I WAS READING HumbleDollar, minding my own business, when I heard those dreaded words: “I need to go shopping.” Frankly, I dislike shopping. If I need something from a store, I go, quickly find what I’m looking for, pay and leave. I use self-checkout whenever it’s available so I can get out as soon as possible.
To avoid the store altogether, I may go online and never leave my easy chair. Search, click, check out and your package arrives Thursday. No aisles to wander, no searching for a parking space. I don’t even have to talk to anyone who may steer me in the wrong direction.
My wife, on the other hand, meanders up and down the aisles. “What are you doing?” I sometimes have the courage to ask.
“Just looking,” I’m told.
“For what?” I ask.
“For something I might need.”
Sometimes the need pops up based on the item being on sale. That way, you can save money when buying something you don’t need. Occasionally, you buy two of them because you get 50% off the second item. The question is, do you now have two more than you need?
I don’t know about you, but if I need something, I know what it is before I go to the store. I just looked in my closet and counted 22 pairs of pants. More than I need, of course, but I must admit some of the older pairs have somehow shrunk a bit around the waist in the years since retirement.
On our last shopping sojourn, “we” decided I needed new pants. After coupons were applied to the sale price, a $59.95 pair of pants cost only $11.99. I must admit this was a bargain. Now I have 23 pairs of pants—about five or six of which fit comfortably.
My wife enjoys shopping and is deliberate about it. She likes to interact with the sales staff and receive help when needed. Research undertaken at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School suggests “women’s role as caregiver contributes to women’s more acute shopping awareness and higher expectations. On the other hand, after generations of relying on women to shop effectively for them, men’s interest in shopping has atrophied.”
Apparently, there’s a scientific basis for this female need to shop. One theory holds it goes back to our hunter-gatherer ancestors. Men hunted while working far fewer hours than women, who spent their days and nights gathering, cooking, making clothes and soothing the egos of the men who didn’t catch anything. Okay, that egos part is my theory.
I think my personal aversion to shopping may be linked to my love of Swedish meatballs. Several years ago, I went to my local IKEA for a bag of frozen meatballs. IKEA has a unique way of arranging its stores. Instead of aisles, it uses a labyrinth. I made a wrong turn and it took me half an hour to find my way out. It was traumatic.
It seems we older men may be behind the times. An article in GQ says that, when shopping, many men are now behaving more like women. According to several experts, men are browsing, impulse buying and experimenting with trends like never before. Of course, all this may be wishful thinking on the part of marketers.
If not, then those of us who can relate to the dinosaur days, when shopping wasn’t a thing, will surely become extinct.
This was great thread, whilst listening to a cancer podcast on a Friday evening. I recall a frequent poster on BHeads a decade or so back whom posted from south.CA, monikered ‘chaz. His posts character were responses w/1 word,..or one three word sentence.
They were always on target.
I wish I could do that.
I actually like shopping, everything that comes in, 2 items must go out,..it’s working Rich.
Maybe you can suggest it.
You always have great threads Rich.
I recall that Dr. in the 1850s demonized for insisting his hospitals Drs wash their hands between operations.
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/01/12/375663920/the-doctor-who-championed-hand-washing-and-saved-women-s-lives
It was not standard practice in that era.
If I recall correctly he was threatened & jailed!
Now there are hospitals named after him!
Life in the USA,.. eh?
The last time a woman shopped for me, I ended up with parachute pants.
I have memberships at both Costco and Sam’s. Some things I like at one and some at the other. I buy all my tires at Costco and the free tire rebalancing pays for the membership.
I agree IKEA can be a nightmare to navigate. Before they built one near Milwaukee, I would drive down about an hour to the one in Illinois at Schaumburg. It’s a three story, rectangular design, with a center court. Even through the paths wind on each floor you can still keep a sense of direction due to the court. I assumed when the IKEA near Milwaukee was built it would be like the in Schaumburg. Nope. It’s a large ground level rectangular building with a giant zig zag floor path design inside. I get lost every time. I still drive down to the one at Schaumburg.
Dinosaurs UNITE!
It appears that we are living parallel lives.
Costco is probably about the only place I like shopping at anymore. Their inventory is constantly changing, and I like the free samples. Of course there’s always the danger of walking out with a 75 inch flat screen tv when all you came for was a bag of dog food and a 24 pack of toilet paper.
My husband and I both hate to shop. We have about 12 items we always get from Costco and our goal is to be in–and out–in less than 15 minutes.
The free samples are the bane of our existence. Why must they set them up at the end of the aisles? I can’t tell you how many times we’ve come around an end cap only to find 8-10 carts stopped at the free sample display as a crowd of people wait for the next bean burrito to be cut up and served.
