Walgreens, Brilliant Product Placement
Having kids gives you a whole new world of experience that you simply can not properly enjoy unless you have kids. Being a first time parent, it is all new to me. Some things are fun, some things are not so fun. This one is not so fun.
Newborns are tons of fun. Basically, all they do is eat, sleep, poop and scream, not necessarily in that order. They are helpless, unable to communicate except through screaming. That’s not quite a well rounded vocabulary, but how much do they need to say? Feed me, change me, let me sleep. You have a 1 in 3 chance of getting it right the first time. However, sometimes it means “I am sick”. Then the fun really begins.
As a new parent, you might as well quit sleeping, you aren’t going to get much. This is even more so if the mother is breast feeding since she’s got to get up and down to feed the baby. As the man, it’s my job to do things like kill bugs and get drugs. In this case, the baby has a fever and I have to go get medicine since there are no spiders to kill. Easy? Sure, there’s a Walgreens right down the road, one of the ones that are open 24 hours.
So, here it is, 4AM in the morning, and I have just been woken up by a screaming baby and sent on a task to get medicine. So, I put on my shorts and the shirt I have near the bed and get my not fully awake self into the car and hit the road to get drugs for my kid. My hair is a mess and I don’t care. I also don’t have on any socks, and I don’t care because at least I have shoes on. I arrive at Walgreens and it is time to begin the search. I’m looking everywhere. They even have a “baby” section for medicine, but it’s not there either. Baby Tylenol, why do you have to be so elusive? Finally, after 15 minutes of blurry-eyed searching, I find it. Where is it? It’s under sleep aids.
While I can’t appreciate this at the time, there is only one term I can use to describe their choice of product placement: Brilliant! I mean, this is absolutely brilliant. I am not trying to be sarcastic, but this is genius. Think about it: you give this to your kid, they feel better and go back to sleep. The more important thing is that you, the parent can now sleep. Brilliant! I hope someone got a raise for coming up with this idea.
Now that I’ve found what I was sent to get, I proceed to the registers to get my purchase rung-up. Can you imagine this? There is a line at 4:20 in the morning. What the heck is up with that? Anyhow, it’s interesting to see the sort of people who come into Walgreens at 4AM, like the idiot in front of me who wants to pay for everything with loose change and coupons. Now it’s my turn. I get the typical greeting, “How are you?”
How am I? Hmm, it’s 4:25, I spent 15 minutes looking for baby medicine, I look like hell, I’m not all the way awake yet, and you ask how I am? How do you think I am? I’m sleep deprived, I look like a mess, and I’m in a bad mood. I restrain the urge to reach out and choke the life out of this clerk who merely asked an innocent question, not meaning to send me into a rage that might result in a homicide. I answer with a muted “fine”. Now, get this, the clerk’s name is “Sultan”, you know, as in an Indian king. Now, not to say anything negative, but he looked more like a janitor. At least he took the hint and avoided further interaction outside of telling me the total for the baby drugs.
Sometimes, no conversation is a good thing. I really like those self checkout registers at certain places. I go to a store, I’m all business.
So, I pay, I go, I get home, I get back in bed. The baby gets medicine; falls asleep and so does my wife and myself.
Baby medicines in the sleep aids section. Pure genius!
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