“This should be its own genre,” muses Malachi Raine. He’s describing the experience of hearing two different piped-in soundtracks—one from the mall’s speakers and the other from an adjacent retail location—at the same time. Binaural aleatoria is just one of the challenges Malachi faces while serving out a 10-hour shift at a mall kiosk, which is perhaps the closest one can get to being marooned in America’s sea of retail.
While kiosks are participating in and contributing to the frenzy of the marketplace, they remain apart, isolated, landless. Standing at a kiosk feels lonely. And the mall is not a nurturing host. Malachi, the lone attendant at Alderwood Mall’s Rose Vape kiosk, feels that there is an adversarial relationship with the mall management and a strict set of rules governing kiosk operation. (Alderwood Mall did not reply to our inquiry.) Often thought of as being pushy salespeople—inspiring in walkers the same dread as a smiling, sanctimonious sidewalk canvasser with hand extended—kiosk attendants must work their sales tactics within the guidelines of mall policy…