I wrote this before I wrote the previous post, but forgot to post it!

Another thing, in my imaginary store: there will be no intercom blaring Muzak all day long. All the employees and customers will have the pleasure of listening to nothing but total silence for hours, and hours, and hours, while they work and shop.

I get music in my head all day long even when I am outside work.

After writing the post about a store where I have no 'prices ending in 9,' I got bombarded for hours with voices debating about my grammar and my prepositions. They want it to end WITH nine, not IN nine. And I sort of agree with that, but I was uncertain, and I chose 'in.' It seemed like 'ends with' felt more like an event or process occurring through time. Like, the process of cooking something ends with sitting down at the table and eating the meal. I am sure I've heard people saying 'ending in' to talk about words and letters. However, it does sound kind of weird and I agree, it probably sounds better as 'with.'

If you look at the abstract meanings of the prepositions, it gets confusing and arbitrary. It starts to seem like it doesn't really matter which preposition you use, because you can rationalize every possible choice. Do the numbers somehow 'merge into' the number nine at the end? Or does the number seem to end 'with, at the same time as, alongside' the number 9? Prepositions are very abstract unless you are talking about physical objects.

In West Virginia, you don't put things ON the floor, you put them IN the floor. And when I first moved down there, I used to make fun of that. It seems like you are embedding objects into the surface of the floor, like when you leave a footprint in fresh concrete. But you can also view it as 'in the area of the floor.' The floor is a square or rectangular area, and you put an object into that area. Or maybe it is IN the few inches of air space near the floor, and 'the floor' includes not just the flat surface but also some of the air above it.

So it's hard to argue about which prepositions are the right ones to use, because it gets so complicated. I decided that 'ends with nine' probably does sound better.

Anyway, the 'in MY store I would do THIS' is just a fantasy. I'm not actually planning to open a business right now. But I wish somebody else would do it. A store where nothing ends with nine, and there's no Muzak. And while we're at it... (list a dozen other things you wish this imaginary store/business would do.)