Personal Shopper Quotes

I’m a modern man, a man for the millennium. Digital and smoke free. A diversified multi-cultural, post-modern deconstruction that is anatomically and ecologically incorrect. I’ve been up linked and downloaded, I’ve been inputted and outsourced, I know the upside of downsizing, I know the downside of upgrading. I’m a high-tech low-life. A cutting edge, state-of-the-art bi-coastal multi-tasker and I can give you a gigabyte in a nanosecond! I’m new wave, but I’m old school and my inner child is outward bound. I’m a hot-wired, heat seeking, warm-hearted cool customer, voice activated and bio-degradable. I interface with my database, my database is in cyberspace, so I’m interactive, I’m hyperactive and from time to time I’m radioactive. Behind the eight ball, ahead of the curve, ridin the wave, dodgin the bullet and pushin the envelope. I’m on-point, on-task, on-message and off drugs. I’ve got no need for coke and speed. I've got no urge to binge and purge. I’m in-the-moment, on-the-edge, over-the-top and under-the-radar. A high-concept, low-profile, medium-range ballistic missionary. A street-wise smart bomb. A top-gun bottom feeder. I wear power ties, I tell power lies, I take power naps and run victory laps. I’m a totally ongoing big-foot, slam-dunk, rainmaker with a pro-active outreach. A raging workaholic. A working rageaholic. Out of rehab and in denial! I’ve got a personal trainer, a personal shopper, a personal assistant and a personal agenda. You can’t shut me up. You can’t dumb me down because I’m tireless and I’m wireless, I’m an alpha male on beta-blockers. I’m a non-believer and an over-achiever, laid-back but fashion-forward. Up-front, down-home, low-rent, high-maintenance. Super-sized, long-lasting, high-definition, fast-acting, oven-ready and built-to-last! I’m a hands-on, foot-loose, knee-jerk head case pretty maturely post-traumatic and I’ve got a love-child that sends me hate mail. But, I’m feeling, I’m caring, I’m healing, I’m sharing-- a supportive, bonding, nurturing primary care-giver. My output is down, but my income is up. I took a short position on the long bond and my revenue stream has its own cash-flow. I read junk mail, I eat junk food, I buy junk bonds and I watch trash sports! I’m gender specific, capital intensive, user-friendly and lactose intolerant. I like rough sex. I like tough love. I use the “F” word in my emails and the software on my hard-drive is hardcore--no soft porn. I bought a microwave at a mini-mall; I bought a mini-van at a mega-store. I eat fast-food in the slow lane. I’m toll-free, bite-sized, ready-to-wear and I come in all sizes. A fully-equipped, factory-authorized, hospital-tested, clinically-proven, scientifically- formulated medical miracle. I’ve been pre-wash, pre-cooked, pre-heated, pre-screened, pre-approved, pre-packaged, post-dated, freeze-dried, double-wrapped, vacuum-packed and, I have an unlimited broadband capacity. I’m a rude dude, but I’m the real deal. Lean and mean! Cocked, locked and ready-to-rock. Rough, tough and hard to bluff. I take it slow, I go with the flow, I ride with the tide. I’ve got glide in my stride. Drivin and movin, sailin and spinin, jiving and groovin, wailin and winnin. I don’t snooze, so I don’t lose. I keep the pedal to the metal and the rubber on the road. I party hearty and lunch time is crunch time. I’m hangin in, there ain’t no doubt and I’m hangin tough, over and out!

Carter got jeans, boots, and a T-shirt that read Property of Alexandria University in English and Arabic. Clearly, even personal shoppers had him pegged as a complete geek.

Being a lifetime wife and mother has afforded me the luxury of having multiple careers: I've been a teacher. A chauffeur. A chef. An interior decorator. A landscape architect, as well as a gardener. I’ve been a painter. A personal shopper. An accountant and a banker. I’ve been a beautician. Santa Claus. The Tooth Fairy. A movie reviewer. A nurse. A psychologist. A negotiator. An I have a Ph. D in How to Pretend Like You Don’t Mind.

