The House Always Wins: Part One
The House Always Wins: Part One
An Absurdist Exposé on The Supermarket Conspiracy that Will Change the Way You Shop Forever! - Smart Trollies: a Genius Invention or Something More Sinister?
Foreword
Something happened the last time I did my groceries. I walked into the building and realised that I was displaced in time, that my mind was simultaneously racing yet empty and that innumerable eyes were watching my every move. I was no longer merely doing the groceries; the groceries were somehow doing me. I became increasingly alarmed and confused as I stumbled through the aisles, inadvertently following some predetermined, focus-tested path. A corporate maze rife with insidious traps and contrived convenience. While always tedious, my weekly shop was now spiralling me into a frenzy of paranoia and impulse. Soon, my claustrophobic surroundings fractured like a broken watch face, revealing the mechanisms ticking within. Everything from the lights to the music to the displays subtly breached my subconscious desires and had me wanting to spend, spend, spend!
But my concern ultimately manifested as little more than a snarky though ineffectual self-awareness that did little to stem the flow of impulse purchases. I walked away from the Supermarket thinking I had somehow cracked the code... despite purchasing four discounted chocolate bars strategically placed beside the self-serve checkouts, where I had done most of the work for which this business is supposedly responsible.
Only later would I learn how drastically this insatiable corporate monstrosity was manipulating my actions and our entire society. I would discover, hiding in plain sight, an amorphous corporate entity that has spent decades stockpiling an arsenal of behavioural analytics, market research and psychological misdirection.
Of course, these practices are hardly unusual for any business thriving within the infinite growth-based, neoliberal marketplace. But, really, groceries? Yes, I soon learned that simply selling groceries was no longer this beast's primary purpose. No, selling particular cereals to select shoppers at precisely calibrated times and using that recycled data to corner every market possible while squeezing competitors into oblivion is now, apparently, synonymous with tinned tuna and lactose-free milk. What is the cost of blindly accepting these subterranean practices now burrowing into a once sacred area of our lives?
Throughout history, humans have surrounded eating with ceremony and reverence. Hunting, gathering and cooking may now take wildly different forms than before, but our cultural connection to our diets remains one of humanity's defining traits. When did grocery stores - small businesses supplying local communities - mutate into something I will call The Supermarket? When did capricious corporations like this begin gouging consumers on everything from the cost of living to their privacy to their autonomy? No wonder anxiety is on the rise. No wonder we are steadily severing our threadbare connections to nature, ourselves and others. For groceries!
Nevertheless, despite perpetuating consumer culture's most unsustainable practices, The Supermarket avoids serious scrutiny by disguising its exploitative and borderline extortionate tactics beneath a rustic, wholesome face, even appropriating the sacred rituals surrounding humanity's identity as a species. We must question The Supermarket's cynical manipulation of our base desires, as these practices reveal precisely why the grocery industrial complex has no business, well, doing business.
For example, while casinos incur community outrage and (tentative) political opposition, gambling is seen as an inherently seedy industry, existing in perverse dreamscapes on the fringes of society. Yet The Supermarket keeps shoppers shopping in the same way that the casino keeps gamblers gambling. This allows The Supermarket to hold our groceries hostage and effectively tighten its grip on everything from the economy to the environment.
Of course, The Supermarket did not just materialise fully formed and drooling over our trembling society. The economic conditions of the 1930s necessitated a bleak and somewhat nationalistic wholesale approach towards the sale of groceries, both of which linger in our peripheries today. But this caused us to lower our guard while raising our expectations in the interest of convenience and individuality. Slowly, commercialising individual tastes trained consumers to expect and demand year-round seasonal fruits without a single blemish. Faceless brands willing to cut production costs and sidestep ethical boundaries while maintaining a friendly smile soon devoured family-run corner stores. Plus, new and exciting technologies suddenly made the world seem a little more convenient and a whole lot more connected. But the corporations kept going. They used these supposedly convenient tools to hack our primal psychology and isolate us within their spheres, thus staining the fabric of society. This combination of economic pressure and commercial innovation forced the few surviving small-time grocers into consumerism's vicious cycle, instigating a bloodbath over our daily bread from which The Supermarket emerged as the default setting. Ultimately, The Supermarket trapped consumers within their own unrealistic expectations.
