Some of my formative memories involve walking through the mall on a shopping trip. Some of my worst memories are from those same trips.
Most of those memories were of being endlessly bored while other family members looked at things that interested them. Given that I have five sisters, three of them older, I didn’t share their fascination with sifting through the latest clothing trends.
I’ve never been able to understand our culture’s fascination with shopping malls. I don’t understand ogling items you can’t afford while wandering through a shrine to consumerism. I’ll never understand grabbing garments that look right under that kind of lighting, only to realize they look different in every other kind of lighting, which is the kind there is everywhere you’ll ever be.
I’m a magical combination of antisocial and cheap. I prefer to not speak to people while I’m shopping. I prefer to know exactly how much I’m going to spend.
In other words, online shopping is extremely attractive to someone like me.
I’m starting to rethink it, though, mostly thanks to the hold Amazon has on my home.
Over Christmas, we got an Alexa. This computerized voice is the only woman in the house who listens to everything I say, as long as I address her properly.
“Alexa, why won’t anyone listen to me?” I asked.
She answers, “I don’t understand the question.”
Generally I like the ease with which we can put necessities onto our shopping lists. It’s easier to remember that you need to add eggs if you can yell at a device when you’ve cracked the last one into the frying pan. Sure, the device is offering constant surveillance to our conversation, but mostly it just learns that we spend an awful lot of time talking about what groceries we need.
We also use Amazon Prime perhaps a bit too much. My wife uses it for both home and her work at an area nursing home. Every time I receive a shipping notification, I play a guessing game about whether it’s for our house or the nursing home.
Two music sheet storage folders? I’m guessing home.
Pack of 20 dental retractor mouth openers? I’m guessing nursing home.
Six-speed stand mixers? It’d better be for work.
But now it’s starting to get out of control. I see Meijer plans to roll out online ordering and home delivery. And Kroger already offers something called ClickList to order your groceries online and pick them up later.
We’ve already taken advantage of ClickList a few times. The preliminary report is we stick to the list better — something I usually excel at anyway — and aren’t falling for the impulse buys as much.
Eventually, we’ll get to the point where we won’t know where anything is located in the store. Wait, I’m already there.
But it makes me wonder what we’re getting with all this saved time. There’s less interaction with other people, bumping into old friends. We don’t get as much exercise walking through stores.
Perhaps we save a little money, but how do we spend the saved time? Buying more stuff online? “Alexa, add ‘irony’ to the list.”
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