According to Wikipedia, a {en:recession} is when the economy is in the crapper. Things are bad, people have neither money nor jobs, but do have a lot of time on their hands.
I decided to use my years of scientific training and observation skills to conduct a socioeconomic experiment on the state of the economy (Nota bene: this means that I go to the shopping mall and do more than just stare at the short skirts and tight pants). My {en:null hypothesis|H0} was that there is NO recession and rather than continue to cover the search for WMD, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Canadian politics the media decided to hype up the problems South of the Border (please note I am referring to the {en:United States|country} and not the {en:South of the Border (attraction)|motel}). Furthermore, since I am bringing life to a new idea, birthing new theory on the state of the economy, AND I am a more than just a little overweight I figured that this would justify me parking in the pregnant person parking (assuming it isn’t intended for women only as that would be sexist and very politically incorrect).
Here are my observations:
I) As I approached a large suburban shopping mall I was immediately stricken by the number of cars in the parking lot. Either the lot had been rented out by an automobile repossession service to store all of the repossessed cars or the shopping centre had a hell of a lot of customers. Upon closer inspection, noticing a distinct lack of fences and guard dogs, I hypothesized that the mall was actually full of customers. Conclusion: There may or may not be a recession since I do not know if the people are buying things. They may just be unemployed and looking for a place to safely park their Mercedes and keep warm.
II) As I entered the mall I quickly started having a sinking feeling. I think there is a recession. I started notcing the fact that many of the young ladies couldn’t afford new clothes this year and were wearing last year’s clothes, when they were two sizes smaller. When I questioned my daughter about this she looked at me as if I was a cretin (please see previous posts for disambiguation of the term cretin and my thyroid status) and told me that this was the style, and that these clothes actually cost lots of money. Since she is so young I didn’t go into the fact that {en:cameltoe| camel toe} very rarely looks good on anyone and gives them more of a trailer park look (no offense intended {en:trailer park boys|Bubbles, Julian, and Ricky}). Conclusion: People can afford clothes they simply buy the wrong ones. In the current economic environment skanky just seems to be a popular way to dress – and people pay a premium for it.
III) In almost every store I entered, the line up at the customer service / cash was incredible. Considering the fact that every till was open, I can only assume that people were buying stuff. I know they weren’t returning items and I will discuss this below. Conclusion: People are still spending money.
Final Conclusion: Either there is no real recession in Canada, or people are simply doing their civic duty and spurring the economy by spending. If the latter holds true, the federal government should screw bailing out the automotive industry (whose problems pre-date the current economic issues by a LONG SHOT) and start handing out shopping cards to average people. Let them spur the economy.
I mentioned “knowing that people were not returning items at the filled cash register lines”. I know this as a fact. In attempting to return a toy at a large national retaile’R’ I noticed a very large customer service imbalance. Although they had 10 cash registers open to take people’s money, they only had one till open for dealing with customer issues. The line to return something wound around the entrance of the store and gave me plenty of time to notice the habits of others in the store. I have also noted this same behaviour at a large retailer of WALs. A 60 minute wait to return something while they have 12 cashes open and 6 of them are empty.