Being a lifetime wife and mother has afforded me the luxury of having multiple and even simultaneous careers: I've been a chauffeur. A chef. An interior decorator. A landscape architect, as well as a gardener. I've been a painter. A furniture restorer. A personal shopper. A veterinarian's assistant and sometimes the veterinarian. I've been an accountant, a banker and on occasion, a broker. I've been a beautician. A map. A psychic. Santa Claus. The Tooth Fairy. The T.V. Guide. A movie reviewer. An angel. God. A nurse and a nursemaid. A psychiatrist and psychologist. Evangelist. For a long time I have felt like I inadvertently got my master's in How To Take Care of Everybody Except Yourself and then a Ph.D. in How to Pretend Like You Don't Mind. But I do mind.

One of the great unwritten chapters of retail intelligence programming featured a “personal shopper” program that all-too-accurately modeled the shoppers’ desires and outputted purchase ideas based on what shoppers really wanted as opposed to what they wanted known that they wanted. This resulted in one overcompensatingly masculine test user receiving suggestions for an anal plug and a tribute art book for classic homoerotic artist Tom of Finland, while a female test user in the throes of a nasty divorce received suggestions for a small handgun, a portable bandsaw, and several gallons of an industrial solvent used to reduce organic matter to an easily drainable slurry. After history’s first recorded instance of a focus group riot, the personal shopper program was extensively rewritten.

in English and Arabic. Clearly, even personal shoppers had him pegged as a complete geek. The shopper also managed to find some supplies for our magic bags—blocks of wax, twine, even some papyrus and ink—though I doubt Bes explained to her what they were for. After she left, Bes, Carter and I ordered more food from room service. We sat on the deck and watched the afternoon go by. The breeze from the Mediterranean was cool and pleasant. Modern Alexandria stretched out to our left—an odd mix of gleaming high-rises, shabby, crumbling buildings, and ancient ruins. The shoreline highway was dotted with palm trees and crowded with every sort of vehicle from BMWs to donkeys. From our penthouse suite, it all seemed a bit unreal—the raw energy of the city, the bustle and congestion below —while we sat on our veranda in the sky eating fresh fruit and the last melting bits of Lenin’s head.

she’s a personal shopper. That means she chooses clothes for people who can’t choose their own clothes

Even then, retailers learned early that shoppers prefer their shopping suggestions not be too truthful. One of the great unwritten chapters of retail intelligence programming featured a “personal shopper” program that all-too-accurately modeled the shoppers’ desires and outputted purchase ideas based on what shoppers really wanted as opposed to what they wanted known that they wanted. This resulted in one overcompensatingly masculine test user receiving suggestions for an anal plug and a tribute art book for classic homoerotic artist Tom of Finland, while a female test user in the throes of a nasty divorce received suggestions for a small handgun, a portable bandsaw, and several gallons of an industrial solvent used to reduce organic matter to an easily drainable slurry.

The starting point for ‘discounts’ may be the manufacturer’s suggested retail price (MSRP), an arbitrarily high price that no one will ever pay. By crossing out the high MSRP, retailers are handing shoppers a psychological victory that will make them feel good about the purchase, even if the discounted price is still expensive.

Have you ever met a slave, Luke?" she asked. The question took me aback, coming from a black person. I stammered out a no. She said, "Really? You've never been to a mall? You've never watched shoppers with their carts piled with soda and microwaveable food? You've never stayed in a hotel where a fifty-year-old Mexican mother of six scrubs your shit stains off the toilet bowl? You've never watched TV for five hours straight?

Food has a unique political power, for several reasons: food links the world’s richest consumers with its poorest farmers; food choices have always been a potent means of social signaling; modern shoppers must make dozens of food choices every week, providing far more opportunities for political expression than electoral politics; and food is a product you consume, so eating something implies a deeply personal endorsement of it. But

Only awe of him can define in you and me a true sense of what we actually need. So many of our prayers are self-centered grocery lists of personal cravings that have no bigger agenda than to make our lives a little more comfortable. They tend to treat God more as our personal shopper than a holy and wise Father-King. Such prayers forget God’s glory and long for a greater experience of the glories of the created world. They lack fear, reverence, wonder, and worship. They’re more like pulling up the divine shopping site than bowing our knees in adoration and worship. They are motivated more by awe of ourselves and our pleasures than by a heart-rattling, satisfaction-producing awe of the Redeemer to whom we are praying.

