One poster, three shelves

Saturday note, from the stationery aisle.

In Dubai and Riyadh, in the first week of September, the back-to-school display is coming down. The pencil cases are on the clearance shelf, the lunchboxes carry a red sticker, and the space at the front of the store is being cleared for something green. The schools went back around the end of August, and a family that has not bought the bag by now has already borrowed one.

In Cairo the same aisle is going up. Public schools open around the twentieth, so the bags are still in their boxes, the uniforms are being hung at the front, and the offer has not started because the mother has not started looking.

The international schools keep a third clock, on their own calendar, and the family shopping for them may be standing in either aisle with a different list.

Above all three shelves hangs the same poster. One start date, one end date, one offer, approved in one office for the whole region. In Dubai it is advertising a shelf that has already been marked down. In Cairo it is advertising a shelf that has not been built. Somewhere in between it is advertising the wrong list.

The poster is the plan. The shelf is the customer. On any Saturday in September the two are in different weeks, and only one of them knows it.

There are three back-to-school seasons in this region, and on a given day only one of them is live for the customer: the one on the shelf in front of her.