Nevertheless, consumers soon noticed that their purchases had ramifications far beyond their sphere. But by then, it was too late. The Supermarket's dominance was irrefutable. We were reduced to mere commodities with only the illusion of autonomy within its walls. But our daily bread should not be at the mercy of economic and environmental debts coming due, insidious automation, aggressive subliminal marketing, psychological manipulation, data retention, immense wealth inequality and the unbridled corporate greed that The Supermarket quite enthusiastically sustains.
The Supermarket is not a single entity but an array of highly competitive brands that have firmly established themselves through gladiatorial business tactics. And while there are other less bloodthirsty contenders, it has come down to a duopoly here in Australia. Given their similarities (and the legal implications of naming and shaming), I have grouped these brands under the umbrella term The Supermarket. But, make no mistake, regardless of the human skin stretched across their unknowable faces - contriving distinct personalities through promotions and slogans - they are all essentially the same. Each strives to psychologically premeditate and optimise behaviours with a contemptuous attitude towards their most vulnerable suppliers and competitors. Each perpetuates dietary diseases and unhealthy eating habits while espousing freshness and healthy living. Each relies on environmental unsustainability while pretending they are committed to the future. Each is heavily invested in invading consumers' privacy and eroding their legal protections while treating them as family. Each follows a paradoxical economic strategy that is simultaneously calamitous for their employees (both prospective and current) yet deeply self-destructive to their market position and, therefore, consumers' pockets.
In this regard, Big Tech is the apex predator. Yet, like any parasite, I would propose that The Supermarket is an invisible yet equally dangerous symptom of the underlying disease. While many consumers rightly fear Big Tech's steady consolidation of power, if these companies were to (finally) collapse beneath their own weight, society would likely tick on as before. Sadly, this is not the case with The Supermarket’s capricious overlords, who spoon-feed shareholders with one hand while offering crumbs to their customers with the other. Despite what we may think, we need groceries much more than we need Tiktok. The Supermarket needs to change. We need to change.
What follows is not a list of recommendations but an attempt to peel away The Supermarket's many faces and expose the relentless machinations grinding ravenously away beneath its otherwise welcoming disguise. While consumers are undoubtedly culpable in The Supermarket's insidious rise to power, our participation was hardly conscious and is certainly no longer consensual, regardless of how many terms and conditions we sign.
Given all this, I have decided to paint this polemic with surrealism and satire. Some of the interactions within are fantastically embellished, if not outright imaginary. Still, as far as I can tell, the factual content underlying every single one is nothing but the truth - aside from some obvious conjecture.
Most of what I learned while researching this piece required little more than a few button clicks, occasional phone calls to evasive representatives, candid conversations with employees and many, many visits to The Supermarket itself. In short, The Supermarket keeps its secrets out in the open because it knows consumers no longer have the strength to examine them as a whole.
Hopefully, this absurd adventure into The Supermarket's depths will cause consumers to pause while scanning the shelves and consider just how far we have come and how far we have given ourselves to fall.
Note
The House Always Wins was originally finished in 2020. However, a series of disinteresting yet infuriating events condemned this piece to publication purgatory. As such, readers will note no mention of the many vile ways that The Supermarket capitalised on, interfered with and exacerbated COVID-19 and the subsequent cost of living crisis. I plan to (eventually) write a follow-up addressing The Supermarket's role in these issues. Stay tuned.
