All This for a Bottle of Shampoo

I didn't buy shampoo the last time I was close to Beauty Farm*, a store where the brand I use is less expensive than anywhere else. I just couldn't face it. I didn't want to be pursued all over the store by the manager (a man) or by the latest sales assistant. (They have all been women--young, old, over the top, mousey, you name it. They are never there very long. I've never encountered the same one twice.)
I also didn't want to have to hear and feel compelled to respond to the litany.
"Do you have a Beauty Farm card?"
"Yes."
"May I see it?"
"No."
"If you left it at home, I can put in your phone number and find it."
"That's all right."
"You know, after you spend $100, you get ten percent off your next purchase."
"That's all right."
"Ten percent is meaningful these days."
"I really just want to buy the shampoo and go next door to do my grocery shopping."
What I really, really want is to go into a store, select an item I desire (and, if I'm having trouble, beckon to knowledgeable sales help), pay for it, and leave.
I do not want to enter into a "relationship" even for a discount with someone I'll never see again (especially in this or any store where employment longevity seems to be about a minute and a half, hardly time to become knowledgeable in the first place.)
I do not want to waste so much time that any monetary savings are eaten up in the process.
I do not want to give my name, address, phone number, or any other information about myself. As far as I'm concerned, when they have my money--via cash, check or credit card--that's all they need to know.
In fact, the prevalence of collecting data about me in the guise of 'discount' or 'membership' cards is getting seriously aggravating, and I wonder, actually, if it is not an imposition thinking people ought not to tolerate.
I did succumb, I admit it, the first time I entered the Beauty Farm and the manager prevailed upon me to register for their card. I didn't care about the ten percent off on my first purchase after spending that first hundred. I just wanted him to be quiet and take my money so I could--you guessed it--go next door and buy groceries.
The store next door is Trader Joe's. Good value, and they collect NO information about you, no matter how you pay. They even accept checks. Granted, they will put the check through a handy machine to see if the customer is in the habit of writing rubber ones. But that's simply prudent, and I doubt that they store the information on the check themselves. It resides, if it is retained, at some processing company's computer somewhere in cyberspace, or maybe California since those two terms are, in some universes, interchangeable.
However, here's the point: At a time when it was possible for merchants to actually get to know their customers, there was some point to it. The merchant could then assess the sorts of items a customer or group of customers preferred, and stock those. There was no discount attached to it all; the customer kept returning because he or she found the products of good value, and the help knowledgeable and professional. Some sort of relationship might develop over time, but it was one based on mutual benefit. It might well have included passing the time of day--asking about the children or whatever--between a customer and merchant who had been doing business together for a long time. But it wouldn't have been a sense of faux-community based on offering the customer a discount in return for loyalty...loyalty which would, moreover, be transferred to the next similar emporium offering similar products at perhaps a slightly larger discount.
There is no honor among thieves. So, if a merchant steals your loyalty by useless blandishments (offering ten percent on a hundred dollar purchase, spread over time, certainly strikes me as useless since you might move away or change preferences in products before you reached the magic number), then he should expect no better from you, or from his competitors.
I miss Mrs. Krause. I even miss Gretchen, her humongous Alsatian that would leap over her grocery counter if you said the wrong word auf Deutsch. I had no clue about anything else in her life, except she opened the store for two hours on Sunday afternoon, just long enough for my grandmother to pop in and buy a couple of my very favorite little cups of custard. No discount was needed, no card, and no false "relationship." Mrs. Krause made custard and sold it. I liked custard. My grandmother thought it a fine treat and gladly bought it, for the price at which it was offered, until Mrs. Krause retired and the world turned into so many facsimilies of Beauty Farm.

* Store name changed to protect me from lawsuits in a litigious society.