Rose Cottage Ltd

I’ve had a few specific items I needed to purchase in recent weeks and I have to say that my offline shopping experience was not much fun.

There was a item or two that I thought would or should be in my local WalMart or Target. I made trips to both stores and did enough round trip “drive-bys” of several aisles that any neighborhood watch group would have reported me to the police. In both instances I was not able to find what I wanted – either the item, or the desired size and color, were not available.

Other shoppers and store employees are also frequently obnoxious. Between the people thumbing phones instead of watching where they are walking, to stores with a dozen employees standing around chatting while customers wait in line wondering why the other available 15 registers are seemingly never opened – it can get frustrating.

Some large shopping centers are like other planets. I went to one huge center that had store after store, and almost couldn’t figure out how to get out! Who comes up with these traffic patterns, and why are there so many dead ends?

I won’t even get into the question of how so many people in this country can be either unemployed or under-employed – and the shopping centers are packed. It does help explain why shopping in the middle of the work week in the middle of a work day is nearly as crowded as shopping on the weekend.

Anyway, I came home feeling I had definitely wasted my time, found the couple of things I needed online, ordered, and will probably have both by Monday – waiting on my doorstep when I get home. There are few instances when I can’t do this since I don’t go shopping as a social experience and I don’t feel I have to “pre-touch” every purchase.

I realize some people live to shop and won’t have a clue what I’m talking about here but I think just as many people feel the same way I do. My goal for the coming holiday season is to purchase 90%+ of gift items online. I’ll be posting some great values and interesting gift ideas in the coming weeks. If there is free shipping – you’ll know it. Big sale – I’ll tell you.

Maybe I can help a few others retain their shopping “sanity” this coming gift season!!!

Happy Weekend…