SM Prestige is the elite membership program of SM Advantage. It is composed of SM Advantage members who have reached the required spending level at SM — at least P300,000 during the two-year membership term, or have been nominated by SM retail establishments.
SM Prestige membership is automatically renewed after two years if you maintain the required spending of P150,000 at all SM Retail stores.
Three operative keywords eloquently, aye, elegantly, give full meaning to what is cited in that eponymous website:
Prestige. Standing or estimation in the eyes of people, weight or credit in general opinion, commanding position in people’s minds. As defined in elementary Webster’s.
Prestige. Status, stature, standing, reputation, regard, fame, renown, honor, esteem, prominence, importance, influence, eminence, celebrity. As synonymized in basic Roget’s.
Lounge. A public room, as in a hotel, theatre, or club, in which to sit and relax. Whence spawned its own genre of easy listening music evoking in listeners that feeling of place of serenity and time of tranquility. Epitomized in Ella Fitzgerald’s Summertime.
Elite. The choicest, the best of anything considered collectively, as of a group or class of persons. Synonyms: the elect, crème de la crème, A-class, A-list, cream of the crop, nonpareil.
Meanings and synonyms sadly lost in the usage of the Prestige Lounges at SM City Clark and SM City Pampanga.
Everything – nursing stations, day care centers and kiddie playgrounds, call centers and gossip corners, sites for job interviews and business deals, debating forums even – but a lounge makes those “havens of The SM Store” now.Correspondingly, anything but “prestigious” makes the denizens of these misappropriated, misnomered lounges.
Yes, even out of the fish market and in the prestigious lounge, the palengkera stays her loud-mouthed self.
The barriotic biglang-yaman though jaundiced with a hoard of Saudi gold remains empty of oral manners, er, conversation etiquette.
The bombastic politico, accustomed to the hustings, takes the lounge as a literal campaign platform.
The rowdy nonesensical chatter of college boys and girls yet another proof of school miseducation.
Aye, what with uniformed public school teachers reducing themselves to fishwives at the lounge.
Not to be outdone is the shrilly gayspeak of “chuva, churva, churvaness” with accompanying limp-wristed high-fives.
Irritating ringing tones. Bawling babies.
Squealing toddlers. Ear-splitting guffaws. Highpitched shrieks. Booming voices.
Anything but a lounge. Everything but prestige. Everyone but the elite.
Not that the SM Prestige Lounge is wanting in protocols – which are in fact posted by the very entrance – most prominent of which is “Be Considerate of Others. Please Observe Silence Inside the Lounge.” This finding vocalization through a public address system whenever the room decibel reaches public market and cockpit levels.
Alas, always to no avail.
Why, No. 12 in the posted House Rules states: “SM Prestige Management reserves the right to ask members and guests who violate Prestige Lounge House Rules and/or Terms & Conditions of the Prestige Program to leave the lounge and /or revoke their membership.” Underscoring mine.
As I write this at the SM City Clark Prestige Lounge – 4:36 p.m. Monday, July 13 – a child babbles at the top of her voice with the young mother doing nothing to silence her.
How and why No. 12 in the House Rules has not been invoked much less enforced by the lounge staff is a testament to the breadth of their tolerance and the depth of their patience.
Which the silent rule-abiding Prestige loungers like me have not been so gifted with.
So, I can only write about all this and hope SM Malls management will read it and take the necessary action. Cognizant as we all are that where crass is most and class least, never can there be prestige.