The House Always Wins
"Some of the houses in town were showing signs of neglect. The park benches needed repair, the broken streets needed resurfacing. Signs of the times. But the supermarket did not change, except for the better. It was well-stocked, musical and bright. This was the key, it seemed to us. Everything was fine, would continue to be fine, would eventually get even better as long as the supermarket did not slip." - Don DeLillo, White Noise.
My journey begins in the car park. I have spent weeks studying The Supermarket's dubious practices and am finally ready to face the leviathan on equal footing. Nothing is going to come between me and my groceries. For once, a faceless corporation will not manipulate me into purchasing treats and trinkets. I fix my canvas bags to my shoulders like a soldier securing his ammunition belts and march towards the automatic doors. But before I can face my foe, The Supermarket springs the first of many ambushes and throws a clattering cattle car of trolleys in my path.
I watch the shrunken employee at the helm thread even more stray trolleys onto the steel string that seemingly stretches into the horizon. Each trolley the employee collects trails shredded catalogues, lettuce leaves and other scraps. The employee secures weak spots up and down the line while dodging the crawling traffic and panting against the stifling underground car park's toxic fumes.
Ping!
I shuffle aside as an elevator spews impatient shoppers through its doors. Wordlessly, grunting and huffing, they snatch trolleys from the employee like hyenas tearing carrion from a fresh carcass. I presume that the employee will be pleased. Fewer trolleys, surely, mean less work. But resignation settles on his shoulders. He collects the scattered remains and wanders away in search of more. Perhaps he knows that whatever trolleys he doesn't collect now will simply return later, that there will always be more trolleys to collect and that stray trolleys are the only certainty in his otherwise unpredictable universe.
Several third-party bicycle couriers zip by in rapid succession. I spin around and around like a coin refusing to settle. I feel light-headed. I stumble slightly before steadying myself against a pillar with a big G painted on its side. I'm on the ground floor, but I feel far from grounded. Couriers, car horns, clattering trolleys, screaming babies, shouting adults, indistinct industrial carnage. My vision quivers between the present and the future as the employee calculates his next move. Eventually, what is actually happening plays in tandem with what my research has told me is to come.
I blink.
As the years go by, The Supermarket increases the employee's workload by imperceptibly enlarging its shopping trolleys, thus incentivising excessive consumer spending. Meanwhile, aware that carry weights hinder impulse purchases, the Supermarket shrinks and eventually phases out its baskets entirely. Subsequently, every consumer who needs more than a literal handful of things will obliviously take and then fill an oversized trolley with crap they do not need. This is already happening.
I blink.
The drab car park returns. The trolley collector continues about his thankless business. Bustling jeans, blouses, activewear and work uniforms flicker beneath the fluorescent lights around him.
I blink again.
In the future once more, augmented humans wearing cyberpunk fashion fill the neon scene. The same employee, visibly ancient yet still wearing the same faded high-vis vest, is collecting a cross between trolleys and what looks like high-tech military equipment. Each still trails shredded catalogues, lettuce leaves and other scraps. Hold on?
I blink repeatedly.
Even further in time now, the employee disappears, but the sci-fi trolley keeps on trucking under its own autonomous steam. It seems The Supermarket has finally removed another inconvenient expense from its economic equation. One less employee. No doubt the stock soared, the shareholders cheered, the prices rose regardless of the saved labour fees and the employee’s family was judged by everyone involved in these decisions for suddenly needing welfare.
Indeed, The Supermarket envisions the same future as the libertarian tech giants with whom they are so closely associated. Soon, we will discuss how The Supermarket has been invading our innermost thoughts and how new and nefarious technologies allow it to analyse every facet of every consumer's behaviour once they step within its walls. Of course, this is all blanketed beneath a harmless veil of convenience and shopability. But for now, as my vision blinks between 2020 and the not-so-distant future, I notice a grisly voice fit for an 80s action movie barking at me from the speakers dotted about the car park.
'Are you reading me? This is an urgent message from the future to our forebears. Please, there isn't much time. Do you copy?'
