Why you should never go shopping again

Shopping is not so much fun.

Between grasping onto plastic shopping bags that cut into your wrists, losing your shopping list, peering into mirrors with bad fluorescent lighting wondering when it was that you aged 20 years in one day, and crowds of people all trying to get the same size dress like you, retail shopping is not fun.

So, why do we hate shopping so much?

It’s useless trying to find one specific item

It could take 3 hours to search through endless racks of clothing just to find that one sequinned black top that you wanted specifically for an event, and when you find it, it’s in the store where you least expected it. Then you end up buying something similar to what you wanted in a panic. The next week you find exactly what you needed, but it’s too late; you don’t actually need it anymore.

Sales assistants only appear rarely, like a mirage in the desert

There’s no one around to help you. And when you do find a salesperson, they won’t leave you alone, popping their heads into your change room door like you’ve known each other since birth, and bombarding you with 5 different colours and three sizes of the same ill-fitting and expensive t-shirt, until you’re swimming in clothes. Or, if you need something specific, they point vaguely in the farthest corner of the store and when you turn back around to clarify, they’ve disappeared like a thief in the night.

You’re never sure if you’ve gotten the best deal

Unlike online shopping where a 2-minute Google search can pretty easily tell you if you have the best deal, when you’re shopping in person, you’re never really sure, even at a shopping outlet. Aside from Googling every item on your shopping list you want to buy (in which case, you may as well be shopping online), you just have to rely on the word of the salesperson with dollar signs in their eyes.

You can never find your size

It’s taken you years to determine your dress size, (which is slightly different in 5 different brands), and you’ve found your dream outfit. But its only available in two sizes, unless you want to travel to a different city to collect it. Your shopping dreams are shattered and you end up trying to find it online anyway.

Fitting room lights are the devil

The lighting in most shopping outlets is either much too dark, or so bad that you’re convinced that you have somehow turned into a grey, ash faced gremlin while shopping. Add to this the fact that you can only take half your clothes into the fitting room and you have to struggle into your clothes in a tiny space. When you need a different size, the salesperson is nowhere to be found, and you’re left half-naked clutching the changing-room curtain for dear life, trying not to overbalance and give the whole store a first-class view of your body, sans pants.

You need to do research

The salesperson doesn’t really understand that you need a fitness watch which can measure your morning swim sessions. Instead, they’re trying to sell you the $600 fitness watch which measures 8 different kinds of exercise, and measures everything from your heart rate to your body temperature. It can probably also read your mind. Their need to oversell is not only obvious, it’s exhausting, but when they’ve already shown you 10 watches you feel obligated to buy one.

Even when you have done research, salespeople make you doubt your decision or give you conflicting information on different products.

Sales are horrible

Going to the shops around for Black Friday sales or Boxing Day can be the stuff of nightmares. What seems like a great idea -heading to the sales and getting a few amazing bargains- can turn in to catfights over bargain bins worthy of a lion feeding frenzy. Or, you finally find what you’re looking for, but it’s not on sale or your size or preference has sold out.

You lose all sense of time and space

After an hour wandering around an artificially-lit shopping mall, you forget that there is such a thing as real sunlight. There’s loud, irritating music blaring through the shop speakers, and chirpy retail assistants keep calling you “hun” or “man” like you’ve known each other for 10 years. All shopping malls are designed to keep you trapped and distracted for hours, so you find a shop once and then never find it again, or it takes you 40 minutes to find your car.

Nothing about the store makes sense

Electrical is near the lingerie and for some reason the phones you’re looking for are located in a separate section somewhere near the frying pans. None of it makes any logical sense and the store looks like it hasn’t been refurbished in 20 years. Either that or it has just been refurbished into what resembles a maze. Colours are grouped together in some odd rainbow mish-mash and you can’t find any clothes that don’t make you look like a potato.

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