If you have to wear a hazmat suit to raise crops, why would you ever eat them? If you’re afraid of getting that crap on your skin, how much more insane would it be to put it in your mouth! Seriously? I often wonder, and I wish someone would research it if they haven’t already, whether the CEOs of Monsanto, Dupont, etc., eat GMO products and feed them to their families, or if they send out their ‘personal shoppers’ to the local farmer’s market to bring home fresh, organic produce every week? I suspect the latter. I’m quite sure they all have reverse osmosis water systems in their mansions. Let me put it bluntly, if I haven’t been clear so far. The day the CEO of Monsanto guzzles a gallon of Roundup, is the day I’ll consider buying their products, maybe.

The second was in her late teens or early twenties, and therefore too callow to advise me. The third, in the manner of Goldilocks, was just right—around my age, well groomed, sensible-looking. I approached with caution. “Excuse me, I wonder if I could possibly ask for your assistance?” I said. She stopped folding sweaters and turned to me, smiling insincerely. “I’m attending a concert at a fashionable venue, and I wondered if you might assist me with the selection of an appropriate ensemble?” Her smile broadened and looked more genuine. “Well, we do offer a personal shopper service,” she said. “I could make you an appointment, if you like?” “Oh no,” I said, “it’s for this evening. I really do need something right now, I’m afraid.” She looked me up and down. “Where is it that you’re going?” “The Cuttings,” I said proudly. She stuck out her bottom lip, nodded once, slowly. “What are you, a twelve?” I nodded, impressed that she had been able to size me up so accurately by sight alone. She checked her watch.

ADVERTISEMENT Shopping at Robinson’s during alert periods. We have roof spotters on duty throughout alert periods to give final ‘take cover’ alarm when danger is near. Until this warning is given we endeavour to continue normal business. Members of our staff carry on and give shoppers cheerful service. We have shelter facilities and seating accommodation in the basement for all persons who are in the building should the spotters give the danger alarm. These arrangements have been made for the protection and convenience of our customers, so you need have no fear regarding shopping arrangements if you are at Robinson’s during an alert period. Straits Times 21, 22, 23 January, 1942

I recently told my mom about a hateful thing that had happened to me. Her response was to casually share a story I had never heard before. When she was new to the country, she was rammed by an irate fellow shopper in a grocery store, a random, race-motivated attack. Translation: What I had faced was nothing in comparison to how things used to be. According to my folks, I should get over it, because in the grand scheme of things, I am winning. But am I? Compared to what she had to face on the regular, yes. Compared to what I dream for myself, no. It is this personal accounting that gets me every time, listener friends. And here’s the truth of it all: Things are better for folks like me—the racialized, the marginalized, the Other. But because two truths can exist simultaneously in the universe, things are worse for us too. Real change is a boulder we keep pushing, but don’t fool yourself into thinking it doesn’t push back. Because it does. And sometimes it pushes back hard. In my parents’ time, simply being acknowledged as worthy of notice, as having your own history and worth, was enough. That’s not enough for me. I want to be included and celebrated. I want nuanced and plentiful stories to be told about my people, and I don’t want it to mean something when one of us breaks through, because there are so many of us breaking through, all the time, in every field.

And meanwhile we decayed. When I was born, when I grew up in the fifties, we believed our country was the land of opportunity, where nobody was doomed to remain poor, where every person of goodwill had a chance to rise. By the time my child was born in the nineties, beggars were crowding the streets of every city, accosting shoppers in the malls. There were camps of homeless in the parks and empty lots, young people going to war with each other for drugs and booze and a few bucks. Our compassion eroded faster than the topsoil, and when we began to notice the earth changes, the droughts and the warming and the die-offs of the animals, the hole in the ozone layer and the epidemics of strange diseases that showed our own immune systems faltering, when we still had a chance to save so much and avert the worst of what followed, we continued to distract ourselves with war.

