As you may know, contributors to global warming – power plants, internal combustion engines, etc. – are ranked by the tons of carbon dioxide they release into the atmosphere. Driving a car is a major contributor to global warming; on NPR last week I heard a report that driving from San Diego to St. Louis, for example, would release several tons of CO2 into the atmosphere, even more than an airplane flown the same distance.
Knowing this, I wish to name shopping catalogues – Bloomingdale's, to be specific – as major contributors to global warming. They must be stopped, before it is too late.
On Friday, May 4, a mail truck, puffing out CO2, arrived at our house, and the mailman placed into our box a Bloomingdale's catalogue distributed especially for Mother's Day. I already knew one thing we were going to do on Mother's Day – a brunch of homemade brownies, coffee ice cream, and Champagne – and carrying the catalogue back to the house, I thought it would be fun to give Karen a gift as well.
All the gifts were beyond my price range until I arrived at a page showing a pair of very fuzzy pink thong-style slippers, by UGG, the famous Australian boot company. She loves fuzzy slippers, and these were very cute. I made a mental note. That was on Friday. On Sunday, I made an excuse to be away from the house. Karen was just leafing through the Bloomie's catalogue as I was about to leave. "Look at these," she said with delight and showed me the page with the pink slippers. It was obvious that she loved them, and I felt great. I bit my tongue and said they were very cute.
I drove to Fashion Valley, a huge and popular mall on the upscale side in San Diego's Mission Valley. It is a distance of about 10 miles. I went early, to avoid crowds. I felt very pleased with myself, locating this gift and actually obtaining it a full week before the event. I would get it gift-wrapped and hide it in the garage until Mother's Day.
But Bloomie's didn't have the slippers. The shoe department was huge, and UGG products were featured in their own display, but no fuzzy pink slippers such as those in a dated catalogue reaching me less than 48 hours prior. The nice salesperson said sometimes items show up in the catalogues that are not actually shipped to individual stores. That didn't make sense to me, but of course that didn't matter. I pictured tens, or hundreds, of men, in similar conversations with salespersons, and the miles they had driven to meet this fate, and the effect on global warming of a company who dangles a Mother's Day gift item before men, as desirable as the Holy Grail, and as impossible to find.
"You might try online, or phone them," suggested the nice salesperson. "Thanks," I said, not encouraged. So low had fallen my expectations of Bloomingdale's that I checked Nordstrom and Sak's before I left. I was amazed, in Nordstrom, shoe and service capital of the planet, to hear a salesperson say there were no UGG products at all in the store, and the next shipment was expected sometime this summer.
I limped home, tons of CO2 trailing behind me. Bloomie's online showed me the slippers in availability that jumped from size 5 to size 11. Five would leave Karen's heel out on the bare ground, and 11 might look good on Daisy Duck. The phone call brought the same result. Could I back-order them? No, they simply were not available on the planet in a size 8. Defiantly, I Googled for an UGG site. There it was, showing vast availability of the "Fluff Flip Flop" in five colors, except the Baby Pink between sizes 5 and 11. What an insult to a size-8 global demographic. It must have been that I had to get the catalogue out of the mailbox, scan it immediately and sprint into the house to the telephone to have any chance at all of obtaining Baby Pink Fluff Flip Flops in any size between 5 and 11.
So I ordered Baby Blue, cut the picture of the Baby Pink ones out of the catalogue, tucked them into Karen's Mother's Day card, and told her over brownies and ice cream that I couldn't get pink, and the blue ones were back-ordered until June 6. She was gracious about it. Then last Thursday, The New York Times ran a Bloomie's Mother's Day ad featuring the Baby Pink Fluff Flip Flops. I saw men and sons rising to the bait, and the clouds of disappointment and CO2 hanging over the U.S. on Sunday morning. Next time you harp at Mobil, Shell and Chevron for wrecking the environment, don't forget about Bloomie's, too.
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