Niko loved supermarket lines. It wasn’t so when Niko arrived at the U.S. as an engineer for an automaker plant. Then he liked to go shopping but hated lines. But the day Niko retired from his job, he went to buy something to read, he chose the shortest line, and there were only two persons ahead of him; an old, skinny lady and a young, huge, and fat man. What caught Niko’s attention was that the old lady, 85 to 88 years old, was buying four six beer packs, rat poison, a gun magazine and dozens of junk food bags. The 21 or maybe 23 years old, and more than 230 pounds, man, was carrying Weight Watchers packets, some environment biodegradable detergent, and a packet of fat-free turkey.
Niko thought that the lady and the man seemed to be with each other’s things. Since that day, Niko began to observe other people’s shopping habits. He chose the longest lines to watch as many shoppers as possible. In a couple of years, Niko became an extremely good forecaster of people’s purchasing behavior. He used to choose an interesting character at the store entrance and follow her or him by the aisles. Niko, mentally, registered what kind of bread, beverages, and dairy products were buying his subject. Niko developed a method to predict what kind of products each person was going to buy.
Niko’s accuracy was 97 percent. By then Niko began to buy things six or seven times a day. Store employees knew him and looked at him suspiciously, they thought he was shoplifting. In some stores, Security people followed Niko, trying to catch him but nobody did since he wasn’t stealing. However, Niko became uncomfortable, and he started going to more distant stores and at night times. Also, Niko started to follow just one person per day and count his weekly, Monday through Sunday, shopping.
Niko discovered his predictions for middle-class neighborhoods weren’t good in low-income or high-income areas. Niko felt devastated since his weekly score fell to 67 percent. Niko felt his game was stupid and dangerous since he had witnessed several people stealing, two armed robberies, and one unprovoked shooting. So Niko decided to leave the game as soon as he reached a 100 percent score.
In the long run, the change paid off since Niko discovered different areas of the city had different consumer patterns. Also, different times of the day produced different types of consumption. So, Niko improved his score to an impressive 98 percent and weeks later to 99.7 percent. But that wasn’t enough for Niko. As a former Nissan engineer, Niko was used to quality control and all he wanted was a 100 score.
Niko was near to reaching his goal but every time a customer would buy something unexpected and Niko’s score stopped around 99. One Sunday when Niko was near to achieving his 100 percent goal Niko decided he was going to take all the precautions to end his hobby that day. He chose a poor neighborhood at 11:00 pm since those customers were easier to predict went to a small supermarket. Niko targeted a young man and started his game, however, the man looked nervous, and Niko knew why, the youth had introduced a cigarette packet into his pocket, unfortunately, Niko didn’t see if it was a Marlboro or a Camels.
Niko predicted it was a Marlboro but wasn’t quite sure. Because he was trying very hard to find out the cigarette brand, Niko became careless and let the man see him.
The youth noticed Niko was following him and became more nervous.
He went to the cashier and paid for seven products that Niko had predicted.
Niko also became excited; it was as close to 100 percent as he had ever been before. The only way to finish this game was to learn the cigarette brand, so Niko followed the youth and asked him for a cigarette. The youth reached for his pocket and reached an old Camels packet and offered Niko the last cigarette. Niko felt frustrated, probably the youth had stolen a Camel’s packet but trying to be sure Niko, pointed to the pocket where the youth had kept the stolen cigarettes packet and said «No I prefer one of these».
The youth, thinking Niko was a security guard, reached his boot an pulled out a small gun, shot two times at Niko, and started running. Niko tried to follow him yelling – The cigarettes, the cigarettes, let me see them!
A few yards ahead Niko fell and died. He never learned the youth had stolen a packet of Marlboro for his girlfriend.
