I’m beginning to think that we’re going to have to retire, or at least diversity, the ZRC blog’s ‘Don’t Use the Zed Word’ tag, which we apply when journalists or pundits lazily apply the label ‘Zombie’ to something they dislike.

In this latest case, we’re talking about big box stores that have cut back on inventory and don’t know how to arrange their wares to avoid an empty-feeling store:

The consequences are well known. The customer enters the store and there is a hush inside, and a low energy level. If the store is a large one, there is likely to be an inordinate amount of empty space because inventory has been “controlled” so much that some racks and other display fixtures have been taken away.

The shelves that remain may have bare spaces, and where the space is actually occupied there may only be a few picked-over items. Clothing racks, if it’s a clothing store, may be half-empty and only have one or two sizes or colours for each item.

…

Welcome to the zombie store, the store built for another era, when consumers only bought things, not experiences, when they didn’t travel overseas, when their houses and wardrobes weren’t already bulging with junk, when fashion was synonymous with clothing, when there was no e-commerce, and when people didn’t mind dragging themselves around cavernous, unnavigable multi-level stores because they had nothing else to do but mop floors and watch the soaps.

Welcome to the land of a 9 comma run-on sentence that comprises an entire paragraph!

Good grief, where was the editor on vacation when that got through?

When you take a step back and look at things from a broader perspective, you see how writers like this Michael Baker fellow are diluting the term ‘Zombie’ to the point it could mean everything and nothing at all. A ‘Zombie’ store is a store that doesn’t have enough stuff to fill its leased space. Or not; it just needs to somehow *feel* that way. So it isn’t inventory, just a vague.. feeling. A Zombie store doesn’t feel ‘right’, to some undefined observer, based on undefined, subjective criteria.

Take that a step further. Is a theatre a ‘Zombie theatre’ if it’s empty? But of course, theatres spend the vast majority of their lives mostly empty. As do most stores of course, save those open 24 hours. As someone who’s worked night stock at a store that closed in the evenings, I can attest that the very same store that Mr. Baker would judge to be thoroughly lively and full of stuff to purchase during the day feels very empty at night.

So would that store be a Half-Zombie store?

What if it had a midnight sale? A quasi-Zombie store?

And let’s not even get started on defining life as being full of commercial activity and consumerism, although it would be a pleasantly ironic inversion of George Romero’s social critique in ‘Dawn of the Dead’.

Honestly. ‘Zombie store’. Give me a break.

Tags: Don't Use the Zed Word, Journamalism

This entry was posted by John Sears on Sunday, September 4th, 2011 at 5:54 pm and is filed under Zombie Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.