I went in Tesco, Wickes and The B&M Shop today. Three stores that make me feel queasy.
I don’t like places that are like warehouses. The roofs are so high and the air is so cavernous, it’s like being in a cave or a shuttle hangar, brightly lit by plasma lamps six miles overhead, above the tightly packed stepladder shelves. You shuffle round the dusty, narrow aisles while tinny music rattles in from inadequate speakers.
There are always those air conditioning tubes too - threading between the unfinished metal beams, along with electrical cables and heating pipes. Imagine if one of them snaked away and broke a cable-tie! Its dragon-like gaping mouth would roar with hot air as it swung wildly across the shop. Horrific.
It’s an odd phobia, for certain. Perhaps even less rational than the old fear-of-geese, the anatidaephobia, which has plagued me for years, and which I also go on about too much.
I was looking for: a padlock, one of those sink-stoppers (impossible to find), and an electrical timer for my bedside lamp. The three enormous shops produced only a padlock between them.
What’s the Greek for massive-budget-warehouses? The Internet says I have a form of megalophobia, but I don’t think that’s specific enough. Plus, I don’t mind large objects, I just don’t want to be inside a big store with a high roof and tall shelves - it’s like being claustrophobic and agoraphobic at the same time.
With respect to Walmart then, I’m calling it Asdaphobia. I am asdaphobic, like I suffer from a kind of indoor-vertigo. Asdas (UK Walmarts) are almost always like this, although clearly more stores are following them. I’m sure it’s cost-efficient and well-researched and pleasant enough for shoppers. Indeed, it might only be me who keeps wondering when they’re going to finish, and put in the suspended ceiling. I’m not holding my breath.
Well, I can’t anyway. There isn’t enough of it when you have indoor-vertigo.
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