, preferring to favour the profit line before the custody of their workforce? What is retail’s role in pushing the up-and-coming generation to look after number one before others? And what can be done about it? Are current employment conditions favouring practices that negate loyalty and block career paths for those who don’t have access or choose not to pursue further education? Do we deserve their allegiance if we can’t offer the most basic needs on the life pyramid, i.e. biological, psychological and safety, to name but a few? Is political correctness choking our ability to express, discuss and debate – to say what we actual feel, openly and honestly? How else are we to learn and appreciate diversity if we are unable to acknowledge it from the source? Do we consider the repercussions of those we ostracise today in our endeavour to redress inconsistencies and wrongs of the past? Is it fair our progeny pay the price? How about the mushrooming bureaucratic monsters we are creating in the name of goodness and sensibility, which no doubt will return and bite us in their failings to do so. Will we ever again hear the wonderful exclamations of our childhood reverberating through commercial hallowed walls as we whoop the equivalency of, ‘Look Mummy – no hands’? Or is it nothing more than a ruse to cover our precious commercial behinds at any cost? Instead of apportioning blame with looks of condescension, we must take the lead and review with urgency retail’s part in ending this spiral of self-indulgence and exclusiveness. Apathy is the less harmful version of exclusion – the opposite of which is so very apparent in the world today. ‘Me’ instead of ‘us’ + ‘I’ instead of ‘we’ + ‘greed’ instead of ‘empathy’ = isolation. Dave Farrell is a retailer with three decades of experience on three continents. He can be reached at alliance@vodafone.co.nz.