My point though is the totem pole of paychecks, with school as one thing that gets you up there, and another one being where you live, country or city. But the main thing is, whatever you’re doing, who is it making happy? Are you selling the cheapest-ass shoes imaginable to Walmart shoppers, or high-class suits to business guys? Even the same exact work, like sanding floors, could be at the Dollar General or a movie star mansion. Show me your paycheck, I’ll make a guess which floor. If you are making a rich person happy, or a regular person feel rich, aka better than other people, the money rolls. If it’s lowlifes you’re looking after, not so much. And if it’s kids, good luck, because anything to do with improving the life of a child is on the bottom. Schoolteacher pay is for the most part in the toilet. I gather this is common knowledge, but I had no idea, the day Miss Barks said, So long sucker, I’m chasing the big bucks now. Schoolteacher!

What motivates Olympic athletes to train for years for one event—in some cases, for just seconds of actual competition? It’s the same thing that kept my friend Pete nosing around old bookstores for years. It’s the same thing that makes a person venture out of a comfortable job to start a new business. We see it in the artist who spends day after day in a studio chipping away at a block of stone. Look closely and you’ll find it in the shopper who passes up the good deal in search of the best deal. It’s one of the things that makes us most human. We consciously pursue what we value. It’s not simply a matter of being driven by biology or genetics or environmental conditioning to satisfy instinctive cravings. Rather, we perceive something, prize it at a certain value, then pursue it according to that assigned value because we were created that way. This ability to perceive, prize, and pursue is part of our essential humanness, and it’s the essence of ambition.

A poster of a woman in tights heralded the Christmas pantomime, and little red devils, who had come in again that year, were prevalent upon the Christmas-cards. Margaret was no morbid idealist. She did not wish this spate of business and self-advertisement checked. It was only the occasion of it that struck her with amazement annually. How many of these vacillating shoppers and tired shop-assistants realised that it was a divine event that drew them together? She realised it, though standing outside in the matter. She was not a Christian in the accepted sense; she did not believe that God had ever worked among us as a young artisan. These people, or most of them, believed it, and if pressed, would affirm it in words. But the visible signs of their belief were Regent Street or Drury Lane, a little mud displaced, a little money spent, a little food cooked, eaten, and forgotten. Inadequate. But in public who shall express the unseen adequately? It is private life that holds out the mirror to infinity; personal intercourse, and that alone, that ever hints at a personality beyond our daily vision.

People, especially those in charge, rarely invite you into their offices and give freely of their time. Instead, you have to do something unique, compelling, even funny or a bit daring, to earn it. Even if you happen to be an exceptionally well-rounded person who possesses all of the scrappy qualities discussed so far, it’s still important to be prepared, dig deep, do the prep work, and think on your feet. Harry Gordon Selfridge, who founded the London-based department store Selfridges, knew the value of doing his homework. Selfridge, an American from Chicago, traveled to London in 1906 with the hope of building his “dream store.” He did just that in 1909, and more than a century later, his stores continue to serve customers in London, Manchester, and Birmingham. Selfridges’ success and staying power is rooted in the scrappy efforts of Harry Selfridge himself, a creative marketer who exhibited “a revolutionary understanding of publicity and the theatre of retail,” as he is described on the Selfridges’ Web site. His department store was known for creating events to attract special clientele, engaging shoppers in a way other retailers had never done before, catering to the holidays, adapting to cultural trends, and changing with the times and political movements such as the suffragists. Selfridge was noted to have said, “People will sit up and take notice of you if you will sit up and take notice of what makes them sit up and take notice.” How do you get people to take notice? How do you stand out in a positive way in order to make things happen? The curiosity and imagination Selfridge employed to successfully build his retail stores can be just as valuable for you to embrace in your circumstances. Perhaps you have landed a meeting, interview, or a quick coffee date with a key decision maker at a company that has sparked your interest. To maximize the impression you’re going to make, you have to know your audience. That means you must respectfully learn what you can about the person, their industry, or the culture of their organization. In fact, it pays to become familiar not only with the person’s current position but also their background, philosophies, triumphs, failures, and major breakthroughs. With that information in hand, you are less likely to waste the precious time you have and more likely to engage in genuine and meaningful conversation.