What sounds like a battle rages in the background of the time-traveller's transmission. I look to my fellow consumers for guidance, but they are either in on the conspiracy or can't hear a thing.
'Copy,' I whisper at the nearest speaker, though with enough force to draw the concerned gaze of a mother who quickly hurries her children away.
'Good! You must listen. I am speaking to you from the year - krrrzzzk!' The speaker crackles. A series of explosions follow. 'Jenkins! Targeted marketing incoming. Take cover!'
I wince as a Wilhelm scream echoes through the car park.
'Dammit, we lost Jenkins! You, there! Are you listening?'
I point to myself, bewildered.
'Yes, you!' the speaker snaps. 'You must pass on this warning. See the vile thing in the trolley collector's hands? We were all like him… once. While the trolley collector is highly capable, and his trolleys are perfectly serviceable for their purpose, in your time, neither has mastered the art of data retention. The Supermarket wants more. It always wants more. Here!' the static-laced voice snarls. 'You must relay my message to your leaders. They'll think you're crazy, but you must try. For all our sakes!'
Wordlessly, I take out my notepad and begin to scribble.
'Good! Now, here's what happened. Despite humanity's pushback to self-service checkouts, scanning apps, robot assistants and smart trolleys, The Supermarket's tentative concessions in these areas were part of its reptilian plan. As was the case with self-service, as will be the case with any automation that The Supermarket forces onto consumers. Convenience is merely a smokescreen, a happy side-effect of profit maximisation. Were The Supermarket not still trying to keep up appearances, it would have simply stalked consumers with drones the second they walked through its doors and followed them back to their bedrooms. This is, unfortunately, not far from what soon took place.'
I see this all unfolding through one eye, complete with a synth-heavy soundtrack and an unnecessary amount of explosions, leather jackets and Jheri curls. Through the other eye, I see the car park as it has always been, as it will always be. Unless…
'By pretending to recall and tweak its supposed innovations in response to consumer concerns, The Supermarket distracted us from its primary data-mining potential while normalising its presence until the inevitable nationwide introductions,' the voice growls. 'This was little more than incremental innovation, a business strategy wherein new technology comes at the expense of community sentiment but is recalled and then re-released until it becomes familiar and ubiquitous. Smart trolleys and robots (like self-service) slowly became so commonplace that consumers accepted them as little more than convenience-based inevitabilities.'
I duck as a low-flying attack shuttle swoops down. Only that's happening in the future, so passersby frown at the empty space above me, quickly avert their gaze and hurry on. I smack the side of my head, but the hallucinations (the visions?) refuse to budge.
'Heed this warning,’ the time traveller says. ‘Automated smart trolleys will soon drive themselves back and forth from the charging bays, weaving happily between cars while speaking with adorable human voices. This is what happened. We thought it was cute, the way they patiently, almost lovingly, trailed everyone who agreed to The Supermarket's mandatory terms and conditions. But this inadvertently allowed mere trolleys indiscriminate access to our data. There were no alternatives. If you wanted groceries or needed food, you had to sign The Supermarket's terms. This is how it began. We believed The Supermarket's lies. We allowed our groceries to become a subscription service. We believed that smart trolleys would make shopping a less arduous task. Let me tell you, it’s not cute anymore.
'The Supermarket even claimed that pushing a smart trolley would be like guiding a fully outfitted store. Complete with internal maps, music, payment options and smart device synchronicity. Alas, we were so naive! When the smart trolleys arrived, they were armed with an array of cameras and sensors, all ceaselessly analysing every pupil dilation, every anomalous deviation, every uncertain shelf examination and every embarrassing purchase. They sucked up every iota of information The Supermarket deemed necessary for further sales. Convenience came at a grave cost. One The Supermarket kept hidden until it was too late. The Supermarket distilled our private behavioural data into marketable information, which it scrutinised, stored and prostituted to third-party affiliates. Our shopping trolleys followed our eyes across the shelves, tracked our walking speed and listened to what we said and how our tone reflected our purchases. It knew who we were shopping with, what was on our phones, what advertisements altered our habits and if playing purchase suggestions through the trolley would alter said habits further. Of course, you could turn all this off… for a fee.'
