I dedicate this article to my leaving boss Phil, thanks for being a good leader; this one's for you!

For those of you who are not aware of it, I work at the global retail gargantuan Wal-Mart as an electronics sales associate specializing in television and home theater systems.  Essentially, my job is to make customers feel better about purchasing an item that not only can they do not need but probably cannot afford without taking out another loan that prioritizes somewhere between their taxidermy bills and child support.  A vast majority of the customers I sell big screens to are of the male variety; married with children, hold a tedious job and constantly compete with the neighbors over who has the largest whatever.

This is typical male behavior; have male A show a big object B in the group and guy C will have to get a larger one.  Back in medieval times when materialistic needs were down to garden implements, males often compared the size of their muscles and capability to fight in the joust since showing off the sizes (or lack thereof) of their sexual organs went out of style with the ancient Olympics and proved to be rather gay.  In the Information Age with the introduction of mass production and cheap goods, the males of today now have a larger variety of larger objects to show off and compare to those of other males.  Such objects include trucks, trailers, guns (both firearm and muscular), what size condoms they buy, lawn siding and, in the case of Captain Jack Sparrow, telescopes.

With televisions and home theater systems, males will spend 30% more for an upgrade of 10% higher, especially in the realm of screen size.  When compared side-by-side a 50 doesn't look much larger than a 47 but to two competing males it's the difference between who has it and who needs to make a call to Smiling Bob at Enzyte.  He with the largest size is usually declared the dominant male and this is measured by how many people will frequent his establishment of viewing during the Playoffs.  Needless to say, this also means he must provide the beer and chips.

So the market of my field of expertise is dependent almost solely on one popular, yet stupid, very male element; penis envy.  Anyone who says "size doesn't matter" is either a used-car salesman or your last boyfriend/girlfriend and both are lying.  Next to Dunkin Doughnuts and Tang, America runs primarily on this kind of envy.  To prove this point, all you have to do it watch one congressional episode of C-SPAN and watch how senators will try to prove their points by showing which state has the largest figures and I doubt they're referring to what Hollywood actresses are living there (in which case, California always wins).

So penis envy is the primary driving force behind my sales figures.  I know what you're thinking; "Tim, there are many other reasons for owning a big screen television beyond stereotypical male attitudes."  I must admit that I agree with this statement since I sold a 47'' Philips 1080p LCD screen ($1647) to a representative of the Mayville School District just today.  I asked the representative what he was using the screen for since I use customer feedback to recommend other products.  He turned, grinned and said...

"Well, Fargo just got a boost to get new screens for their locker rooms so we figure we deserve equal treatment right?"

So big screen televisions serve another purpose; penis envy equalizers.  To tell the person next to you that although you are large and in charge, the next person down the line has a wanker just as big as yours and in high definition.

To say this attitude is male exclusive would be a gross lie.  Granted most of the customers I sell to are males but women tend to either fill this role or encourage it by giving big screens to their men as gifts to recognize that they too think their man has a large HDMI cable.  If anything, women are more aggressive and not nearly as subtle about penis envy as males are.  Take a look at the stereotypical suburban life and observe the constant competition over who has the larger SUV and nicest siding on their house.  This is what drove Hummer (no pun intended) to transform their line of products from a decent off-road vehicle to a gas-guzzling SUV that would make a Cadillac Escalade look like the Toyota Yaris.  As if the size comparison of the Honda Odyssey and Dodge Caravan wasn't enough, Hummer had to take things to the next level by giving soccer moms a 2-ton battering ram with a car seat and "Baby on Board" sticker in case another soccer mom starting piping her at the next intersection.

So you see how this accounts for a LOT of the drive force behind competition in the world?  Without penis envy, there would be no sports teams, foreign policy with France, Gucci and Pontiac Firebirds.  This accounts for the vast majority of my business but doesn't end with television sales.  The console wars in the video game industry probably personify penis envy more than even televisions.

While the Playstation II was an incredible and revolutionary system in and of itself, the Japanese at Sony got tired of the Americans at Microsoft for raking in all the hardcore players with the XBox360 due to the higher system specifications.  The Japanese executives at Sony looked down and realized the size of their system specs were nowhere near that of the Americans and that WOULD NOT stand.  In retaliation, they injected steroids into their DVD players and released the Blue Ray discs hoping to appeal to the penis envy in the American economy; they succeeded.

To take it to the next level, Sony placed Blue Ray players in their new vamped Playstation III and toned up their ram, rom and hard drive space to compare to the size of the Americans.  Problem is, while their size was comparable to the Americans, the Japanese at Sony didn't know how to use it right and sales plummeted as people preferred to get the same size but better price from Microsoft.  Sony tried to use their size like the Americans but fell short and released waay too soon, even sooner than Microsoft did and turned off a lot of buyers. 

It also didn't help that the people at Nintendo, who had a much smaller size system, sold theirs at a fraction of the cost only more fun to play.  Of course, I'm referring to the Nintendo Wii.  While the Wii may be smaller in size, it's much more fun to play with and one can spend hours making suggestive comments about the name ("Let's all go play on Tim's Wii!" or "If Tim had two Wiis, he'd be playing with his WiiWii.").

So, by capitalizing on penis envy I can sell just about anyone a product they probably could live without but can't resist knowing someone has a larger size than they do and don't want to be laughed at as the person who came too soon to settle for a smaller size.

Sorry, had to rant about my job.