In both cultures, wealth is no longer a means to get by. It becomes directly tied to personal worth. A young suburbanite with every advantage—the prep school education, the exhaustive coaching for college admissions tests, the overseas semester in Paris or Shanghai—still flatters himself that it is his skill, hard work, and prodigious problem-solving abilities that have lifted him into a world of privilege. Money vindicates all doubts. They’re eager to convince us all that Darwinism is at work, when it looks very much to the outside like a combination of gaming a system and dumb luck. In both of these industries, the real world, with all of its messiness, sits apart. The inclination is to replace people with data trails, turning them into more effective shoppers, voters, or workers to optimize some objective. This is easy to do, and to justify, when success comes back as an anonymous score and when the people affected remain every bit as abstract as the numbers dancing across the screen. More and more, I worried about the separation between technical models and real people, and about the moral repercussions of that separation. In fact, I saw the same pattern emerging that I’d witnessed in finance: a false sense of security was leading to widespread use of imperfect models, self-serving definitions of success, and growing feedback loops. Those who objected were regarded as nostalgic Luddites.

Starting a little over a decade ago, Target began building a vast data warehouse that assigned every shopper an identification code—known internally as the “Guest ID number”—that kept tabs on how each person shopped. When a customer used a Target-issued credit card, handed over a frequent-buyer tag at the register, redeemed a coupon that was mailed to their house, filled out a survey, mailed in a refund, phoned the customer help line, opened an email from Target, visited Target.com, or purchased anything online, the company’s computers took note. A record of each purchase was linked to that shopper’s Guest ID number along with information on everything else they’d ever bought. Also linked to that Guest ID number was demographic information that Target collected or purchased from other firms, including the shopper’s age, whether they were married and had kids, which part of town they lived in, how long it took them to drive to the store, an estimate of how much money they earned, if they’d moved recently, which websites they visited, the credit cards they carried in their wallet, and their home and mobile phone numbers. Target can purchase data that indicates a shopper’s ethnicity, their job history, what magazines they read, if they have ever declared bankruptcy, the year they bought (or lost) their house, where they went to college or graduate school, and whether they prefer certain brands of coffee, toilet paper, cereal, or applesauce. There are data peddlers such as InfiniGraph that “listen” to shoppers’ online conversations on message boards and Internet forums, and track which products people mention favorably. A firm named Rapleaf sells information on shoppers’ political leanings, reading habits, charitable giving, the number of cars they own, and whether they prefer religious news or deals on cigarettes. Other companies analyze photos that consumers post online, cataloging if they are obese or skinny, short or tall, hairy or bald, and what kinds of products they might want to buy as a result.

Until this point in history, it was advantageous for a person to claim to be autistic when one really wasn't autistic at all, because society was more than willing to cut people with autism slack, or make special accommodations for them. But as people's medical privacy continues to erode, and as national healthcare systems continue to be modified, as the US one is currently, it will be much harder for self-diagnosed people, wannabees, and diagnosis shoppers to claim to be autistic when the government will be scrutinizing everyone so closely. So

The retailer features them in advertising to generate store traffic, but once the shopper is in the store the retailer has every incentive via prominent merchandising to sell that person a competitive brand, one

a right-handed person, pushing a shopping cart, is going to tend to push with their right hand, giving the cart a natural tendency to turn left; that is, in a counterclockwise direction.

,, Ah, da, tvoj princ u sjajnom oklopu.“ Prekorno je zazvučao. „Ilije u pitanju sjajno armani odelo? Čovek koji će te u svom bentliju povesti ka lagodnom životu i trošenju neverovatnih suma novca s njegove kreditne kartice.“ „Svi imamo pravo da sanjamo“, oštro ga je podsetila.

who says you she has

a novelty gifts.

