I will rip your head off and shit down your neck, Barnes and Noble!

You heard me right you commie bastards!

It’s real convenient how you go and build a four story bookstore in the middle of Manhatten and put the cafe on the top floor.

Let’s examine a hypo-fucking-thetical situation for a moment, fartknockers. Say a, uhhh, friend of mine, we’ll call him odeirf, just wanted a cup of coffee and a muffin?

Ah ha! Odeirf says to himself, I’ll just march into that Barnes and Noble there!

But poor odeirf didn’t know what B&N had in store for him. Hmmmm, odeirf wonders to himself, I wonder where the cafe is? Oh, the sign says it’s on the fourth floor. Okie dokie. And look at this! All the up escalators are directly in front of one another, making my ascension trivial! How convenient!

But then he reached the top. While waiting on line to get his refreshments, he notices the new Linux Journal is on display at the newsstand, conveniently placed next to the line. Well he has to read it, of course.

So he pays for his coffee and muffin, and he decides to leave. Of course, the only way out is on the ground floor. Where’s the down escalator? Ahhh, all the way over-fucking-there!

And what’s this! The next down escalator, unlike the up-escalators, is not directly in front of this one, but all the way accross the store! Forcing poor odeirf to walk through a veritable jungle of bookshelves and merchandise to get to the next level down!

But it gets worse!

What does odeirf stumble upon on his arduous journey to the next escalator? Why, the computer section, and a brand new PHP reference is on display! Well, I’ll be a monkey’s red-haired retarded stepchild, odeirf needs a PHP reference!

Ah ha! The next escalator. Drops odeirf right smack-dab in the middle of the Classics section. Feh, odeirf mutters to himself, I don’t need no stinkin’ classics.

Until he sees, standing proudly on display, a beautiful hardbound anthology of the works of Emily Dickenson, complete with gold bordered pages and a little ribbon to use as a bookmark. Sold.

Well, after crawling through mountainous terrain and navigating jungle swamps, odeirf has reached the final and last escalator. The one that deposits him, again, mighty conveniently, in front of the cashier.

Odeirf pauses to collect himself and form a strategy. I’ll just go pay for what I have, and walk out the door. The cashier is right in front of me. OK.

Little did he know that the line for the cashier is surrounded on both sides by books, and odeirf quickly found himself surrounded, his left flank threatened by Bill O’Reilly’s new work, The O’Reilly Factor.

Odeirf happens to be a fan of Bill O’Reilly. And then there’s that new DVD release of The Abyss.

Finally, the cashier awaits me!

1 Magazine: $6.50
1 Big red PHP reference book: $38.00
1 O’Reilly Factor: $26.00
1 The Abyss $24.00
1 coffee and muffin: $7.56

Intended total: $7.56
Actual total: $102.06

Difference: $94.50

Well Jesus H Christ on a candy cross with sugar on top! Holy jumpin’ crackwhores, batman! Those rat bastard, slime bucket, bitch-fucking, brick-shitting, cumbags suckered me…errr…I mean odeirf, into paying more than $94.49 more than he intended!

In conclusion, I think those unclefucking cum receptacles should die a slow, tortuous death involving fire, acupuncture, verbal humiliation, and Janet Reno.

Ummmm, friedo, or odeirf, if you’d prefer, have simply walked right into the Perfect Retail Trap. See, they know what’s popular, and they put those items in high-traffic areas, where people are likely to see them.

Consider this. The Minneapolis store has two floors, and is ridiculously convenient. I went to browse and get coffee at lunch one day and came back with a Gray’s Anatomy, a copy of a reference book on radiological and laboratory tests, and a medical abbreviation book. Over fifty dollars later, I had my coffee.

They know us too well.

Robin

As a former employee of B&N, allow me to add this:
MWAHAHA!

In regards to “Retail Traps” I once worked in a grocery store that had a bakery. I got to read the industry magazines, and remember one item keyed to the bakers. You were supposed to have the ovens working when the most traffic was in the store. They knew the smell was a lure to customers. Don’t see any harm in it. If I owned a B&N franchise I would do what the Manhattan one did.

The hell with the books. You paid $7.56 for a frigging cup of coffee and a muffin? I don’t know whether to be appalled at B&N for charging that much or to just laugh at you for paying it.

Can anyone verify that this concept of “consumer confusion” was started by Bloomingdales back in the 1960’s-70’s? My sister worked at one at that time, and I remember feeling as though I had to negotiate a maze to get to her in the restaurant.

Personally, I try very hard not to step foot in a Barnes and Noble. That is, I am one of those people who resents it when a corporate monolith attempts to reduce the entire world’s concept of a bookstore to a chain of oh-so-tastefully-decorated clones. Everytime I check out a Barnes and Noble in a city I’ve never visited before (only to find that I might as well never have gotten on the plane) I feel the sum of human diversity diminishing by the second.

