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Saturday, June 18, 2011
Top 8 shopping pet peeves
I stole the idea from was inspired by this blog at one of my favorite time-wasting girly gossip sites, TheFrisky.com. While the Frisky’s bloggers pretty much all live in NYC and have a guaranteed different shopping experience than we do here in the midwest, it still stands that there are some things that can make a routine shopping trip (for groceries, clothes, furniture, anything) a huge pain in the keister.
Here are some that come to mind (without copying the Frisky’s list… gotta at least try for some originality, even at this late hour):
Mysterious Disappearing Employees. When I want to be left alone, they’re around every corner, asking me if I’m finding everything okay (usually when I’m just browsing and not even looking for anything in particular). But when I actually need help finding something, suddenly everyone is on break.
Out of My Size. I’m right there with most of American women in that I wear pants in the 12-14 range. But the fact that so many of my shopping sisters are going after the same pants I want means those sizes are the ones most frequently out of stock, while there are no shortages among the 0-4’s.
Isn’t Made in My Size. Or rather, in my most recent experience, isn’t made in my husband’s size. He is tall with long arms and a linebacker’s neck, but apparently, his combination of measurements is a rare animal in the department store jungle. Finding him a decent selection of new dress shirts turned into a multi-weekend, multi-mall experience.
Unkempt Dressing Rooms. Clothes on the floor. Clothes flung over doors and draped on door handles. Clothes crammed into corners or piled on the tiny little bench in the dressing room. Big sale weekends are the worst for this. I almost never buy anything without trying it on so I’ve seen most of the dressing rooms in the I-75 corridor area. I at least try to do my part by putting my own rejects back on the hangers and putting them on the reject-cart.
Mall Kiosks. You know the ones I mean. I don’t know whether I feel pity for the people who have to work in these, or if I am allowed to just outright loathe them. A 4x8 stand barely counts as a place of employment, yet some of these salespeople take their jobs dead seriously - they’re more persistent than bill collectors. Every trick in the book has been invented to avoid them - pretend to take a phone call, duck into a store or behind a crowd of noisy teenagers, avoid any kind of body language that could communicate interest in their product - yet they still exist. I’m mystified.
Slooooooow checkout lanes. I don’t understand how a store can boast 20-some cash registers, yet even when a decent number of them are open, checking out adds another 15 minutes to the shopping experience. And I don’t even know who to blame - slow cashiers and/or baggers? Customers paying in pennies or telling the cashier their life stories? Me, for choosing the wrong lane time and time again? In any case, the checking lane traffic jam can ruin an otherwise pleasant experience.
Where are Your ** Bathrooms? I guess it’s just bad karma, but I find I ALWAYS have to go at the most inopportune time: when the shopping cart is full and I’m about to check out, when pumping gas, when I walk into the refrigerated section of the grocery store, and best of all, when I’m in a store at the mall that has NO bathrooms and the nearest public bathroom is on the opposite end of the whole mall. So if you ever see a crazy redhead sprinting across the tiles, it’s not my newest kiosk-avoidance tactic, it’s a matter of life and death. Or at least, a matter of dry or wet pants.
Those Darn Trends. I don’t pay a lot of attention to trends. If I like something and it’s trendy, hey, bonus points for me, I guess. But if it’s trendy and I don’t like it, it’s not ending up in my closet. The problem here comes when I am looking specifically for something that’s not trendy. Last fall I had a little corduroy fetish and wanted some corduroy pants to wear to work as it started getting chillier. Could. Not. Be. Found. (Ok, white lie. I did finally find one pair. And just a few weeks ago I ruined them by spilling the contents of a take-out box on my lap on the way home from dinner. Just my luck.)
Those are the big ones that come to mind. Share your pet peeves and shopping horror stories - or if you work in retail, tell us about the bad customer behavior that drives you up the wall. We’re all guilty of something, right?
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