If I ran Costco (and I doubt I ever will), I would have a separate tent/building with all the free sample displays in it.
Agreed – I detest shopping and source 99% of what I need – from groceries to literally our last 3 automobiles – online.
I’m so over the sexist “wife shopping” tropes from men. Not all women live to shop. It’s not a hobby or leisure activity to me – it’s another must-do in life like brushing teeth, maintaining the car, etc.
We try to go when it’s not super busy. Be careful, you’re way too young to start sounding like Dick😉! Just kidding. As a fellow dog lover,I love your writing btw.
Many years ago , a colleague of mine with a PhD in Math from Harvard told me he called 911 from IKEA because he couldn’t find his way out of the store !
My dad grew up in a time when you went to a department store and a salesperson “waited” on you. Late in his life he ventured out to a local Target to shop for something. I later asked him how it went and he said, “Not too well. I walked in the store, waited about 15 minutes for a salesperson to come help me. When they never did, I turned around and came home.”
A great way to save money!
Most of the older workers at Target are really helpful and will go out of their way to help, at least where I shop. The younger ones can be helpful but you usually need to ask first.
Richard, I’m sure the pants you don’t or can’t wear have a layer of dust on them. That’s when I know I need to clean out the closet.
Although not my style, I see quite a few men wearing the denim overalls. That seems to solve the issue of tight fitting pants.
I’m sure your local charity shop would be glad of the dusty ones. When I moved out of my house last year I was a regular there.
That is where they usually end up. It’s just that I’m slowly motivated to clean out the closet. But, this will be the year to do so as we are moving.
Add me to the “women who hate to shop” crowd. I take it this is satire?
BTW, your picture of primitive men hunting while the women gathered is out of date – see https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/54722788 among other places.
Men can still find “clothes” in retail stores. Women can only find plasticky things made of polyester, rayon and nylon cosplaying as “clothes”. I only shop at a select few online stores where they actually sell breathable garments made of things I can recognise (like cotton, linen, wool, silk). I no longer even try to find women’s clothes in retail stores.
I had given up hope of finding jeans that fit, and my last pair had designer fraying because they were wearing out, when I discovered L.L.Bean had one style that not only fit but sat on the waist instead of the hip. I bought two pairs in each of three colors and now hope I never have to shop for jeans again. (96% cotton and 4% spandex.)
Jeans have been the bane of my existence, but the return of the higher waist/mom jeans has been helpful, along with a judicious investment in a couple of belts that will sit flat under an untucked shirt. A friend recently turned me on to Old Navy for jeans, and I’ve gotta say, they have a great selection and the prices are so reasonable, relatively speaking, and they have terrific sales. Higher-waisted jeans are everywhere now. I had turned up my nose at them (“the 90s called, and they want their mom jeans back), but they actually do solve a problem for me.
I don’t mind when my wife says, “I need to go shopping.” But what I don’t like is when she says, “Honey, YOU need to go shopping.”
Good point
I guess I didn’t get the woman shopping gene because I’ve always hated it. I find malls overwhelming and distracting. Too much information, too many lights and too much noise. My daughters, though, egged on by their grandmother, always LOVED going to the mall.
I was mostly doing online shopping even before the pandemic, and now it’s about 99% online. But I lost quite a bit of weight between 2020-21, and with a return to campus looming after a year and a half of remote teaching, I actually braved a mall in San Francisco on my birthday weekend in 2021 to try to figure out my new size(s) and get some work clothes. I even booked a personal shopper. But it didn’t turn out well. In that early post-COVID stage, they hardly had any actual inventory in the store (and this was a huge city department store). I’d try something on and ask my shopper if they had the item in a different size/color, and she’d shrug and say “We can check the computer and order it to be sent to you.”
Indeed, if you Google “Women shop, men buy,” you get 1.7 billion hits. For example, here is a 1999 article:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/magazine/1999/08/22/women-shop-men-buy/5ac9eb67-59aa-4294-ba9b-05a9ec2243e9/
Still, some readers might question Mr. Quinn’s assertion that he was minding his own business while reading Humble Dollar. 🙂
Important Update. Those new pants didn’t fit. I picked up the wrong size – probably in my haste to leave the store. We exchanged them, but while at the store my wife noted “you need new shoes to go with those pants” 😢
Is my family the only one that uses the no-extra-charge shipping on returns to buy 12 pairs of shoes online, with the intention of keeping just one or two?
I believe I have heard, “I’ll get two in different sizes and return one that doesn’t fit.”