Actually, for the same reason, I also try to avoid Starbuck’s; but the bastards have been so successful in putting independent cafes out of business that it’s often the only game in town. In any case, the worse damage they can do to you at Starbuck’s is tempting you with chic earthenware, the local newspaper, and some not-half-bad chocolate bars. As the first does nothing for me, and the second and third won’t set me back too far, I find Starbuck’s a much cheaper corporate-sell-out experience than Barnes and Noble’s.

Cup of Coffee and Muffin: $7.56

Stuff you didn’t plan on buying but did: 94.50

Being swindled by the tricky placement of a store to buy, buy, buy!: Priceless.

:D:D:D:D:D:D
Someone had to say it.

The coffee shops in our local B&N’s are Starbucks. YMMV

You think that’s bad? Have you ever been to a casino?

I believe it’s actually impossible to find your way out of a casino. If you do manage to find your way to a door, you are merely teleported back into the bowels of the slots.

Sue- if it actually was impossible to find your way out of a casino, I wouldn’t be able to post this post. I in fact wouldn’t be working at the Flamingo Hilton. I’d be at the skanky old El Cortez because I got lost and couldn’t find the door.

I find my way into and out of casinos on a regular basis. I use the craps tables as my point of orientation. Of course,I live in Las Vegas, and I’m a craps dealer, so I get lots of practice. I can even go into a casino, eat at the restaraunt and find my way out again without so much as putting a single quarter into a single slot machine.

Actually, I do play slots sometimes if I’m really really really bored. I made the discovery shortly after moving here that the slot machines at bars are actually useful. You can put a dollar in, play a quarter at a time and get a drink comped. I’ve had as many as six drinks for two dollars of slot play, and won just enough money to leave the bartender a decent tip…

OK, so much for the hijack. Friedo, I think I know what your problem is. It’s the same problem I have. You’re a book freak. An illiterate goon would have no problem navigating through Barnes and Noble without buying a whole lotta books. Me, I can go into just about any retail establishment that has a restaraunt or snack bar and not buy a bunch of stuff, but not a bookstore. There’s something so seductive about the printed word…

When I want a cup of caffeine, I throw 2-3 teaspoons of Folgers instant into a cup and follow it with some hot water.

Tastes gnarly, but its better than paying $3 at starbucks (and it gets my heart rate up! ).

What I hate is how they put all that candy and other shit kids like in the one place in the grocery store where you HAVE to stand still for a while. It fucking sucks when you have a whiney hyperactive 5-year old begging for gum, tic-tacs, whatever catches her eye, while you wait in line forever to pay for your $170 worth of groceries. If it was K-Mart I’d just smack her, but I don’t think you are allowed to hit your kids anywhere else.

I think I’d rather carry a themos of gasoline to work.
Then again, we’ve got tons of good coffeeshops around here; they’re just not in the strip malls.
:vomit smilie:

Fortunately, I don’t drink coffee and Starbuck’s makes a revolting cup of tea. Unfortunately, they’ve been multiplying like cockroachs around London, putting out of business a lot of the smaller cafes that do make a decent cup of tea.

[Cappuccino’s Paradox: Halfway between any given starting point and any given Starbucks will be another Starbucks. And halfway between your starting point and that Starbucks will be another Starbucks; and so on…]

Oh and friedo…can I interest you in a book on “Developing your Willpower” – only $49.95… heh heh heh…

Them thar illiterats got the right idea. They git there coffee from a greasy spoon and avoid all that readin’ and spending’ in them fancy bookstores.

Of course, I fucking hate how they put the rack of “Big Juggs” and “Barely Legal” right where I have to pass it on my way to get my 40-ouncer of Bud Ice. Cripes, I can’t get out of the convenience store without spending an extra $20. And those lottery tickets by the cashier! Boom, there goes the $50 my wife gave me to pick up some formula and diapers for the twins, and Dad’s blood pressure medication.

Oh come on, stores have been doing stuff like this for years. Ever notice how the colorful, enticing produce is the first thing you see when you enter a supermarket? How the meat and the dairy cases are waaaaaay in the back, at opposite ends? They wanna make you cross lots of real estate, and they know just about everyone buys milk when they go to the store, so they make it inconvenient.

You have been suckered by an ingenious layout.

How much was the beautiful hardbound anthology of the works of Emily Dickinson, complete with gold bordered pages?

Oh, and unless they’re conjoined twins, you would shit down Barnes and Noble’s necks, plural.

Mercutio’s comment:

…was of course in no way intended to be a parody of a certain credit card company’s similar series of advertisements, about parodies of which they have gotten quite litigious lately…
(There, Ed; you’re covered. Send the money the usual way.)
:smiley:

Well, shit. I forgot about that. That, amazingly, was only $14.00