May I Trouble You for Your Slide Rule?

It was a long time a-coming, but now I am in full revolt, determined to overturn the smug statistics of the merchandising researchers.

They’re so cocky, so precise about what they’ll make me buy, how much I can spend, where they’ll let me go. They never quote comfortably sloppy round numbers, but always figures primly calculated to the toenail. “The American male will eat 15.7 pounds more mutton this year”; “You’ll buy 3.8 new shirts in the next twelve months”; “13.6 per cent more families will drive their own car on vacations and will spend $109.72 per member for an average vacation of 11.2 days.”

For years I responded like a wellbred cage mouse, eating 1.4 apples per week, reading 2.2 books per month, driving my car 8900.8 miles per year. All because some omnipotent researcher told me to, so that he could in turn tell the fruit dealer, the bookseller, and the service station operator what to have ready when they saw me headed their way.

It got so that I could imagine their conversation as I walked down the street (“You’ll wear out 2.1 soles of 1.97 pairs of shoes this year”).

“Look,” the head buyer for Schneer Bros. Haberdashery would say, “here comes Greene. Get ready 2.17 pairs of trousers, 51.3 inches of belting, 4.2 pairs of socks, and .98 bottles of aftershave.”

Blinders, the assistant, would put in his two cents worth: “Regular or ‘lectric on that after-shave, boss?”

“Good question, Blinders. We’ll sell 22.5 per cent more ‘lectric shave this year than last.”

McGrind, the credit manager, peers over their shoulders. “His credit rating will drop 2.13.”

“But he’s spending $131.66 more with us this year,” the head buyer pointed out. “Let him worry about his credit rating.”

The big explosion came as I paid for a cup of coffee. Somewhere in the back of my mind I knew that the cashier at Walgreen’s wasn’t looking out for my forgetfulness every day when she asked, “Need blades?” I say I knew it, but it hadn’t disturbed me. But that day something gave; someone slammed a final door, a time bomb ticked an ending lock.

“ ‘Need blades?’ ” I snarled. “I’m on to you, young lady. Someone told you I was going to buy 6.3 more packs of blades this year if you asked me every day, didn’t they? Well, I’m not. N-O-T.” They had me under sedatives for 3.1 days.

Now I am deliberately, seriously wrecking their numerical playhouse. I see an Old Favorite toothpaste in a new carton (“Your customers will take home 5.5 more tubes per year in the new, striped packaging”); I read where 13.9 per cent more puppies will change to Grossgott Bone Biscuit, and what do I do? I rush into stores asking for Old Favorite — in the old blue, speckled box.

And I hunt up the pet supply stockboy at the supermarket and I inform him that, beginning this year, I will feed no more Grossgott Bone Biscuit to any puppy I might ever happen to own.

Then I turn and walk right by that huge, shiny pyramid of canned English peas (“Mass display sells 41.7 per cent more”); I pass up the charcoal briquets (“Americans are moving outdoors. They’ll eat 56.4 meals on the patio this summer”) and reach for a dusty, lonely jar of chutney (“Exotic condiments to slip in Midwest by 9.6 per cent”).

I’ll show ‘em who’s boss — 46.3 per cent of the time — 6.7 times out of 9.99!