The shopping mall massage chair business is a hard-earned dollar. All you can do is offer a brief in-situ experience, as nobody actually wants to install one permanently in their home. After all, the average massage chair is about the same size as a double bed. Then where you put your ninety-inch 4K television?
And, although there is no shortage of sweat-panted, food-court fattened shoppers who might enjoy nothing more than wallowing, hippo-like, in the leathery, undulating comfort of such mechanical furniture, the bargain hunting masses rarely trudge through the neglected mezzanines where massage chair floor models languish.
I only came across the examples pictured below when lost in the catacombs of Level 2A, wandering past the shoe repair station and the lost property kiosk, searching for the bathrooms at the end of a dimly-lit corridor.
These enormous receptacles for aching bones had been dumped in the walkway and left to peddle their own orthopedic benefits. No human salesman was present, but the insertion of a dollar bill in the armrest slot bought a minute of lower back pain relief if you were so inclined.
Does anybody ever have a go on these? I asked the equally idle shoe repair guy.
He wrinkled his nose and shook his head. Folk just come here to take a piss and then leave, he said. That's the only foot traffic we get. Sometimes you'll get a couple having an argument over in the corner, but mostly it's just piss and leave.
I thought it would be polite to ask him how his business was doing, despite my better judgement and overwhelming urge to join the ranks of the piss and leave people. He shrugged. Been better, been worse.
I didn't ask him what could be worse than a day with zero sales spent watching people walk in and out of the bathrooms. Perhaps no longer being needed at all, like the guy who used to cajole people into trying the massage chairs but was replaced by an automated payment machine.
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