Consumer Trends Among the 'Grumpies'

Back in March, I wrote a column called "Armchair Predictions About Consumer Trends."

I had just realized I was an armchair expert on certain consumer trends because I had a perfect demographic focus group of millennial female consumers right in my living room – my two daughters, ages 16 and 19.

"This demographic is responsible for a large portion of America's consumer spending," I said at the time. "And from what I can tell by my credit-card bills, my daughters do about 120% of that spending."

But now I've realized I also have a perfect demographic focus group of another segment of consumers: the male, 65-plus Baby Boomer. That focus group is me.

I'm a real armchair expert on this subject because I'm the one sitting in the armchair.

Marketing experts don't seem to think guys like me are major consumers. To judge by advertising that's pitched to people our age and gender, you'd think the only things we shop for are Medicare supplemental insurance, reading glasses, and Viagra.

The marketing experts are fools. Male, 65-plus Baby Boomers are more important to U.S. consumer economics than most other sections of the population, including the Yuppies.

Call us the "Grumpies" – Graying Rich Upset Male Persons.

And note the "rich" part. What makes us important is that we've got the money. Men over the age of 65 have among the highest average net worth of any Americans. (That is, if we're still alive. The Americans with the highest average net worth are the widows of men over 65.)

So pay attention, marketing experts. (And investors too.) Keep an eye on Grumpie consumer trends.

Of course, given that the main characteristic of Grumpies is grumpiness, these are not "consumer trends" in the sense of "products we want to buy." These are gripes – consumer trends in the sense of "products we'd like to stuff up the noses of the people who manufactured them."

But the companies that marketing experts work for don't make profits just by knowing what products consumers love. They also need to know what products consumers loathe.

And here are some...

We don't like the Internet. Of course, it's handy. And like everybody else, we use it all the time. But...

When we're trying to Google something important, such as "best salmon river in Atlantic Canada" and an ad pops up... the way we feel about the company that posted that ad is the way Gloria Steinem feels about Bill O'Reilly.

We Grumpies hate social media... even if our little Suzy and that dork she married post cute pictures of the grandkids on Facebook.

We detest the whole everybody-connected-to-everybody-24/7 thing. We'd like to be dis-connected, up on the Miramichi River in New Brunswick, casting flies and claiming that our cellphones and laptops fell out of our waders.

We'd also like someone to develop an app that gets rid of all apps, a no-app app. Call it a "napp."

Maybe that would keep people from fiddling with their phones all day. Imagine how much fun the sitcom Cheers would have been if Norm walked into the bar and nobody said anything because Sam, Diane, Carla, Frasier, Woody, and Cliff the mailman all had their noses buried in their iPhones.

No one is willing to dispose of their phones these days. Meanwhile, everything else that's for sale seems to be completely disposable, and this makes us Grumpies mad.

When I moved to rural New England in the 1970s, I bought a bunch of power tools. Forty years later, they still work. Albeit my old Skilsaw is down to about 60 rpm, and I keep forgetting to take the chuck wrench out of the chuck when I'm using my original electric drill, which usually causes the chuck wrench to fly across my shop and bust a window.

So I bought a good cordless drill a few years back. But its battery packs have quit taking a charge. I went to the hardware store to buy new batteries and found out they'd have to be special ordered. If they still made those batteries anymore, which the hardware store clerk wasn't sure about.

Then I found out I could buy a new drill, the same brand, with a pair of different "improved" battery packs, all for less than the special-order batteries for my old (perfectly satisfactory) drill.

This is just wrong. Shortly afterward, my Shop-Vac died. The $0.50 plastic on/off switch broke. And you guessed it, the price to get it fixed was more than the price of a new Shop-Vac.

Build things to last, damn it! We Grumpies may not be children of the Depression, but we're children of children of the Depression. We grew up hearing: "Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without."

I couldn't fix the Shop-Vac myself because... (A) They don't make that (perfectly satisfactory) model of Shop-Vac anymore... (B) They don't make parts for that model anymore... And (C) when I tried to substitute another switch, I laid a screwdriver across the positive and negative poles to test the connection and set off all the smoke alarms in my shop.

OK, maybe point (C) was my bad... But you can't fix anything anymore.

You can't even comprehend it.

The washer-dryer and dishwasher at our house have no knobs or dials. Instead, they have circuit boards that look like miniature maps of downtown Mumbai faced with flat panels of electronic touch controls. You touch them, and they take control. What will happen next is anyone's guess. The washer dries, the dryer sets itself on "rinse," and the dishwasher goes into spin cycle.

Same with cars. Unfixable. I grew up in the automobile business. I was a passable shade-tree mechanic in my youth. But now I'm flummoxed. I don't even try anymore. The last time something started to go thunk-thunk-thunk, I didn't bother to look in the engine compartment. I immediately took the car to a real mechanic.

My mechanic is a Grumpie, too. He's been working on cars since the Edsel was the Tesla of its day. I can speak frankly with him.

"To tell the truth," I said as I opened the hood, "I don't know what two-thirds of the stuff in here is."

My mechanic said, "To tell the truth, I don't, either."

Regards,

P.J. O'Rourke