The Mall(s) of America

I've never been that big of a shopper. When I was a kid my Mom always joked about how I had about a 30 minute window at a mall before I was ready to leave. It must be a little ironic now that as a non-shopper one of my job's main functions is traveling to different Victoria's Secret stores. From my count I've now been to 59 (I might be missing a couple) stores in cities like Miami, New York City, Chicago, Detroit, Dallas and Myrtle Beach. This past month I was actually only in Columbus for 15 of the 31 days because I was traveling the rest of the time.

From this I've started to notice the differences in malls and shopping centers. I can pick out the similarities, the differences and the types of malls by a quick glance around. Maybe this doesn't seem too impressive to the general public, but for me it really is something I never would have expected. For me growing up malls were just malls. I never gave much thought to Northpark being that much different than any other malls in the country. I know now how ridiculous that statement is, but at the time I just never really thought of other malls being different from my *local mall.

*You know the saying "all politics is local." Well, there is probably even more truth to "all malls are local." During some of my store visits I end up going to malls that are various friends and coworkers former local malls and whenever I bring that up I am guaranteed to get a spirited conversation.One coworker and I talked for a good 20 minutes about her local mall and why it was superior to the mall just 3 miles down the street.

Anyway, I've developed certain criteria to judge malls and also since it is my normal lunch spot now how to handle the food court dilemma. (Order - 1. Local speciality option, 2. Chick-Fil-A, 3. food court Japanese.) It is actually a lot more exciting than I ever thought it would be. I'm starting to understand the passion certain people have for retail, and that makes my job that much easier. I can't say that I've completely reach the point where *Confucius would be proud of me, but I'm getting closer.

"Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life."