“Remoted” – Workday Sixteen (Tuesday)

Prior to the period of pandemic isolation, I visited Family Dollar regularly, as much out of need as need for entertainment. It became my “go-to” for affordable (i.e. cheap) dog biscuits, chips, cookies, movie box candy, frozen pizza, emergency baking supplies, tissues, and toilet paper. The store is a mere half-mile away, and it’s small size means there isn’t the overwhelming array of product choices that usually result in the anxiety felt at Market Basket when facing a mile long aisle filled with about a thousand types of cereal, or a wall of pasta from 15 different companies, or 87 options for toilet paper.

Since the remote work /social distance /stay home  stuff, instead of Family Dollar, shopping has been through Amazon. Talk about overwhelming. 

Shopping on Amazon used to be for very specific clothing items for themed parties (metallic tuxedo, Steampunk stuff) or dance performances (25 yard skirt, sparkly top) or the bag for my doumbek drum.

Now, the shopping is for specific grocery items and household needs that would have been filled with a quick trip to Family Dollar. Because half the country is doing the same thing, needed key items are out of stock on Amazon. Sometimes, things have disappeared from my cart (toilet paper, rice, flour, errr) because I kept shopping and the product sold out in the meantime. There is a lesson in there to close out the cart as soon as the items are found, but for some reason, I don’t seem to be learning it.

Things keep adding to the cart, and then when I see the total, half of it comes back out as “save for later.” There are now 36 items in my “saved for later” list, and most of it is stuff I would never buy under normal circumstances, like Korean Sweet Pancake mix, and Kosher meat substitute in a can.

There is probably some deep and fascinating behavioral psychology behind it, and it’s working well for Amazon, because when I found the laundry detergent I needed ($4.97), I didn’t check out and get out. Oh no, I did not, and now there are seven pounds of dog biscuits ($11.64) and a 35-pack of Frito-Lay snacks ($13.98) scheduled to deliver next Saturday. Even better, I forgot there are already two pounds of dog biscuits delivering this Saturday that were ordered last week, so it’s going to be very interesting around here very soon. Maybe I can start trading dog biscuits for flour, sugar, rice, and beer.

Sometimes search results
 are amusing.

My favorite is when the search term yields really weird results. Two or three weeks ago, I searched for leather conditioner, because my leather dining chairs that I’ve suddenly been sitting on daily are suddenly cracking, probably because they are 13 years old and that is around the time everything gets prickly and annoying. There was some in stock and for whatever reason, I didn’t buy it. 

This week, feeling regret over not buying the leather conditioner and seeing the chairs getting worse, I searched for it again and there was one result – for body wash. Which, I suppose, is correct in some cases.