But I cheered when I found out Target bought the leases on 220 Zellers stores. I cheered long and loud. Not because I love Target (though I did appreciate the Targets I have visited in the U.S): because I hate Zellers.
We have two Zellers stores in this city, and I have found myself in a number of other locations throughout Ontario. Almost without exception, they are dark and dingy. Random piles of boxes clutter the floors. Bare shelves dot the store, showing the places where items pictured in the weekly flyer would be if they had any in stock. And some of the worst customer service experiences I've ever had have been at Zellers stores. It's almost as if staff are trained in how to ignore customers.
I remember the time I decided to improve the atmosphere in the Bridgeport Zellers. We were standing in line, ready to check out. Without warning--indeed, without consent, in fact without my immediate knowledge, an unbelievably toxic cloud issued from my nether regions. It rapidly filled my pants, spilling out into the open air and very shortly hitting my nose, which recoiled in abject horror.
Words cannot express how noxious this cloud was. It smelled like slowly baking Death. I tried to breathe and found I couldn't; my wife standing with me, suddenly commenced to choking.
An idiosyncrasy I must mention here about my darling wife, one of her many endearing qualities: somebody farts, she giggles. She can't help herself. She's been doing it since she was a baby, relaxing in her crib, pffting and giggling to herself.
Now, I have given her many reasons to giggle over our eleven-plus years together. I have driven her from rooms, scowling furiously and giggling in spite of herself. This, however...this was most emphatically NOT FUNNY. It was terribly inappropriate, for one thing. Such smells should be confined to bathrooms, sewage treatment plants, and Lovecraftian night-swamps. They most certainly have no place in department stores, no matter how ill-lit and grungy they may be.
Ever laughed at a funeral?
As the smell, impossibly, worsened, I progressed beyond mortification and into a species of perverse pride. I'd outdone myself this time. Any second now, somebody was going to vomit. It might even be me. This'll be one to tell the grandkids about, I thought.
The laughter boiled up and I bit down on it, hard. What escaped from my clenched lips was a weird teakettle whistling. That'll go with the steam coming out the other end, I thought, and then I was off and chortling, Eva just as unwillingly joining in.
The cashier regarded us suspiciously. Suddenly her nose twitched, and then all she could do was stand there and blink ineffectually as the fetid reek caressed her.
With every unwitting laugh, my sphincter released a tiny puff, adding to the miasma surrounding till seven. There I stood, sputtering from both ends, willing with all my might for the cashier to don breathing apparatus, process our odor...order...and let us get the hell out of there. Which she eventually did, without saying so much as a single word. I couldn't exactly blame her.
We christened that holy terror a "screaming Zeller". It's something of a blessed relief that the store for which that atrocity was named will soon pass out of existence.
There was a time when Zellers was actually a decent place to shop. They had a loyalty program called Club Zed and every Canadian knew "The Lowest Price Is The Law." Meanwhile, their upscale sister The Bay was suffering from hideously inflated pricing and a tired atmosphere. Sometime roughly coincident with Wal*Mart's arrival in Canada, the Bay reinvented itself and all the energy seemed to go out of Zellers, never to return.
As I say, I hate to see Americans take over live Canadian chain stores. But Zellers has been dead for years, and just didn't know it.
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