Petty Resentment

We could not agree more with Bradford Senning and Zachary Neal's heart-rending lamentations over the ASUA's cruel and unusual customer service practices. As prospective Barnes and Noble shareholders, we encourage such sentiment. Of course, we know of the superior accouterments offered by Barnes and Noble megastores. Rather than wasting their profits on University of Arizona students (in the form of wages for student jobs, academic scholarships and funding for student clubs and organizations), Barnes and Noble reinvests in their own infrastructure, and we consumers reap the benefit. Did you know that there was a dark time when bookstores did not sell espresso? In those heathen times, shopping at a bookstore was not a cross-marketed, multi-media experience, but involved only the mere buying of books.

Thanks to Barnes and Noble's corporate wisdom, books themselves are now completely secondary to the book-buying experience as a whole. So of course the books can be bought and returned at the consumer's whim; because selling books is not their primary concern. Their far-sighted organization is instead concerned with vending a particular attitude, which Bradford and Zachary so laudably display. This attitude, that convenience is more important than substance, that the "customer is always right" (as long as he is happily consuming), assures that consumers will continue to feel that special gratification that today, only shopping can provide: the assurance that the individual consumer's whims can be appeased instantly, and that these whims are, in fact, his unique and natural desires, the very yearnings that make him the individual that he knows himself to be.

No wonder Zachary and Bradford are so upset! The despots at ASUA are not only withholding their refund, but they are also denying the essence of their being. If ASUA will not bend to Zachary and Bradford's will, then Zachary and Bradford cannot feel like powerful, autonomous individuals in our free society.

Barnes and Noble, on the other hand, knows that gratifying the petty caprices of their customers is actually a subtle (and profitable) form of coercion. Like sugar-mad 8-year- olds, we hustle back to Barnes and Noble and all their superstore cousins, to relish the sweet taste of power as we receive a refund on the book that didn't cooperate with our need to be flattered as readily as does the underpaid employee, from whom we demand our right to a free shot of vanilla in our lattes.

That's why we plan to invest in Barnes and Noble. For as long as Bradford, Zachary and their ilk are arguing for their consumer rights, and for bookstores that "don't suck," we can be certain that the value of our portfolios will continue to increase exponentially.

We pray that America will continue to subscribe to the twin duties of self-interest and petty resentment. As more and more Americans assume personal responsibility for preserving their own false consciousness, less money need be wasted on advertising (once sadly necessary to blur the lines between culture and commerce), and more money can pad the already fat wallets of the financiers, among whose number we one day hope to count ourselves.

Perhaps when our investments have ripened, we will build our own multi-techno entertainment-plex to sell ersatz feeling and pseudo-enlightenment. When that day comes, we will give Bradford, Zachary and the rest of the empowered consumers the opportunity to clean it at night for a subsistence wage, which they can then return to us when we re-open.

Robert Horning
English graduate student

Jesse Showalter
English Senior