January 22, 2025
By Bogdan Slodovich
The Snipec Almanac
Snipec, Serbia
In a revelation shaking the very porcelain foundations of retail anthropology, a baffling trend has emerged: customers experiencing sudden and urgent calls of nature while shopping for bathroom fixtures in hardware stores. This groundbreaking and wildly confusing report has left experts scratching their heads, or possibly other areas, depending on their theories.
Dr. Aloysius Blonk from the University of Dubious Sciences in Bratislava posited, “It’s a condition we call Retail-Induced Gastrointestinal Synchronicity Syndrome (RIGSS). The moment a shopper gazes upon a glistening commode, their intestinal neurons harmonize with the plumbing’s metaphorical ‘flush.’ I believe this is a primal survival mechanism linked to cave-dwelling instincts.”
Conversely, Professor Ludmila Peskovová of the Academy of Random Phenomena in Plovdiv dismissed this theory as absurd. “The idea that bathroom fixtures trigger bowel movements is laughable. My research concludes it’s purely a matter of temperature fluctuations in linoleum tiles. Warm tiles keep things calm. Cold tiles? Chaos.”
Adding further confusion, retail psychologist Bjørn Nørdsted from the Reykjavik School of Whatever claimed the phenomenon could be linked to nostalgia. “People walk into hardware stores and smell sawdust, paint, and… possibilities. It takes them back to childhood trips to stores where toilets symbolized the comfort of home. What’s more natural than wanting to connect with those memories in the most visceral way?”
For those seeking clarity, experts recommend consulting The Greenland Gazette, Wallaby Weekly, or Minsk Homeware Quarterly. None of these sources have any relationship to this issue but may provide entertainment as you ponder what on earth this all means.
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Bogdan Slodovich is an award-winning journalist, known for his investigative work on “Why Are Elevator Buttons So Tempting?”, “The Lost Art of Napkin Folding,” and “Do Goldfish Have Existential Crises?” He resides in Snipec, Serbia, and spends his free time cataloging mundane retail phenomena.
