Why I Hate Shopping, Part 1

Call me crazy, call me abnormal, call me whatever you like—but I have to admit it: I HATE shopping. It’s not just that everything costs so much these days, although that’s certainly a part of it. And it’s not that it’s inconvenient—there’s a store or a mall of some sort on practically every corner in the entire metropolitan area. No, there are other reasons why I hate shopping. A recent trip to Wal-Mart is a perfect example.

One evening several years ago, against my better judgment, I went to Wal-mart with Ilana, my then-teenage daughter, because we were out of Kleenex and napkins and Cheerios and a shower curtain liner and other stuff. I knew it was a mistake the minute we walked in, because there were no shopping carts near the door, and I had to go and wait near the checkout counters for someone to be done with a cart. (I briefly considered wrestling one away from a little old lady, but I decided against it.) The store was crowded and messy (it’s getting to be as bad as K-Mart.) Finally I got a cart and I started in on my list, but right away I got really aggravated because I was looking for peanut butter and I couldn’t find any, so I asked a clerk and he said, “I know we have some; it’s in the food section, but I don’t know where.”

Well, duh. Of course it should be in the food section, but I checked every aisle three times and I couldn’t find any. So I gave up and went to look for an electric hair straightener that Ilana wanted. It wasn’t with the shampoo and the electric shavers, where you would think it should be, so I asked at the pharmacy window. I was clever enough to ask for “hair dryers” and not “hair straighteners,” since I figured I needed to make it as simple as possible for these people. The pharmacy clerk said, “It’s in ‘Hardware.’” Hardware? Really? But, OK, whatever.
We went to Hardware, and the hair straighteners were actually there, and Ilana picked out the one she wanted. Meanwhile, I went and did the rest of my shopping, and when I was all done I went to the little Customer Service desk they have right by the checkout, and I asked the woman working there, “Do you have peanut butter?” She looked me right in the eye and said, “I don’t know.” I thought of several possible replies at that point (the most mild of which was, “Excuse me, but isn’t that your JOB?”) but the sarcastic ones would have gone over her head, and the serious ones would have got me arrested.

So I just sighed and walked away and stood in the line at the checkout counter for 20 minutes and then paid $117 for the privilege of shopping at Wal-Mart. When I got out to the car, I remembered that my windshield wiper had broken just as I was driving to the store, and I was going to buy a new one while I was there, but I didn’t write it on my list, so of course by the time I got into the store I forgot all about it.

And it’s supposed to rain all week.

Speaking of windshield wipers--a couple of months ago my husband asked me to buy new wipers for my car, so I did. But when I got home, he said, “Why did you only buy one?” I had just assumed that there were two of them in the package. Shouldn’t they come in pairs? Why would you buy just one windshield wiper? Isn’t that sort of like buying one shoe?

Anyway, getting back to Wal-mart--the real reason I went there at all was because, at the time this happened (2003), I was a kindergarten teacher, and I needed clear plastic cups for an art project for my class. If I didn’t need them right away, I would have put off buying the Cheerios and the napkins and the shower curtain liner as long as possible, maybe for weeks or even months. One can live without Cheerios or napkins, and the shower curtain liner has been moldy and disgusting since last summer, so what’s the rush? But I really needed those plastic cups, so just because of that I went to the store and spent an hour and $117.

And GUESS WHAT? Wal-mart was out of them.

So I had to go to Party City to get the cups, and it was already 8:30, and I had promised Ilana that we would be home by 9:00 so that she could watch NYPD Blue on TV with her father, because this was their little Tuesday night father-daughter bonding ritual, and she still had 3 math problems to do for homework and she had stayed up until 1:45 AM the previous night reading Huckleberry Finn, because Mrs. Rosenwald was giving a test the next day. And even though she had just had a whole week off from school, she left it until the last possible moment so I knew she wouldn’t be awake for long after the TV show was over but I really needed the cups because I had promised the other kindergarten teacher that I would get them SO I WAS FEELING A LOT OF STRESS.

While I was at Party City, I decided to get some paper plates and napkins, but they only had a couple of colors of the kind of plates I like and they weren’t on sale. And the price had gone up since the last time I bought them. But finally I picked some out and took them, and the clear plastic cups (which they actually did have!) to the checkout counter. There was only one clerk, and she was waiting on someone else, but she was just standing there, she wasn’t doing anything, she was obviously waiting for somebody to check a price or something. I started at her until she noticed me, and then she said to me, “Can you wait for a few minutes?” Normally I’d be my usually wimpy self and say “OK,” but let’s not forget that I had just been through the Wal-Mart experience, so I said, “No, I really can’t. Are you the ONLY person working in the store?” She picked up the phone and paged “David,” and after a minute or two he came and opened up another register. When he rang up the plates, I saw that for some reason the purple plates cost a dollar more than the others, so I told him I didn’t want them. He took them out of the bag and deducted the charge, and I paid, and then we left the store and came home. It was raining and I couldn’t see out of the right side of the windshield because my wiper was flapping around helplessly like a dying fish.

When we got home (at 8:56), Ilana helped me carry all of the bags into the house, and while she watched NYPD with her father, I unpacked them.

THE CUPS WERE NOT IN THE BAG.

I asked Ilana if there was another bag from Party City, because I couldn’t find the cups. She said no, there was just one. But she thought she remembered that “David” had taken the cups out of the bag when he was removing the purple plates that I didn’t want because they cost more than the other ones, and that he had put the package of cups on the counter, and she thought that he probably hadn’t put it back in the bag.

I went out to the garage and looked in the car to see if the cups were in there.

They weren’t.

I came back inside and called the store and asked to talk to “David.” When he came on the line, I started explaining the problem, but I was holding the phone with my shoulder since I was unpacking the Wal-Mart bags at the same time, and by accident I pressed the “OFF” button with my chin and disconnected the call, so of course I felt like an idiot. I called back and explained the problem again, and “David” said he didn’t see the cups anywhere, but if I came back in he would give me a refund (or, preferably, the cups). But by this time it was 9:15, and the store closes at 9:30, and I did not have an ounce of emotional energy left to go out and drive in the rain with one wiper and deal with traffic and red lights and worry if I would get there in time, so I said I would come in the next day.

So, basically, I spent almost two hours doing something I hate anyway, and it was all for NOTHING, since I only went out in the first place to get the STUPID CUPS and I didn’t even have them!!!!!!

That’s why I hate shopping. In case you wanted to know.