With teaching coming up in the fall, I finally had to acquire some semi-professional duds to wear in the classroom. It’s been awhile since I’ve been wearing jeans to work for so many years now. I don’t know if this is a typical male response or not, but I hate shopping (raise your hand if you’re one of those hard-to-fit guys).
You’ve got to drive to the store, get a shopping cart with that one wheel that constantly wants to turn left, find the men’s department, search through racks and racks of stuff trying to find the size you think you are, fill the cart with samples, get to the dressing room only to find that they only allow you to take in three articles of clothing at a time, enter an airless, stale, hot, humid dressing hole-in-the-wall, get undressed, try on your measly three items to find that they don’t fit, get redressed, go find another three measly items to try on, repeat, repeat repeat. Ugh!
I think I’m starting to like Jerry Seinfeld’s idea more and more now. He suggests that we need stores for men where we check our pants at the door, and then get to walk around the store in our underwear trying stuff on. Sure would be more efficient.
Half the time I don’t even go in the changing room. There are so many racks around the store you can easily find a spot where no one can see you. That doesn’t even matter to me though, it’s just that people would complain if they saw me changing in the middle of the store.
I hate shopping for dress clothes but I am a lucky guy in that pretty much if it sais medium it will fit me, and if the waist is 30 then it will be a bit tight but if its 32 I will need to wear a belt.
Shopping is pretty easy for me and therefore it just depends on the store I’m in on how much I like it.
I get really agravated (sp?) if I spend much time in a shop and I don’t find something I like or I don’t like the prices. I needed to buy socks and underwear a couple days ago and I went to three department stores and all of them were madly overpriced or didn’t have what I wanted. I didn’t want armani socks I just wanted some plain boring cheap stuff.
I was also quite disapointed today when I found a store that only sold hats, and they had a great quantity of rediculously awesome hats, but when I found two hats that were my price and my style they didn’t have my size and that drove me nuts!
I can really agree though that I hate trying things on, it is like torture, I would rather buy something that may or may not fit than try it on in the store.
The solution is online shopping from websites that allow returns to their stores. If you’re not sure of your size, buy several and return those that don’t fit to the store.
It also just seems like more of a pain in the ass, if it forces you to go to the store anyways then it would be much easier to just go to the store.
Plus how hard is it to remember your size. There is a reason to have standardized sizes. If what you are wearing is tight then get the next size up, if its loose then the next size down, if you don’t konw your size then get naked and check those tags!
It’s the easiest solution for the problems that Yoopers mentions. From what I know about Yoopers, I don’t think he is particularly concerned about such things. One could also consider that increasing the overhead of the consumer friendly places that can afford to have those policies, ultimately helps smaller stores stay in business.
It’s not something I do. I know my sizes, and mostly shop at thrift stores anyway.
I hate shopping too. My wife is pretty good at picking out clothes for me.
As for dressing rooms, go shopping in a Kilt and t-shirt. All the shirts should fit over the t-shirt and the pants/tousers can be tried on anywhere. For the sake of the rest of us though; just don’t go commando…
All of my clothes come from wall-mart (minus shirts, those are all free event t-shirts). I recently came upon the discovery that if I wear a belt, then I don’t have to be too picky about the pant size and they will fit alright. So I just go in, find a pair that looks close by holding it in front of me, then purchase it for eight bucks. Works alright.
EDIT: shopping in the electronics section on the other hand… oh boy!
I don’t shop all that often, but when I do I usually know pretty much what I want and it takes minimal time.
However, I love going to the mall. I enjoy watching and being part of the scene. It is where my fellow citizens are and being among them is one of my joys.
I know my clothing size, what I like, and what I want. because of that, i walk into the store, walk straight to what I need, takes about 30 seconsd to see what I want and make sure its the right size, I dont bother trying it on cause I know its going to fit. Take it to the self-checkout, pay, and leave.
When I shop, it never takes me more than 5mins. Unless the line is long, or I have to wait on someone else im with to hurry up and pick their stuff out.
This is sort of off-topic, but I recently heard from a librarian at QVC, which is a television shopping network, that a good part of their operation is automated. The hosts are obviously on camera, but the sound and video operations are done without audio- or camera-operators. There’s like a booth with one person directing everything.
Retail is, as I like to say, taking the “man” out of manpower.
QVC, by the way, employees 11 librarians mostly doing competitive intelligence.
i guess the less you people you employ the less you have to pay. but WOW.
They(scientists or whoever) are probably working on computers that can be creative for us too.