Less Pressure
Yesterday I had two different consumer experiences.
In the morning I enjoyed another leap ahead in time as we sold our first car in over 20 years. Living in Harlem means we don’t really need a car for personal use, but my wife needed one for work for a couple of years. Once we were done with it, we stressed about selling it.
Thanks to Sue Bird and Steph Curry, I visited the world wide web and got quotes in an instant. We scheduled appointments within a week based on the best offers and never made it past the second appointment because Car Max’s online estimate and in-person appraisal were right on the nose.
The experience itself was exactly like the commercials that, oddly, our customer representative Leah had never seen (thanks algorithm). From the layout of the office to the ease of the transaction, I was floored by the simplicity.
On top of handling our individual sale, Leah fairly contrasted the working and customer experience of Car Max’s competitor Carvana because she’d worked there previously. Her insights were balanced and nuanced so I gained an appreciation for each company’s approach to their business model.
When the manager came by to confirm our sale I praised Leah’s customer service. In sixty seconds this manager complimented Leah’s work, explained how she’d been part of the opening of this particular office, broke down how the retailer entered the northeast region and how the network operated as a whole — before excusing himself to head to the next customer.
As excited as I was about selling a car in week, I was thrilled to be educated on a business and an industry that meant nothing to me eight days earlier.
In the year 2023 I understand that this euphoric capitalistic adventure could be soon sullied by some scandal in another week or an article on how athletes are forced into long term marketing deals that threaten their families, but I’ll enjoy this win because I live in the present.
A few hours later we found ourselves running suburban errands — in our sons’ car — because we were in New Jersey.
As unremarkable as those adventures might have been, I was unnerved by a seemingly simple recurring merchandising reality.
The first day of September meant that the Halloween cheer was in excess. Both Home Depot and CVS had everything you needed to make this year the scariest fun you could hope for — from the bags of candy you’ll dig into well before your kids get their costumes on to the Tesla-sized light-up inflatable haunted Mickey Mouse for your front yard.
While most people would have taken that opportunity to think about what costume they’d be wearing to a fun party with friends and family, my mind immediately began to add up the billions of hours of labor needed to strategize, plan, design, develop, produce, ship, inventory, market and merchandise all of this regalia for improved year-to-year margins on a shortened calendar.
Boo!
The calm before the storm is that all of this was happening during a travel holiday conveniently coinciding with back-to-school festivities.
Scared, yet?
The kicker is that all of this is just the preseason for the Black Friday through Cyber Monday celebration that fuels a higher percentage of commerce than any economist would program into any functioning society.
Imagine telling Sue Bird and Steph Curry to wait until 4 minutes to go in the game before handing out 4 assists or scoring 24 points of their career season averages of 6 assists and 29 points — respectively.
Now imagine asking — sorry, expecting them to do this every game.
That’s how we manage a large chunk of our $600B annual economy, almost 6% of GDP.
I get that there are hurricanes caused by carcinogenic wastes while racist domestic terrorists are efficiently consumed by AI driven social media algorithms.
But none of those evils were staring me down in a Bergen County CVS on a pleasant Saturday afternoon.
Okay, of course they were, but those are other stories.
As I gained enough composure to use an 8 month old Visa gift card from — insert gasp here — Christmas, I wondered if there could be a behavioral shift in our collective gifting and thus, develop purchasing experiences that might alleviate the single quarter stress in the system.
We often ridicule capitalism for introducing Santa induced joy in October because that’s not how religion works, but they are simply trying to spread out Sue’s assists and Steph’s points so that their playing time can be balanced.
Okay, that’s not really true. Coach Capitalism probably wants Sue and Steph to put up 4 dimes and 24 points in the first 3 quarters AND in the last quarter because 4 & 24 every quarter would be unthinkable unless you were a 2021 backed start up looking for an IPO.
The point is that retail’s tether to a religious holiday’s gift giving experience may have gone a bit too far. You could argue that the dystopian carnage of shoppers crushing each other at midnight for a plastic doll was a worse optic, but spreading the sadness online didn’t make it go away.
This may sound a little like Coach Capitalism (Go Buy Buttons!) but I’d encourage everyone to spread their gift giving year round. That retailer’s pressure to make numbers every year isn’t as bad as a parent’s pressure to find and pay for toys, games, sneakers and concert tickets over two weeks.
The pressure on everyone who scrolls increases as the smell of pumpkin spice fills minivans of America.
Gifting loved ones throughout the year for no reason other than you care may reduce your overall stress — emotionally and financially.
I’m privileged enough to send random people shoes just because they made me smile on Elon Zuckerberg’s Tiktopia. Random times on random days. Tomorrow isn’t promised so why not today.
Perhaps you can make this lift easier by asking others not to overindulge on gifts for you in December. Your birthday is just as reasonable a date to celebrate you, so load up then. There are countless other holidays where gifting could have meaning.
And is just as capitalistic.
Valentines is in the vicinity but we can definitely do better than mattresses on Presidents Day.
I think back to my magical Car Max experience and wonder how many of the folks in there needed that estimate to work in their favor to make Christmas magical this year. The pressures that we all feel in some way can be more crippling to some of us. Turning down the universal demands to hit calendar and budget may ease a lot of hearts.
The pressure to gift and gift high won’t go away. People like nice things I’m told.
But the need to show up financially when you might not be ready to do so doesn’t need to happen every year for everybody at the same time.
My random assumption is that if you are reading this you are privileged enough to give a few gifts and/or be the receiver of your fair share. Celebrating others throughout the year and requesting others to do less gifting to you during the holidays is how larger behavioral shifts begin. Be the change blah blah blah.
There will be more time to talk about shopping at the Restore Store and donating time as a gift, but for now, let’s just focus on the shopping calendar.
Let Sue hand out 8 assists in the 4th on a magical playoff night because it’s magical. Steph can put up 28 in a fourth quarter once in his career because it’s special.
Not every game.
With that pressure out of the way we can all enjoy our back-to-school shopping in peace.
Good things.
