The Invisible People

Overheard at the shopping centre:

An old bloke whispering to his elderly wife, “What happened to our sexual relations?” “Don’t know”, she answered, “We haven’t had a Christmas Card from them in years.”

Age, it’s a beautiful thing and as an ‘oldie’ marketer myself, I know that despite most seniors having a more than adequate disposable income and ready and willing to buy luxury goods, no one wants to serve us. We’re bloody invisible it seems.

Shopping is fun, nobody knows you’re there.  I sometimes wonder how shop owners survive, not because we don’t want to shop there but because I’m certain if we began a shoplifting spree, nobody would notice. After all, who’s going to sue you for lifting incontinent pads?

Supermarkets are nothing short of nightmares. The porridge is always on a shelf that was built for an eight foot giant, when everybody knows we oldies grow smaller. Short of hiring Adam Sanderlands to go shopping with, no one’s feeding their face with the Uncle Toby’s oats this week. And whoever decided electric doors were a good idea needs to spend some time watching terrified Edna as she tries to emulate Usain Bolt. She’s felt the cold breeze of those automatic doors whistling up her nether regions more than once.

Escalators are fun too. They may not be deadly to the nimble, but when you feel like your legs are pinned together with a safety pin, alighting the darn things is akin to saddle bronc riding.

Sadly it’s not our world anymore – but watch out, vengeance is on its way. As more and more silver haired folks turn to technology we are reaping our revenge. We’ve quickly learned if you’re going to ignore us, we’ll ignore you. We’ve discovered online shopping and we don’t have to move off our collective clackers to get anything we want. Yes the internet is our friend. It warmly greets us with our name, conveniently lists everything that’s available, lets us choose without pressure, with no express lanes, boring packing, ignorant sales people and a nice chappie delivers it all to our door – with a smile.

Retail? Poop! We don’t need it any longer. And that’s nobody’s fault but the stores and their personnel. You made it very clear we’re invisible, so now we are and so is our money. You can’t be polite, you don’t stock our products, except incontinent pads, and worst of all you lack patience. Retail? You deserve everything you get. You’ve forgotten the golden rule – “They who have the gold rule.”

We may be small in stature but we’re large in number and we’re voting with our feet and if you want us back there’s a simple formula. It goes like this.

The Customer is King… no matter what their age.