Do Staples Employees Ever Think of Themselves as Redshirts?

[tmcg]

akaspeedo and I were in a Staples yesterday. We had some questions, and for a long time there was no one around to answer them. Finally, two aisles away, I spotted a tall guy in a Staples-red polo shirt. I started to go over to him, but having read this account of an Improv Everywhere invasion of Best Buy (linked to by gadarene), I...hesitated. Briefly, but long enough to laugh at myself. Was he really a Staples guy? Or just a guy in a red shirt? It reminded me of Disney World, which royally screwed with my sense of reality in an "Is it live or is it Animatronic?" way. Dude, the world is weird and complicated enough as it is.

The thing that struck me about the Best Buy invasion was that they'd have had very little to chronicle if they hadn't been trying to chronicle it. What got them into trouble, and made fodder for all the anecdotes, was the cameras they smuggled in to record the invasion. Attempting to observe the phenomenon not only changed the quality of it, but made it into something.

I really, really loved their Cell Phone Symphony mission, though.