Little Shop of Horrors

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Over the past month, I've done a great deal more retail shopping than usual - my usual being Christmas gifts and a once-a-year bra and panties replacement - and I'm getting some insights into why bricks and mortar stores are (at least according to the New York Times) dying out.

Shopping apps designed by Russian troll farms (apparently.) Nowadays, it's not enough to go to the store during a sale, or to clip a few coupons from the Sunday paper and hope you wont lose them in the back of your wallet. (You will.) Every establishment has their special app they want you to load onto your groaning, overstuffed iPhone. In the video clip describing this wonder, neatly-coiffed shoppers wave their phones around the store, pinging hidden sale items and walking away from the cash register with enough in discounts to cover two tickets to Hamilton. 

In the real world, the first problem is setting up the damn account. The app wants to know your name, gender, birthdate, family connections, favorite color, height, weight, vacation destination and assorted other pieces of information they will use to bombard you with emails for products you will never buy. It will take you four tries to set up a password the app considers appropriately secure because it doesn't tell you you need to have a letter, a number, a capital letter, a non-numerical symbol, nothing consecutive, nothing that resembles a word, and no variation on any other password you have ever had. You wind up with something like ieP^3#9qR, which of course you forget, so the next time you go shopping you have to spend twenty minutes re-registering a new password.

Twenty minutes is also the time it will take at check out for you, the cashier, the swing cashier and the front end manager to figure out what offers to scan, how to scan them, why the scanner doesn't work, and then to double check everything because it looks like one of the discounts is missing. Yesterday afternoon I bought a button collared shirt, two long-sleeve Ts and a blouse (For me? Of course not. They were for Youngest.) at a store we shall call Marget (except we pronounce it Mar-zhay 'cause we're fancy.) After we performed the ritual dance of scanning, swiping, checking, and fixing via manager override I had spent a quarter of an hour extra and saved five dollars. Maybe what they need is an EZ Pass for clothing - you pay full price, but in exchange you get to walk under a scanner and be out in the parking lot in under three minutes.

In all fairness, the apps are still better than those damn coffee shop loyalty cards you got punched. I never got a free cup - instead I had a half-dozen crumpled cards in my purse with three stamps each.

Stores that are vast wastelands uninhabited by humankind. Specifically, an establishment we'll call Tracy's. I've made a pilgrimage there early every spring to buy a delicate fancy frock. (For me? Ha. For Youngest's prom/senior fling/spring formal.) Every year, the store has fewer and fewer employees. I've long ago given up on the idea of a clerk, say, bringing clothing to the changing room. Instead, I schlep enough prom dresses to qualify as a Teamsters transport and switch models and sizes until Youngest finds the One True Dress that will make her look like a radiant princess. (They all make her look like a radiant princess. She's 17, 5'8", and wears a size 6.) 

Then we begin a trek not dissimilar to the great crossings over deserts and mountain rages of old. Only we're not looking to import the riches of the fabled Indes. We're just trying to find someone - anyone - to take our money. (Literally ours this year. She paid half.) Eventually, after crossing from Ladies Better Dresses to Shoes to Juniors, we find a staffed register in the Lingerie section. 

Unfortunately, everyone else shopping has found the same cashier, and we all back up like the Lincoln Tunnel on a rainy day. Time to locate, try on and select dress=45 minutes. Time to locate, stand in line and purchase dress=45 minutes. That latter also includes the poor clerk giving me a mandatory speech about how wonderful my life will be if I apply for a store credit card. God only know what would happen if anyone ever took her up on the offer. Rioting from the rest of the queue, I suspect.

Register receipts with more marketing on them than Times Square. I'm looking at you, pharmacy we'll call BDS. I itemize my taxes, and so am forced to keep receipts from filling my prescriptions. Which I have in hand, right at the top. Followed by an ad for grape-flavored children's croup medication, a coupon for adult diapers, a survey form, and offer to join the BDS loyalty shoppers team, and, for all I know, the location of the Holy Grail. I never get down that far, because by now the receipt has unscrolled to the floor, forcing me into an awkward maneuver whereby I attempt to accordion-fold three feet of paper while juggling my bag, wallet and purchases. Inevitably, I give up, crumpling it into a wad large enough to staunch blood. It joins the other paper wads at the bottom of my purse, awaiting the Day of Resurrection.

And finally,

Prominently displayed hand sanitizer/wipe dispensers with nothing in them. Come on, guys. Have you read about this year's flu season? How hard is it to throw in a couple gallons of Purell and some Clorax sheets? 

How about you, dear readers? Anything that makes you want to run back home an pledge eternal fealty to Amazon Prime?