I had an incredible experience shopping for supplies and program upgrades to get me started on this assignment. I use the word incredible because 'horrible' still doesn't sit too well with me. I guess by now I should be used to electronic supply stores but nothing out there prepares one for the mind-blowing experience of entering another dimension like Fry's Electronic Super-mart. I found it to be too imposing for my tastes and more than huge; it is disgustingly enormous and overwhelming. The enormity of the store and the hoards of people scurrying up and down the aisle seemingly looking for something but finding nothing confused me. They added to the confusion by congregating around middle aisle 'specials', feeling, smelling and playing with remote 'everything', more especially the remote cars. (My grandson used to call them 'mokajo's' and for a long time I thought that was a special toy until I grew up and he explained them to me.)

I asked a roving salesman, there were a lot of them, where I could find floppy disks and a Windows 98 Upgrade. He pointed to the back of the store, which I quickly surveyed was at least a quarter of a mile walk, for the disks and shrugged his shoulders about the Upgrade. I ran the quarter mile in less than record time; the hoards of people in the aisles slowed me down. I found my disks tucked in an isle off the computer/printer circle of hallowed floor space known as the 'money pit'. That makes sense. The best buy, for me, was the packet of 50 for $17.99; it included a $15.00 rebate, which translated to $0.06 each. O.K., I buy that!

Three narrow aisles over, to the left and one eighth of a mile back towards the front of this cavernous depot was the subdivision called 'software', another 'cash cow' abyss. There were unending shelves of these wares, on almost every conceivable subject, jammed together and all dressed in 'come hither and buy me' wrappings. All the images and colors blended like a painter's practice canvas; it was hard to ferret out what I wanted. I thought that I should put the salesman, who was standing next to me to work; he looked like he was falling asleep in spite of all the activity around him.

"Excuse me," I apologized meekly, hoping that I hadn't disturbed his meditations; he blinked his eyes rapidly as he emerged from his neverland and I faintly detected an annoyance on his part that there were customers in his department to annoy him. "I can't find Windows 98 Upgrade number two." I said in English. He quickly scanned the shelves; he seemed to know his stock on hand.

"I am sorry," he said, politely, "But we don't have it."

"Perhaps in the back stock room?" I suggested, hopefully.

"No, if it's not here, on the shelf, then we don't have it," he assured me.

He seemed annoyingly insistent and I assumed that he meant that there was no such thing as a 'back stock room'. I also couldn't believe that Bill Gates would allow "Fry's" to be without any one of his products visible on the shelves for one split-second. I am not one to give up so I persisted.

"I see a blue box over there that says "Windows 98 Upgrade -- Second Edition." Is that the same as upgrade number two?" I asked.

"Gee, I don't know -- could be. You can try it." I had no doubts that he was sincere.

I took it. The price was $84.95. O.K., that's what I had expected to pay, more or less, be-cause that's what Bill Gates was personally advertising it for. He seems to be attached to that magic retail number; it has made him wretchedly rich beyond anyone's imagination, including his.

By this time, I'd had enough; I was ready to check out. My last eighth mile to the cashier was cut short by a long line of people waiting to file into a large room that had only one opening with a large sign over it, "Cashiers". I didn't dare queue up before peeking into the room; this was my first experience with segregated cashiers. There was at least thirty check out stations, ten of which were open. I pride myself on being a quick study and it took me just a matter of seconds to figure out that ten cashiers could not service at least fifty people queued up, with carts filled to the brims, anytime soon. I calculated my time waiting, times my hourly rate if I were working instead of waiting and the answer told me to get out of there fast. I left the merchandise with another handy salesman who was standing in the aisle; hands behind his back, happily watching the patrons play with mechanized dolls.

Now ---- as a non-buying patron, getting out of that masonry structure was a whole other experience. Exits, except through the cashier's rooms were non-existent; it reminded me of the cashier's cages in Las Vegas -- money goes one way in and no way out. I was reduced to literally begging my way out of the store.

On the way back to the office, I decided to give Staples a try even though my mood was less than congenial. I found a pack of disks, 30 for $10.97 that included a $10.00 rebate, which equaled about $0.03 per disk, so I grabbed it! The Windows update was in plain view; it was packaged with a Music CD and one free month of MSN Internet access (ho-hum) at $89.97, five dollars more than Fry's. There were three cashiers open and only one person on line in front of me. As the cashier rang me up, I told her about my Fry's experience; she was more than sympathetic. She thanked me for shopping Staples and informed me that I had a five-dollar rebate due me if I could get a voucher from Fry's.

"We won't be undersold," she declared.

I left the store with my usual happy mood restored, my faith reinforced that personalized customer service should be part of the 'retail game' and a vow under my breath; never walk into the mouth of the Fry's Dragon again.

In conclusion: This illustrates the community shopping theory; your local merchant can be competitive. It also begs the question on a larger scale. Why is it that here in Los Angeles we have a Staples Sports Center and not a Fry's Sports Center?

EDITOR'S NOTE:
Chuck Odessa is our roaming, contributing editor. In the next few months, he will be reporting on what snipes at his conscious and what gripes his soul.