The Inconvenience Store
I have been fantasizing about a type of shop that I’m certain doesn’t exist; or if it does, it does so unintentionally (as the best things tend to). I speak of the inconvenience store.
I don’t think the inconvenience store is far off as a reality. The modern market exists to give us what we currently don’t already have, and right now we have convenience — effortless and instantaneous — in spades. What we do not have is the luxury of waiting, and of difficulty. We do not have the delight of looking all over for something; Amazon and Google Ads look all over for us, ready to impale us with tailored offers.
I am not unreasonable: like Amazon, you could get anything at the inconvenience store, if you were willing to pay for its delayed delivery. The delay would be in relation to your cashier’s perception of how badly you want the item. You would not be so much buying the item as much the delight in actually getting it. Let us say you wanted a special bottle of wine, but (secretly) with the emotional payload of it being temporarily lost en route, only to arrive just in time for your planned party: the inconvenience store would charge you a modest fee to order it and have it sent around the country, to arrive hours before you need it. You might tell them the sort of shoe you are looking for and for a slight upcharge, they could say they are out and direct you to other options, one of which you might come to prefer (but nothing is guaranteed; that would ruin the magic). You could download the latest music from the inconvenience store’s website, but the quality would be that of 8-tracks which have sat in a glove compartment through a long Ohio summer. Alternatively, you could order pristine MP3s and they would arrive by mail. Either way, you would enjoy them.
The best franchise locations would be able to provide services outside the store; they could delay your Uber, causing you to enjoy a beer at the corner café and admire the weather much as folks used to do when they missed trains or buses; they could secretly drain your cellphone’s battery when you are in a rush to go to a meeting downtown, and cause you to wander about town, gazing at street names with need and fondness like a man discovering the stars. They might steal cellphones altogether. The inconvenience store would restore the lost luxuries of the 20th century.
Perhaps the greatest service an inconvenience store could offer would be simply not having your desired purchase or service at all, thus saving you the money and making you a more self-sufficient individual, aware of the true and minimal extent of his or her needs. They could do so for a flat percentage rate of the original item’s price, ensuring their workers’ salaries while improving your virtue. While your friends debase themselves in Black Friday orgies, you could walk with moral superiority into the inconvenience store, secure in the knowledge of what you won’t be walking out with.
As far as I know, the inconvenience store bubbles up here and there in the un-optimized corners of the world, but it is getting rarer. A few months ago I attempted to buy pillow sheets and spent ten minutes at the counter, trying to give the elderly saleslady my email in order to receive a coupon. After correcting her several times, I finally let her input mathewthumaseli@gmail.com into her computer, a victorious grin on her face as she took 20% off. The ability to have signed in with Google would have deprived me of this human moment, this quiet victory against the cold efficiency which would have relegated this woman to an old persons’ home. When I returned weeks later, I saw a board advertising that this department store now served as a pickup point for Amazon packages, a service for the “increased convenience” of customers. I mourned that sign. I would have paid 20% more on every order to have ensured that Amazon packages could not have been picked up there, maybe burned there only. But it was too late. Still, it is this growing unfulfilled need which could propel the inconvenience store into real viability — when the last elderly saleslady, the last overly talkative waitress, the last slow-going delivery truck have all been swept into the sea.
In the meantime, I anticipate needing a few new shirts this summer. I had better start shopping for them now.
