In-Direct

I despise malls. Great Northern Mall especially is a truly horrible place, with the shitty music from every store and kiosk competing with each other, the blinky lights and the jerky cell phone salesmen doing everything short of casting a net to attract your attention. That said, I have to admit that whoever came up with the idea of a mall directory was pretty brilliant. In a huge confusing headache inducing place like a mall, it's nice to know that every fifty feet or so there's a map to show you how to get to store you're looking for, or, if you've had all you can take, to the exit.Except that some moron at Great Northern thought it'd be great to hang smaller maps for your convenience... on top of the large lit map. Yes, I realize that I can just take one of the little maps and walk away if I really want to see what's hidden behind the plastic map holder, but come on, there's two square feet of white space down just below where they hung the stupid things. Or, if you don't believe most Americans will exert themselves enough to bend that far (and I guess I'm with you on that) how about hanging it on the side?


It's not like I needed to see what was on the map beneath the map holder, but since I couldn't SEE it, I had no way of knowing that. I happened to be looking for an electronic store and didn't see electronics anywhere else on the map. As it turned out that's because Great Northern doesn't have any electronics stores inside the mall which is just brilliant. In fact all that was under the map was men's clothing and children's clothing. Granted, it's a long tradition of stereotypes to assume that men aren't going to check the map anyway but I think it's also a long accepted stereotype, and probably a more accurate one, that most grown men want to spend as little time in the damn mall as possible, which, logically, means checking the map and getting the hell out of there. And what about the kid's stores? If I were any of the stores covered up by mini-maps I'd be pissed, but I find it hard to believe that the omniscient Disney Store puts up with it. I smell a lawsuit.