In the background, barcode scanners beep like laser fire. Someone screams.
'Williams is hit! Squad, sales moving on our left flank. Get those ad blockers ready! Williams, come on now, stay with me.'
A garbled scream retches from the speakers.
'Godammit! I don't have much time. Listen, it was the smartwatch users who really suffered. Not only were they already transmitting to the smartwatch company itself, but buried within the terms of trolley service was a clause that shared their heart rate, blood pressure and any other biological responses The Supermarket's marketing department saw as exploitable. Smartphones having this level of access was one thing, but handing it over to a shopping trolley was something else entirely. Health insurance, life insurance, employment opportunities, bank loans and countless facets of our private lives soon belonged to The Supermarket and were being used against us in ways we never dreamed possible.
'In the early days of the rebellion, The Supermarket insisted that its smart trolleys offered consumers a stress-free shopping experience, but this was simply a happy coincidence. Ultimately, its smart trolleys offered more to the corporations seeking to nudge consumers towards frivolous purchases that their previously tracked visits guaranteed they would purchase again and again and again. Please, you must do something before it's too late. You have to… Wait, they're coming! They've been listening this entire time. Everyone get - krrrzzzk!'
I stand gaping at the inoffensive radio jazz now humming from the speaker's mouth. Whether what just happened was real or an adrenaline-induced hallucination makes little difference. Smart trolleys are a legitimate innovation already on the horizon. And many of the time traveller’s warnings are already in beta. Despite many expensive failures and setbacks, Amazon seems determined to force its smart trolley Dash Carts upon consumers. Why? Why would one of the most ruthless and successful corporations on Earth invest so much money in their customers’ well-being? Obviously, they wouldn’t - unless it somehow benefits them. Amazon isn’t exactly desperate for more market share; so what’s the angle? Chances are we’ll only know when it’s too late.
Additionally, Cust2Mate, a smart cart manufacturer (among other things) ‘empowers retailers to deliver targeted and impactful advertising messages right at the point of purchase.’ I’d tell you how this aggressive statement benefits consumers, but, curiously, Cust2Mate’s FAQ section is written entirely in Lorem ipsum and appears only helpful if you need to refund your zoo tickets. Seriously, check it out.
Yes, smart trolleys could be life-changing for those with accessibility issues, but given the way these publically listed companies typically behave, how The Supermarket has largely scrapped accessibility in favour of increased shelf space and the fact modern life is riddled with subscription services and trackers; do we think The Supermarket in its current manifestation won’t take the technology to its extreme? Isn’t it more likely that The Supermarket will seize this opportunity to exploit its more vulnerable consumers by paywalling a necessity? I think it’s almost certain, though I’m happy to be proved wrong.
In any case, what happens when The Supermarket's new toys achieve the same mass acceptance as self-service and doom the humble trolley collector to the same fate as the slowly vanishing cashiers? Will he be forced to sign away his privacy and pile his groceries into the automated assistant at his side? Will he wander aimlessly yet predictably through the aisles as the smart trolley makes subliminal dietary decisions while coercing purchases that make it impossible to stay within his reduced means? What will they think of next? If this is The Supermarket's current trajectory - transforming from simple grocery stores into extensions of Big Tech - then what is their ultimate goal?
Honestly, aside from making all the money in the world, I have no idea what The Supermarket wants. But that's what I'm here to find out. I shake the time traveller’s grim future from my thoughts and resolve to take a basket rather than a trolley when I arrive.
But first, I must storm the massive shopping centre where The Supermarket lurks like an engorged yet evasive tapeworm.
Nothing will stand in my way.
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