Organised-Panic buying

Like any country, the French have some laws that may appear stupid viewed from outside. For example, 70% of the music played on French radio must be in French (an edict from l'Académie Française which aims to protect the purity of the French language - which anyway they are currently losing because of the pace of expansion of the web and IT technology in general). Another one I like is that it is forbidden to wear shorts in public swimming pools. No, you cannot go naked before you ask; you must wear "correct attire", or, as we say in the north of England, "skimpers" or "Speedos". Apparently this was because too many young scamps were diving in with cut-off jeans.

Anyway, at the weekend, I learnt a new silly law. Apparently, the law stipulates that there cannot be more than a given number of supermarkets per capita (i.e. you can't have a town with 1000 inhabitants with, say, 10 supermarkets). Unfortunately, the law doesn't stipulate the size of the supermarkets, which has led to the concept of hyper-markets. You just don't have supermarkets this big in the UK and you can buy anything in them (last week, my "local" supermarket was selling motor-bikes).

Last weekend, this supermarket had what they call a braderie; literally, a clearance sale - except that it wasn't quite that: it was an well-planned exercise in marketing and selling and gave me an excellent opportunity to observe mass hysteria.

What they did was set up a huge tent in front of the shop. Everything in there was piled into roughly arranged bins and sellers with loudspeakers were continually announcing "Only 1 minute left for the knock-down price of 2€ instead of the marked 10€ for any old crap" (Actually, I added the "any old crap" bit myself). And the people lapped it up. The loudspeaker bearers moved around the tent. Anything that looked like it wasn't shifting fast enough was put on a 2 minute "flash sale". People were following the loud-speaking loudspeakers around the tent from "bargain to bargain". The noise, the carefully organised impression of anarchy, all served to raise the excitement and stress level of the people who no doubt already regret buying most of the stuff they bought. Perfect selling.

Once, a long time ago, I was on Oxford Street in London, and went into a "shop" that, on the face of it, was an auction. Interest was garnered by projecting the voice of the auctioneer onto the street outside and having human gorillas limiting entry to the room. The place was crowded and the "bargains" were flowing from the auctioneer. It shows how long ago it was, because he was selling the original Nintendo GameBoys for £1 or whatever. However, I stood at the back and watched. I noticed after a while that the people getting the bargains were actually part of the scam (because that is what it was) as they invariably headed out of the shop, only to re-appear a few minutes later to make their way back to the front of the crowd. The thing worked perfectly because I watched people being cajoled into buying "lucky-dip" bags, with the promise that they may have the said GameBoys inside. These bags cost £50 because there was "much, much more" inside. However, my guess is that those bags contained nothing but a load of tat (and no, it wasn't me who bought any of the lucky-dip bags - it is pure supposition on my part).

This scam was a revelation to me at the time as I know I am naive, but it was nowhere near the scale of hysteria that I witnessed this weekend - people fighting to get the last low-voltage light-bulb or whatever. I didn't buy anything inside the tent - I couldn't stand more than a few minutes and went into the relatively calm shop where I bought a desk-lamp for 5€, reduced from 10€ - a bargain (and for the record, I was actually planning to buy one before I went there).

The thought hit me that maybe I could have got it for 2€ in the braderie, so, out of interest, I went back to look for it. Sure enough, there it was, at the bargain, knock-down price of...5€. Maybe I should have followed the loudspeaker people around, hoping to get it for 4€ or something?

The outcome of all this? I got home, plugged it in and the damned thing doesn't work. So I guess I'll be back there next week. At least the braderie has finished.