 5c off the 10oz size"
Things deteriorated a little after that and I forget the details, but I
suspect they quietly bought the coupons off him for a good price.
It was all definitely worth missing my Tai Chi for.
© Mark Harris 1997