A tale of holiday shopping

First off, my officemate is from Korea. She’s 35 and came to Colorado six years ago. Yesterday, we started talking about holiday shopping. Because it’s that time of year.

Anyhow, she told me that America is a strange place. People standing outside of shops at 3:30am to get extremely low prices on goods at places like Best Buy. She said that she really didn’t know there would be so many people shopping the day after Thanksgiving. “Duh,” I said, “It’s the biggest shopping day of the year!” She didn’t know that, so she did a bit of shopping and was totally overwhelmed by the crowds.

Funny thing is, she said that next year she plans on hitting the shops early. Standing outside in the cold at 4am to pickup some sweet deals, cause “the prices are so low.” She even said that she’s planning on making a schedule to hit the shops in the order that they open.

Welcome to America. Land of crazy shoppers and the consumerism movement.

And this is why I prefer to do my shopping online. I can sit in my comfy chair, sipping on coffee, and order nearly anything in the world. Actually, even more things than I could get at a physical store, since I often want esoteric brands and oddball products. This summer, I tried to buy a certain John Zorn cd in a physical store. I went to five stores, three of which were specialty stores in downtown Denver, before giving in and just ordering it online. I don’t like to waste my time, and I feel like driving to a store, looking around and maybe finding what I want is a waste of time. So, I just order things online.