If I were a millionaire, I would hire someone to shop for me. I don’t mean a personal shopper who buys fancy clothes for you. What I desperately want is a person who helps me with shopping, catering to my family’s mundane needs. Everything from groceries and light bulbs to shoes, cold medicine, and clothes. I’m terrible at shopping; I don’t know the prices of things, and can’t find anything quickly. As soon as I enter a store, I feel the energy sucked out of my body and evaporate to nothingness. The word “helpless” sums up my feelings. But somebody has to shop for my family, and that responsibility usually falls on my shoulders.
I used to like driving and shopping around town. My kids liked being in the car when they were younger, and I drove with them to the library, a playground and a grocery store. I called it “My triangle.” My triangle also functioned as my safe zone, an escape from emails and phone calls. But that changed when my husband bought me a smart phone. Shoot! But more importantly, my shopping habits changed as my kids started to eat more and needed constant upgrades for bigger pairs of shoes, clothes, sports gear and such. Reluctantly, I started going to a wholesale store every two weeks or so. That was when the true agony with shopping started.
Shopping at a wholesale store was hard work. First, I needed to go through coupons and made shopping list with a star mark that signified that a coupon was available for that item. All the items were listed according to the floor plan so that I didn’t have to walk the same isle more than once. But of course, they had to change the location of peanut butter so often that even store clerks didn’t remember where to find it. I logged a mile each time I looked for it until I moved peanut butter to my supermarket shopping list.
And the coupons! I carried them in a plastic bag. But you see, I was never interested in everyday stuff, and couldn’t remember the brands of goods that I needed to buy. So, while walking in the isles of the vast store, I would check each coupon so that I could buy the right stuff to get a discount. And as I moved the coupons in and out of the plastic bag, I would sometimes lose a coupon, like the one that could give me two dollars off of a laundry detergent. I knew intellectually that it wasn’t the end of the world. But, I couldn’t give up on it that easily since I had invested my time in cutting it out from a coupon book and putting it in the plastic bag and made my shopping list with a star right next to that item. Looking for a lost coupon was one of the most miserable experiences in my life.
The stores rely on our patronage, but we need to go through this agony to get a discount? In Japan, there’s a proverb that says, “Customer is god.” God shouldn’t have to work hard to get a small discount. I realize that this is the U.S. and not Japan, but still, if you want to sell something, then you should make the customer’s shopping experience easy and ideally enjoyable. Don’t you agree?
Passing this burden of coupon clipping onto the customer was totally unreasonable, I concluded. And I switched to a different wholesale store that required a longer drive but no paper coupons. That was one of the best decisions I’ve made in a long time.
I’ve been doing even better with shoe-shopping. The cashier at a nearby discount shoe store will say “Oh, you have a ten-dollar coupon. Would you like to use it today?” To that, I say “Yes, please” with a smile. See, that store knows how to serve its customers!
But the world tends to evolve beyond what I can imagine. Last December, while I was busy buying gifts for my family and getting ready for holiday cooking, I saw a coupon from a local grocery store sitting on my kitchen counter. The store would give me a five-dollar discount if I spent certain amount of money. Right next to it, it said I could get a twenty-dollar discount if I loaded the coupon on my store card. I really didn’t like the sound of it. Why did I, a patron of the store, need to work harder? But this fifteen-dollar difference was big enough to buy a good amount of fruit. I could buy apples for an apple crisp, and berries that would go well with ice cream. But it seemed to be a big trap that would force me to “load” coupons forever after that. After a few minutes of mulling over this, I succumbed. I asked my daughter to help me install the software on my phone and load the coupon to my store card. Sigh! I’m now waiting to see what kind of damage I have inflicted on myself.
I’m reminiscent of a more traditional shopping experience. I still encounter it occasionally, like when I went to an arts & crafts store. I went there to get two Kabuki woodblock prints framed. They were from an old calendar. I loved the woodblock print of each month so much that I kept it on a wall a bit longer. Some visitors, though, started to question my common sense, since it had been over two years. So, I drove to the store with a coupon that promised a big discount. There, I was told that they would call me if the framing work was finished early. No calls came, so I went there several days after the due date. They found one, but not the other. The store person said, “Oh, I’m sorry that you have to come twice for this when you’re busy getting ready for holidays.” She said it with compassion and a sympathetic smile. I appreciated her apology and felt as if I was understood. I wasn’t going to blame anybody, and she was not in a defensive mode. We both understood that these things happen and we can’t do anything about it.
A little conversation like this can turn shopping into a warm human experience. I don’t have to be treated as god. I just want to have a little exchange with my fellow human beings, sharing the moment of a minor predicament or a little joy, and have the sense that you know what I’m going through.