“Hello there, can I help you with anything today?”

Words we’re all to used to hearing. Perhaps some of us are used to saying them too. It’s a basic script that those in the marketing industry use. It may not be laid out on your first day, but you’ll start finding yourself using the same phrases and terms constantly throughout the day. When working at a children’s toy store (I won’t name which as this is online) I found myself using the term ‘Hiya guys, and hello to you [the child], what’s your name?’ quickly followed by ‘Is this [toy] for you? Oh yes, I love this one, this one is my favourite’ regardless of whether it actually was my favourite, or I thought it looked like a fluffy lump of feces.
It’s become almost like a ritual.
What if that ritual didn’t exist? Imagine being a “Customer” walking into a (site specific) store, up to the till, only to be greeted with ‘Just these please’ as who you previously thought was the shop attendant drops a sandwich and a newspaper on the desk. A simple scientific experiment of human reaction, if you will.

“I’m gonna’ pop some tags, only got twenty dollars in my pocket…”

Retail therapy is an odd yet charming concept. The idea that one can go through a simple bad day, heartbreak, or bad news and fix it with a new pair of shoes that you can’t really afford but “to hell with it! I deserve it.” I’m one of those dangerous impulse buyers. If I’m in a bad mood I can walk around any store and spend anything from 20 to 70 quid on stuff I don’t really need nor particularly want. I find myself in toys r us after a bad breakup buying 5 boxes of Lego just to keep myself happy for the evening. I don’t know why I would think that would work. Little bits of plastic in replacement for emotion? Ridiculous. But… imagine if shops sold actual emotions? I don’t mean you pay some little old lady to tell you an uplifting anecdote from her past to liven your mood. I mean somewhere between the drug dealers in Doctor Who’s Gridlock and the ever famous ‘Drink Me’ potions from Alice in wonderland. Shelves upon shelves of ‘Happy’, ‘Sad’, ‘Love’, ‘Anger’ and so on. Would it be the cure for all humankind, or the beginning of its decline? We already have the monstrosity of date rape drugs; imagine getting drugged with ‘love’. You could even slip a bit of ‘generous’ to your mean boss who won’t give you that pay-rise.

In a time where the phrase ‘retail therapy’ is thrown around between varying levels of need, how far would people be willing to go to feel just that little bit happier?