The number in the corner

Friday note. From the middle of September the shop windows in Riyadh split into two kinds, and the difference is in the corner.

One window has a National Day offer with a small licence in the corner: a piece of paper with the dates on it and a number. The other has a discount and no paper.

The corner tells you who applied in August. A promotion in Saudi Arabia is a licensed activity. The application goes in weeks before the glass changes, with the offer already decided, and the licence window for National Day falls in the middle of this month. So a licence in a window this week means somebody sat down in August, while the city was still away, and wrote down exactly what would be on offer on the twenty-third.

The window without one was decided last week, probably by someone who did not know the paper existed, or who knew and hoped the inspector would be busy. The inspector is never that busy. That is what the paper is for.

I have never met a customer who reads the licence. I have also never met one who could not tell the two windows apart. The licensed offer has real dates on it, a real price before and a real price after, because the form made somebody commit to them. The unlicensed one says "up to" and "selected items" and ends when the stock does.

The licence is a small piece of paper that says the promotion was planned by someone who lives under this ministry. The customer has never read one, and can still tell the difference.