I crawled out of a doomladen weekend of news of the
deaths of dozens of people in Norway in a terror attack by some right wing
nutter and the inevitable but still miserable demise of Amy Winehouse searching
for something to convince me that yes, life in the dust bowl still goes on as
normal and the (immensely fierce and really quite burny) sun will continue to
shine. Thanks to the Gulf's, erm, most peculiar news source, I found
it.
Any news story that incorporates a play on words into a
Bob Marley song title for its headline is alright by me so gold star to my
beloved Emirates 24/7, purveyor of fine headlines since, well, probably a few
years ago.
But there's more than just the headline to love
in this story about shopkeepers sneakily taking advantage of
discounts at the new Union Coop in Al Barsha, Dubai. The very idea that taking
a woman with them will stop these men buying up huge amounts of fruits,
vegetables and household goods in order to sell them on at a profit, that a
woman will be way too honest to countenance such behaviour tickled me a great
deal.
I am also now entertaining a host of mental images. 1.
These men dressing up in saris or abayas, shaving their beards and donning wigs
and makeup, such will be their desperation to profit from the Coop's generous
discounting. Or perhaps, not because they're not best keen on cross dressing in
Dubai. 2. They could send their wives or sisters down there to buy half a ton
of onions and tomatos and innocently tell the manager that they're having a
really, really big dinner party. 3. Grab an innocent woman shopper at the
doors of the Coop, bribe her and convince her to accompany you on your
supermarket discount sweep. Marvellous stuff.
I applaud them for taking the really rather forward
thinking step of banning men from the store rather than, say, stop people buying
up goods in large amounts. No arguments about the reasoning for buying 20 sacks
of spuds, just ban the man. Awesome.
They've well and truly got their message across that the
Coop is offering really quite massive discounts. If they weren't relatively
innocent in the dark arts of press releases and PR in this part of the world,
I'd suspect a publicity stunt. Oh no. Perhaps they're not, perhaps the
protested innocence is all part of the clever plan to suck you in with their
genius PR and I've fallen for it. Argh! *Black hole opens up as the universe
collapses in on itself and Sand Witch melts in manner of Wicked Witch of the
West in Wizard of Oz.*
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