“Remoted” Workday 198 / Day 301 (Monday)

At 7:00 am, I rolled the red trash bin to the curb, just like every non-holiday Monday morning. A glance up the street and the sight of green recycle bins at neighboring homes indicated it was every-other-Monday recycle day, so I busted up some boxes and rolled my own recycle bin down the driveway. As I was doing so, the black pickup truck that had been next door picking up neighbor guy like nearly every morning, swiftly backed out of the neighbor driveway, and just as swiftly backed into my driveway to turn around, nearly running me over in the process. Luckily for me, I was paying attention and jumped out of the way because it didn’t seem that the driver of the truck had even noticed how close he came to plowing me over in my own driveway. Cripes. At least the adrenaline rush from the narrow escape was exciting.

Tonight, a visit to a previously started Amazon Pantry shopping cart delivered another, smaller jolt. During the first week of the New Year my wallet was having a little rest to recover from the financial hit from the Christmas Day auto strike, the memory of which was still fresh. On that day, the car had gotten a little hot under the hood during a ride on the highway, ceased functioning, and was towed to a repair shop. The New Year's Eve repair bill could have been worse, but it still left a dent in the finances, so the accounts and I took a little break to cool down. 

During the pause, recreational window shopping continued, specifically for household items including a clock and a tea kettle. There was an alert bar from Amazon that prices had changed on Pantry items in the cart. This happens regularly, but what was surprising was that all the prices had dropped. It was a declared spending break and nothing in the cart was urgent, so I moved on to other things.

Tonight, with the spending kibosh over since Saturday when dog biscuits were bought, a visit was made to the Amazon Pantry cart with full intent to add items to reach the $35 level for free shipping and commit to the transaction. Oddly, the Pantry items were displaying as “Item no longer available from vendor.” All of them. It wasn’t unusual for one or two items to become unavailable, but never has it been everything in the cart.

No more Pantry "Buy Again."
Let the crying begin.

That’s when I realized that Pantry no longer showed as a department in the search bar or the left-hand navigation. It was gone. Disappeared, without a trace, like it never existed at all. If not for the items showing in my cart and now suddenly labeled “unavailable,” I might wonder if Pantry had ever existed at all, or if I had just dreamt its’ marvelousness. A visit to past orders showed that it had existed. My best cyber research friend Google delivered several news articles from Friday, January 8, about Pantry’s closing on Wednesday, January 6. As my items sat neglected in the shopping cart and my bank card cooled off, I missed what was apparently the Pantry clearance sale. It's all over now but for the crying over the lost cart and the items I planned to push a button and "Buy Again."

Had I known about the plans to close Pantry, things would have gone differently last week. The spending freeze would have been lifted to stock up on favorite items, available in small quantities at low prices. Today’s search for the same items that were in the cart and past orders seems to indicate that we are now in the realm of warehouse type shopping. