Member-only story
Olfactory Marketing
(It has nothing to do with factories.)
I do not have any letters after my name. I have no PHD nor any other symbol of educational prowess following my name. I am essentially self-educated and I admit that I had a pretty crappy teacher.
I am loathe to admit it but I have spent way the hell too many years of my life in retail. Retail is a chamber of Hell that Dante forgot to mention. It is where we venture when we compromise between true happiness and some Capitalist apocalyptic scenario.
Back when I was a kid I used to fantasize about being a shopkeeper. Seriously? Who — whether child or adult — fantasizes about being a shopkeeper?
Well, I did. I used to like to play ‘store’ when I was a wee lad. I would gather a bunch of stuff together and pretend it was all part of my inventory. I had an imaginary cash register. I forced all my siblings and anyone within earshot to shop at my store.
All of my inventory was laid out in an artistic, symmetrical, visually appealing way. I was an eight-year-old being sucked into an awful world of retail.
My imaginary store was awesome!
Then there was that time several decades later when I found myself being the owner and operator of a real-life, 3D, brick and mortar store! My childhood fantasies had…
