Artisan Retail Experience

The handwritten sign on the Shop-Smart window read HELP NEEDED.

Max thought of it as a question.

He was unemployed. Certainly in need of assistance.

His life required direction.

Max pulled the sign down and walked inside.

# # #

The manager laid it out for him.

“Head Office is calling it the Artisan Retail Experience. The role would be customer facing. We’ve tested it with focus groups and crunched the numbers with consultants. What they’ve found is that self-service checkouts degrade the process of shopping. The initial thinking around automation was that it would not only cut costs but facilitate a more streamlined and pleasurable Shop-Smart visit for the consumer. Retail activity is intrinsic to human nature. Inspection, acquisition. Our genetic need to make highly personal choices. The act of providing. It’s that whole hunter/gatherer thing still wired into our brains. However, our research suggests there is a social aspect to it as well. There’s a certain desirable level of human interaction.”

The manager spoke in corporate Esperanto. Client retention and sales volumes.

He explained to Max how a team of cultural anthropologists worked with Shop-Smart on a narrative construction of the aisles and where best to position citrus fruit.

He gave Max a uniform and told him to show up next Monday.

The pay was low but dental insurance was included. Bus fare was on his dime.

# # #

Max was a natural. He would work weekends and extra shifts, regaling customers with earnest conversation and tailored factoids as he rang up and bagged groceries. They loved it. Far from annoyance with the extended waiting time, many of them ignored the self-service checkouts and lined up for their turn. Saturday mornings would see a queue snaking through the store then out the entrance and around the block. Max enjoyed the job. His instinct for what these people wanted was downright mystical. He would discuss trivial matters with ease but could pivot into subjects as diverse as Ancient Greek history or the mating habits of Asian palm civets when the opportunity arose. Max would offer newlyweds practical advice and would ask after the children of older couples. His memory was eidetic. His charm was assured. Max could quote Springsteen lyrics and break down the themes of social conformity in the work of Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. People would camp outside the supermarket at night. The act of shopping became a pilgrimage of profound intensity, an event of life-affirming connection between souls.

# # #

All of which put the regional management of Shop-Smart in a bind. How long could Max feasibly remain in his current position as a cashier? They agreed to increase his salary and cushion it with quarterly performance-related bonuses, but this would never be enough. The only other option was to promote Max off the shop floor into a senior role where his talents would be wasted. In the end, a decision was made for them. The Head of Programming at a struggling cable station ducked into the store on a rainy Wednesday evening for a quart of milk and a pack of Marlboro Reds. Max ended up chatting with him for almost ninety minutes about The Rockford Files.

His fate was sealed.

# # #

Max had a late-night talk show that ran for six years. He played the role of a tirelessly suave raconteur and an attentive listener. The viewers invited him into their homes. Foreign dignitaries and music icons frequently appeared as guests. The ratings killed. Max inked endorsement deals with toothpaste companies and made cameos in blockbuster films. He was a brand ambassador for Tommy Hilfiger and a spokesperson for the World Wildlife Fund. He created generational wealth and fathered no children.

Did this success make him truly happy?

Evidently not, and gradually the cracks began to show. Ego, drugs, women. The flipside to innate human compassion is our frailty. One can never exist without the other. The audience is also a fickle mistress. Tastes changed. The world changed too. Conflict, famine, and the erosion of parliamentary democracy. Rising sea levels and religious persecution. It became cynical and darker. Empathy was outdated. Max never evolved. The ratings slipped. By the time Max lost his entire fortune to a baroquely structured Ponzi scheme and his accountant fled for Uruguay, it barely moved the needle on his psyche.

# # #

This was all a long time ago now. Max vanished for a while, wandering the country from one end to the other and sleeping in roadside chain motels. Then he went back to working retail. Back to the same Shop-Smart, where his old manager hired him on the spot and put him to work on the very same register where he’d started. There was some initial publicity and fanfare, the tone of it not unsimilar to travelling PT Barnum freakshows of yesteryear with their fire-eaters and Fiji mermaids. A lesser man may have found it undignified, but Max longed for the old routine. He craved simplicity. He wanted to be forgotten, and soon enough he was. There was the occasional lingering stare from a customer, his face at the edge of familiarity, but Max quickly settled into an anonymous existence. Each day was the same, ringing up groceries and making small talk with his regular customers. Each day provided moments of casual interaction, discreet synergies of connection that tethered him to other people. Discussions about nothing that ultimately went nowhere, but they meant everything to Max. It was in the quotidian that he had found the sublime. He still had fears and still felt doubts, but these only reinforced his belief that this was what it meant to live a genuine life.

Max lived alone as always, and each night he would return to his unfurnished studio apartment to recharge, carefully unscrewing the bolts in his torso and plugging into a bundled nest of power cables to download security patches and any vital operating system updates.

Saturday tomorrow. A double shift.

Max would weep tears of joy if he could.

BIO: Ron Shagmatt was born during the infamous New York City blackout of 1977, but on the other side of the planet in an oil exploration vessel anchored off the coast of Mozambique. He is a Circle K franchise owner, regional badminton champion, and an aspiring literary author. None of this may be true.