August 3, 2008

Irony

Getting free coupons to shop in inflationary times is almost like getting twice the mileage from your car! Imagine my happiness when my mother presented me gift vouchers worth Rs. 1500 that could be redeemed at a fancy lifestyle store. Now you might argue that what hell could come in that much money but in my case this retail adventure could end up meaning clothes for an entire season.

I'm not your average Project Runway reject but I can dress. No. I'm not really the white T-Shirt and blue jeans kinda guy. In any case anything white in this day and age isn’t a god idea! I’m usually the plain round neck t shirt and jeans kind of person. So fifteen hundred bucks transform into a lot of t shirts.

In case you have been closely following NASA’s Mars odyssey, you’d have noticed the SALE signs on every shop. One thing I can’t fathom and have previously blogged about as well, is why the hell people over price their products and then give a discount. This used to be the standard practice in Karol Bagh or Sarojini Nagar. It turns out that the notion of the world becoming a village is indeed true. I took my coupons and entered the domain of retail therapy. Imagine my utter surprise when everything was on sale. I managed to reach the joint in good time as it was the last day of the coupon’s validity. So far so good. But these coupons wouldn’t be effective on items on sale.

What?

So I searched the three floors of the shop to find something that would be (a) covered by the coupons and more importantly (b) be of any use to me! I looked at the men’s section; everything was on sale ranging from 10% to a whopping 80%! Off I went to the household section. Different floor, same results. I searched every where and nothing had escaped the sale- lamp shades, soaps, perfumes, sunglasses, baby diapers, cutlery, you name it and the darn thing was on sale.

I love a challenge and but this was stupid. Being an average middle class Indian I just could let go of the free coupons. Finally I did manage to buy goods worth Rs. 1473/- but if anyone saw what ultimately accompanied me out of the shop, they’d not be able to understand anything about the pattern. Three days into it and I'm still thinking how the hell does one pick up a travel kit with a neck pillow and eye patch, three bars of organic soap, a set of three socks, a navy blue crew T-Shirt and a bread baking dish!
What a double whammy these free coupons turned out to be....

A traffic jam when you're already late
A no-smoking sign on your cigarette break
It's like ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife
It's meeting the man of my dreams
And then meeting his beautiful wife
And isn't it ironic...dontcha think
A little too ironic...and yeah I really do think.

Ironic- Alanis Morissette

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