Outta Leftfield: Cyber Monday may put professional schleppers out of business
Published: Tuesday, November 30, 2010
By Mike Morsch
Executive Editor
Have I mentioned that I hate Yiddish words like "schlep" and "schmuck," etc? They might have been funny back when Mel Brooks was still making good movies, but they've fallen on hard times since then.
Schleppers beware: The primary role of the hapless husband — that of toting the bags on shopping excursions — is being threatened by this Cyber Monday business.
Come on. We covered the "husbands carry bags and push shopping carts" angle in his last column!
As one who has spent a lifetime perfecting the art of schlepping — especially during the holiday season — I have built what many consider to be an impressive resume in the craft: Vice President in Charge of Moping Around Looking for a Place to Sit Down at the Mall; Executive Director of Yawning and Napping; chief author of the pamphlet “How to Avoid Becoming Your Shopper’s Personal Coat Rack Outside the Fitting Room”; and Honorary Grand Pooh-bah of the Whining Husbands Hall of Fame.
I think Morsch has been reduced to two jokes: 1.) Men can't do anything; and 2.) Long made-up titles.
Why, because of my years of complaining to mall management about the hard benches, I am relatively certain that I am responsible for there being padded chairs and couches at Montgomery Mall for all the schlepping husbands. If I can only convince mall officials that there is a critical need for big-screen televisions and refrigerators stocked with cold adult beverages to complement the padded furniture, then the schlepper’s shopping experience would be complete.
Is this going to be like his "Rule No.1" post - will he just use the word "schlep" constantly and expect it to be amusing?
But now, for the past five years or so, Cyber Monday has all but eliminated the need for professional schleppers,
Yep, looks like he will.
just as we were getting used to the comfy chairs. Instead of running after wide-eyed wives lugging massive purses filled with coupons from store to store, we have been reduced to Wine Serving Interns as the wives sit at home on the couch, laptops at the ready, ordering our socks and undershorts online. (Online undershorts. Tell me those won’t ride up.)
Why is "Wine Serving Interns" capitalized? And why is there no hyphen between "wine" and "serving"? And why does he have to say "undershorts" not once but twice?
And besides, sitting down and trying to get comfortable has always been the schlepper’s bailiwick. There is no time for the shoppers to sit comfortably and relax; they must sprint from sale to sale throwing filled shopping bags over their shoulders for us to catch.
Haw haw haw. "Bailiwick." Funny word.
Cyber Monday — the term used by online retailers — is the Monday after “Black Friday” and generally recognized at the beginning of the online holiday shopping season. (Maybe there ought to be a ceremonial throwing out of the first shopping bag or something.)
This counts as an unnecessary baseball reference. For the record, I checked Wikipedia, but for once in his life Morsch did NOT steal this paragraph from them.
Media estimates predicted a record 106.9 million Americans would shop online Monday. That’s a lot of potential schleppers that could be out of work this holiday season. I do hope that mall management doesn’t see that figure and decide to reduce the number of comfy chairs at the mall. We fought long and hard for that advancement.
Thank goodness he specified "comfy chairs at the mall". I would have thought that "mall management" might have reduced the number of chairs in, say, the hospital.
One theory on why online sales increase on Cyber Monday is that people see items in malls over the weekend — not the schleppers, of course; we are busy napping and see very little of anything at the mall —
What do you want to bet that 100% of schleppers are MEN? Because there has never been a lazy woman. Not ever.
then wait until Monday when they can compare prices, avoid long lines at the checkout counter and take advantage of things like free shipping.
Free shipping? Phooey. Free schlepping is much more cost-effective than any free shipping deal could be.
What? This doesn't even make any sense.
Besides, where’s the sport in online shopping? See, one of the advantages that schleppers enjoy is that the more schlepping
Is he doing this on purpose? Is he testing just how poorly he can write something and still have it published?
and sitting we do at the mall, the less time we have for home improvement projects. If the professional shoppers in our life can shop from the convenience of their own couches, there will be nothing for us to schlep. I will end up painting the bathroom every other weekend, depending of course on which color paint is on sale online.
I hate this. I really do.
Another disadvantage I see to Cyber Monday shopping has to do with the number of goofs who camp outside retail stores for three days prior to Black Friday just to save a few bucks on a blender.
I'm looking forward to seeing how he connects the two ideas.
One of the reasons there are very few professional schleppers in this crowd is because there is section in the Professional Schleppers Handbook that clearly states: “Professional schleppers will not, under any circumstances, camp outside in late November and freeze our patooties off in the hopes that TV reporters who have no real news to report are doing Black Friday Idiocy stories and will stick our sorry mugs on the television.” (I’m paraphrasing, of course.)
The word "schlep" is not funny when it's used once. What makes anyone think that it will be funny when you use it so many times in the same column? "Patooties" isn't funny either.
I would hate to see the schleppers — their usefulness curtailed at the malls because of the increased online shopping — being forced to look for schlepping opportunities amongst the overnight camping crowd.
Jeez Louise would you stop already?!? This one is seriously starting to annoy me.
We schleppers make a clear distinction between dozing off in the comfy chairs inside the heated mall and trying to grab a quick nap in freezing temperatures on a retail store’s parking lot three days before the big blender sale.
Alright, we have variations on the word "schlep" and references to comfy chairs at the mall. I find more interesting column topics lodged in my stool.
So all you professional shoppers just cut it out with this online shopping stuff. Get off the couch and get a little exercise. Go out to the mall and run around like your hair is on fire.
And be sure to wake the professional schleppers when it’s time to go home and not paint the bathroom.
He used "schlep," or a variation on it, TWENTY times in this column. By the way, did you know that "schlep" can be defined as "someone or something that is tedious, slow, or awkward"? I think that's the perfect fit for this column and its author.
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