Leia

wondering

Muškarci uvek iznevere... na ovaj ili onaj način

Elle’s Kitchen

Cotton is also the planet’s thirstiest crop, using about 2,700 litres of water to grow enough to make a single T-shirt.36 Which is a huge figure, although hard for the average shopper to put into any kind of context – until we’re told that it’s enough for one person to drink for 900 days.

Please don’t let me mess this up. Please. I’ll just die. But then the tape grows taut and I’m not even all the way up his leg yet. I give it a tug with a grunt, trying not to make eye contact with the man’s lower body as I work with the tape. Then, to my total horror, the tape snaps and pings Blaze right in the area I was trying to avoid. He grunts and steps back, covering his crotch with both hands. A tear slides down his left cheek. This is so much worse than going up too high with the tape. So much worse. I stare at him dumbfounded for a few seconds before I find words. But instead of offering an apology, I hold up the two broken pieces of tape and frown at him. “You’re so big, you broke my measuring tape!

If you hired someone to do the work of maintaining a household, especially if you have children, the cost would be approximately $90,000 a year. This is what a “traditional” at-home spouse would get paid today to clean the house, be a personal shopper and personal assistant, run errands, and take care of the children. It’s a lot of money, and it’s a lot of work. Either you pay someone to do this or someone in the relationship has to take on these jobs.

When you talk to hundreds of people who are dying and looking back over their lives, you come to realize something startling: Every single person out there has a crazy story. Every single person has some bizarre, life-shattering, pull-the-rug-out-from-under-you story in their past, or will experience one in their future. Every shopper in the grocery store, every telemarketer on the phone, every mother at school pickup, every banker striding down the sidewalk. Money, faith, popularity, beauty, power—nothing prevents it.

Now, crowd technologies have democratized having a chauffeur, having a personal shopper, having a grocery delivery service, and having, well, almost anything.

Providing consumers with tailored experiences where both content and advertising is personalized to their needs and interests increases relevancy and, ultimately, long-term sales.

When I buy an inexpensive shirt made in a sweatshop in China, am I willing to think about the person who made it—about what kind of life he or she lives in order for me to buy a $10 garment? Or do I pat myself on the back for my skills as a bargain shopper?

So many of our prayers are self-centered grocery lists of personal cravings that have no bigger agenda than to make our lives a little more comfortable. They tend to treat God more as our personal shopper than a holy and wise Father-King. Such prayers forget God’s glory and long for a greater experience of the glories of the created world. They lack fear, reverence, wonder, and worship. They’re more like pulling up the divine shopping site than bowing our knees in adoration and worship. They are motivated more by awe of ourselves and our pleasures than by a heart-rattling, satisfaction-producing awe of the Redeemer to whom we are praying.

Research has found that when you ask a person to test something for you, they place it under the microscope. They see things that, in the course of normal usage, they would never see or even consider.

warranty. Although every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this work, neither the author nor the publisher shall have any liability to any person or entity with respect to any loss or damage caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by the information contained in this book.   About the Recipes Here is a selection of some of my favorite tastes

Then she told us about going to Harrod’s to buy a video game that Prince William particularly wanted for his birthday. She confessed that she “felt a perfect fool,” since she didn’t know how video games worked or exactly which item William wanted. I could relate to that. The video-game craze was too technical for me, too. As she walked through Harrod’s, the other shoppers cleared way for her. They did not stop her or intrude. They only wanted to smile at her, say “hello,” or simply gaze at her in person. Diana’s point was that she loved the genuine friendliness and politeness of the people she encountered. Clearly, Diana needed the reassurance of the sincere support of “ordinary people,” or she would not have ventured to shops, restaurants, and amusement parks as she did. She could so easily have remained behind the palace walls, aloof and isolated.

Similar service providers are using smartphones to rejigger local logistics. Over the years many firms have tried to turn the delivery of groceries and other goods into a big business. The latest generation is much more likely to succeed thanks to the smartphones of freelance personal shoppers ready to jump into action should something need to be picked up. Instacart, one of the biggest such services, has contracts with more than 4,000 of them in 15 American cities. It has grown from $1m in revenues in 2012 to $100m last year. Such business models are not without critics; the way that “Plattform-Kapitalismus” integrates people’s lives and livelihoods ever more thoroughly into a network of market transactions is an increasing concern on the European left.

We need a proper statistical model that lets each person have his own momentum effect and each person have his own checkout attraction and to see if we can pull him out from the data.

Guests will visit you online before they visit you in person. Count on it.

„Ova odeća je praktična“, rekao je Ed. „Ova odeća je kriminalna“, insistirala je Eni.

If this hunger to get the same consideration as others seems too whiney in this day and age, consider the statistics: one out of three Americans has daily contact with a person they care about who has a disability. We save money by keeping people in their communities. People with disabilities are actually being placed in nursing homes now because they can't get on a bus to do their own food shopping. It would be far cheaper to force public bus companies to treat shoppers with disabilities more fairly.

Prime is a way to change consumer shopping patterns, to turn the occasional online shopper into a person locked into the Amazon ecosystem who interacts with the company on a frequent basis. The idea is to make Prime so attractive and so easy to use that customers can’t imagine living without it. It’s the online equivalent of nicotine—a metaphor that Amazon would never use. It is addictive

Personally, I believe that spending heavily on the decorations and display designs makes new clients out of random window shoppers

shopper’s paradise? Not exactly ​ With imports from Earth being astronomically expensive, and with initial lunar industries having a relatively small market to serve, there will be few choices. Unless (1) we produce only basic simple “standard issue” items and (2) we design them to serve as is, but also to be “modification friendly.” Purchasers could then give them a personal touch at their leisure, or, for those with little time and/or talent, “issue” wears and wares could be entrusted to talented craftsman and artists on commission to personalize such items for the customer during free time before or after day job duties.

Amazon customers who joined Prime doubled, on average, their spending on the site, according to a person familiar with the company’s internal finances at the time. A Prime member was like a shopper who walked into a Costco warehouse for a case of beer and walked out with the beer plus an armful of DVDs, a nine-pound smoked ham, and a flat-screen television.

In everyday terms, it is not racism that prompts a white shopper in a clothing store to go up to a random black or brown person who is also shopping and to ask for a sweater in a different size, or for a white guest at a party to ask a black or brown person who is also a guest to fetch them a drink, as happened to Barack Obama as a state senator, or even perhaps a judge to sentence a subordinate-caste person for an offense for which a dominant-caste person might not even be charged. It is caste or rather the policing of and adherence to the caste system. It’s the autonomic, unconscious, reflexive response to expectations from a thousand imaging inputs and neurological societal downloads that affix people to certain roles based upon what they look like and what they historically have been assigned to or the characteristics and stereotypes by which they have been categorized. No ethnic or racial category is immune to the messaging we all receive about the hierarchy, and thus no one escapes its consequences.

Tune in to any Venezuelan television channel in January 2015, and you would see government-funded ads featuring famous singers, soap opera actors, and television personalities with one message for shoppers: “Cool it with the nervous purchases.

On the stages at the Cannery and Ghirardelli malls, busking was not only tolerated, it was encouraged; free performances lured shoppers and buskers enjoyed freedom from police interference. Out on the streets, it was a different story. Business owners—worried that performers were literally and figuratively stealing the show—filed complaints with the city. “Whenever somebody who’s paying for a business license and paying taxes on his property sees a crowd of people facing away from him, they immediately assume that business is being lost,” says tap dancer Rosie Radiator. “Now, art being the glue of all of us, it was, of course, the street performers who were drawing the people to the location. They weren’t coming for the trinkets in the shops as much as they were coming for the artisans on the sidewalks and the street performers who gave it ambiance and personality and the fun aspects of a destination.

Let’s just say Keaton always suited up with a certain eccentric imagination, as if her personal shopper was Buñuel.