An Educated Consumer is Our Best Customer.™ A stupid cat, not so much.

[captainsblog]

Those of you in the northeast will recognize that slogan as being the longtime come-on of a clothing chain called Syms. Since time immemorial, Sy and Marcie Syms have been doing deadpan commercials for their off-price offerings of brand-name suits and designer dresses, Whose Names You Must Know (even though they're not allowed to mention them). They're a smidge too up-market for blue-collar B-lo, but they've held their own with relatively little competition, taking over a huge furniture store (the one my sister and I got lost trying to find when I first moved here) which they've since subdivided and now share with- only here could this happen- a discount lumber store.

Eleanor headed over there today for some dress slacks for work. She came home around 3. The bag has been on the living room sofa since then. And, other than the intervening dinner hour, so has this:



Yup, that's boy on the paper shopping bag, where he's spent most of the past five hours. He's probably dreaming of mice being offered on automatic markdown.

The other fun thing for those who know the store? The salesclerk signed Eleanor up for some kind of shoppers club promotion, with email coupons and notifications of their sales. Just one problem: Sy has been advertising for ages that "At Syms, you'll never hear the word 'sale.'"  True dat; they refer to their semiannual markdowns as "Bash." No idea why that evokes images of badly-behaving drunks; must be just me.