Greetings and salutations.

It has not escaped my careful observation that, slowly by slowly, inch by inch, our beloved Borders stores are evolving into nothing but big, gaudy, garish, crimson advertisements.

Naturally, I'm referring to Borders Rewards, that charming, colorful little program that began in several limited test markets, and was so incomprehensible to customer and employee alike that it caused some to wonder whether or not the entire project was developed by imprisoned chimpanzees dancing on keyboards in some secret corporate antechamber somewhere (probably New Mexico). The test markets were mostly failures, leaving nothing but a chain of confused, angry customers and parched, nearly suicidal employees in their wake, so naturally, the program was implemented nation wide.

(even to this day, it is said that every time a customer signs up for a Rewards card, if you stop talking, close your eyes, and listen very carefully, you can hear the angels that watch over retail employees everywhere softly weeping)

Anyway, I'm telling a story that has been told a thousand times in a thousand stock rooms across the continental United States, so enough of that. The soul-killing work has already been done. What really concerns me now is the sheer aesthetic disaster being carried out by what are rumored to be faceless corporate gnomes that lurk in the reference section during the day but are unleashed at night to wreak their havoc. And wreak havoc they do.

My question is simple. Who here honestly believes that smearing Borders Rewards Card logo feces all over every single flat, angular, spherical, vertical and horizontal surface in the entire store is going to make customers want to sign up for it? I mean, does this bother anyone else, or am I just a lone voice crying in the wilderness?

For instance, once I stood outside a local store and, before I could even walk into the place, I counted no less than NINE advertisements for the Rewards card. Nine. From the registers, you can count as many as twenty-five. TWENTY-FIVE. Actually, that got me thinking.

Why stop there? Why twenty-five advertisements? Why not fifty? Why not a hundred? Why not position giant vats filled with Rewards cards right over the front doors, link them to the registers or the info desk, and the minute a hapless customer wanders in off the street, dump thousands of Rewards cards on them? That would make me sign up, wouldn't it you?

But why even stop there? After all, there's a Customer Loyalty Initiative in the works! Why not make it mandatory that every employee on the second Tuesday of every month has to actually dress up like a giant Borders Rewards card? Think about it. No more of those pesky issues revolving dress codes in handbooks if everyone is wobbling around in big red costumes pasted together with scotch tape, you know?

Why not make employees compose their own Borders Rewards poetry, limericks, jingles, and/or lyrics that can be recited on command? I mean, what customer wouldn't want to spend an additional twenty minutes in line around Christmas time jiving to a service manager-led Borders Rewards Rap? Especially if they have a few kids and are already under the weather courtesy of too much eggnog made from grandpa's old cough syrup.

And speaking of kids, we can't leave out the kids! Maybe corporate could come up with some kind of Christmas special for them. You know, Borders Rewards action figures, or something like that. Wouldn't you have loved to have been a ten year old waking up to your own Borders Rewards playset, complete with a smiling clerk figure, an ecstatic customer, a working cash register, and about two hundred plastic Rewards cards? I see a Dark Horse comic book in the offing, and maybe even a Saturday morning cartoon if this thing really catches on.

Okay, for my final suggestion to corporate, why not construct an entire store made out of nothing but Rewards cards? Imagine that. From the inside out. We're talking counters, information desks, end caps, shelves, displays, aisles, ladders, ceilings, floors ... maybe even a few stationary employees for those stores out in South Dakota or somewhere that don't do a lot of business. That would get the customers' attention no?

I mean, why not? Tact went out the door a few months ago. We can't promote those damn little slabs of plastic any more aggressively without physically attacking the customers with them. Honestly, the more I think about it, the more I think I'm on to something.

Corporate, if you're reading, I want in on the merchandising!