Popeye's Grocery Store Coercion: subliminal slavery and mind control

Popeye's Grocery Store Coercion: subliminal slavery and mind control

Going to the grocery store and paying attention can lead to a bit of frustration and confusion. If you have half a brain, know the value of a dollar, and don't like to be played for a sucker, the experience might make your blood pressure rise. How would Popeye react?

How many of us have seen meat on sale in that special bin, with a sticker on a sticker to indicate it is discounted, and found it to be the exact same price on the regular meat rack? What about the price of roses doubling during a holiday, or a sign that says "dollar off", and you find out the price was inflated for the sale.

You don't buy it, but most all would. You say to yourself, "My daddy didn't raise a fool!" and yet you continue plowing through the store, a market scientifically designed to separate you from your money, from end cap to end cap. What choice do you have? How can you win? You push the thought behind you, justifying it to be a business tactic... but deep inside you grow more and more resentful, and in the process, un-trusting.

As you stand back, it all starts to make sense. They care little or nothing about you as a shopper, but everything about their bottom line. When you realize this, you will start to wake up.

Suddenly you will trust nothing at face value. You see, there is a reason your grand-kids are crying for sugar-rich cereal, candy, and toys. It is all sold at their eye level... There around the cash register, while you are busy bagging your own groceries, they bet we are too weak and distracted to say no, and a candy bar is wrung up. Oh, you thought this happened by chance? 

Strange that you will find the glue, the paper napkins, the batteries... just the things you searched for all around the store, what you originally went for, within easy reach around the register. Is it possible they knew you would forget as you were bombarded from every side to buy anything else? Pretty smart of them? You bet. But what happens to trust when your eyes suddenly open to this? You start looking around, and you start to question.

Surely, they are not doing anything illegal. But you wonder: are they spraying something on the vegetables to keep them fresh? If that is true, is that good for me and my family? How about the meat? Seems like those rotisserie chickens don't move very fast. What keeps them fresh? It hits you: When something is on sale, is the date of expiration covered by the sale tag? And then, the more you look, the more you see. What are those red lights doing above the meat rack?

Is good business practice both an art-form and a scientific form of mind control? One might consider that, and speculate too just what the word, "subliminal," actually means. But isn't that what these methods of selling is all about?

The layout of the market is a case in point. To get to your main staples you have to go through a maze, something like a mouse going for the cheese, and along the way your eyes catch bright and sparkly items that get you thinking subconsciously. It is called subliminal advertising. Halloween candy displayed in September, Easter candy for Mardi Gras, are taking advantage of our most basic instincts, and we fall for it. They know you will nibble on those candies for months, and just before the holiday be back to restock. Very clever.

Huge chain markets spend a lot of money researching and testing, and they also have the ability to see exactly what your buying habits are. Ever wonder why they ask you for your phone number, and then tell you how much you saved by belonging to the club? Oh, you thought that was for your benefit? This information is valuable. Not just for their own knowledge, but for those advertising firms who purchase this from them. We are something akin to a gunny pig at times, mice running a maze in another, and sheep to be sheered too, and when you realize this your blood pressure will rise. What have we become?

Your senses are being used against you. Fans that pump the aroma of fresh-baked bread into the store, music designed to keep you walking slow and in a shopping mood: Your mind is so controlled you don't even hear the subtitle advertisements that fill your head with shopping ideas.

You are so frugal you actually cut out a coupon to buy a product you have never tried. Your effort was so time consuming and thought provoking you decided to buy it long before you compared price, or quality. Yes, you were set on a mission, and that mission had nothing to do with an original thought. That mission was instilled in you by them.

To win, you must reign in your bargain-hunter instincts, and use your conscious intellect, and that is not easy when you are hypnotized, mesmerized, and bamboozled.

Pause for a moment when you are pouring that little cup of freshly made Louisiana coffee that just happens to be your favorite, and ask the true reasons why it is there. Remember also, that the manager to the bag boy are only doing their job, and have little to do with company standards. If you are able, even for a moment, try to wake up from you subliminal indoctrination to see something lucidly, and point it out to the manager in a nice way. When you get home, however, call the main office and tell them you have figured out their tricks. They might seem shocked, in denial, and have a myriad of excuses. They know, however, that you are indeed their bottom line, and the possibility of losing that is their primary concern.

I think Popeye would take a stand...

 

I Can't stanz no more!

Author's note: A few years back while shopping for a television in Lafayette, I went to a well known department store. While considering the many varieties I noticed some little kids looking at nudity and suggestive dancing from six TVs high overhead. I asked to speak to the manager, and when I mentioned him my concerns he told me that those stations were approved by the "main office."

"Oh, the main office." I said. "So, you are not going to turn this off?"

"No," he said with a real glare of contempt.

"Well," I said. "I'm a very busy man, and really don't have time for this, but I'm going to clear my schedule, and make a prediction here. Within the week you will never be able to play these disgusting videos again, and most likely you will be out of a job."

He looked at me hard, seemingly embarrassed in front of his co-workers, and said, "Go for it."

I was wrong. It took over a month. But when I finally combined forces by email with friends, family, and their church groups, all that was played was Walt Disney theme songs and cartoons from that moment on. I got several letters of apology after that, with promises for change.

I went back periodically, but never bought a thing ever again. A year later Walt Disney was still playing, and Popeye was dancing with Oli girl.

The manager was unavailable to talk with me because he had been transferred. Did we have something to do with that? I hope so. A year later that company went out of business. Most probably, in retrospect, from the competition from another major player across the street. This disgusting immoral advertising ploy was used out of desperation for a positive bottom line, and I'd like to believe it contributed to their demise.

It might be the romantic in me, but I think we can all have a positive impact if we stand and unite. No righteous cause can lose. We should feel empathy for those who are caught up in the mechanics and the science that promotes business, but selling yourself to the company store is indeed slavery, and if you are doing wrong to keep your job, you should fall right along with them. You deserve it. A company who asks you to do wrong on their behalf, owns not only you, but your very soul as well.