This post originated from an RSS feed registered with .NET Buzz by Sean McCormack. Original Post: BlockBuster, your friendly neighborhood candy store Feed Title: Vini Vidi Vici - Sean McCormack's Blog Feed URL: http://smccormack.blogs.com/adapdev/SyndicationService.asmx/GetRss Feed Description: Sean McCormack's Blog, focusing on various aspects of .NET development, open source projects, recommended books and tools Latest .NET Buzz Posts Latest .NET Buzz Posts by Sean McCormack Latest Posts From Vini Vidi Vici - Sean McCormack's Blog

I just took my daughter to BlockBuster and almost lost it on the poor clerk at the desk.  As we were getting in line, there were two families ahead of me.  When you checkout, BlockBuster purposely drives you through a narrow line that's surrounded by towering shelves of candy on both sides.

One by one, as each of us approached with our kids, the children went nuts.  Each parent had a screaming child that went after the candy - which of course is at their level - only to be told no by their caring parents.  Of course, a child can't be disuaded when all that candy is right within their reach...so a nice little battle of wills ensued between each parent and child.  The result was a screaming kid, or a kid that would be screaming in an hour once they had their fill of sugar after the parents capitulated.

What kills me is the psychology that's at play.  They purposely drive you through that ambush, hoping that parents will be embarrased by their screaming kids and give in.  For those of us that don't, we get to let everyone in line watch us as we wrestle with our kids and keep them away from the candy.  The younger the kids, the better the entertainment.  2 1/2 year olds are especially fun (can you guess what age my daughter is??)...completely driven by their passions and devoid of any reasoning capabilities.

Although they may make money off of parents in the short-term, people like me will decide it's not worth fighting with your child the entire time you're there and switch to NetFlix - no candy and browsing for movies is a lot more peaceful.  In my current state, looking at movies is interspersed with chasing my daughter away from the ice cream machine (oh...and my wife from the magazine rack and sodas).  And that's just browsing.  Then comes the dreaded checkout...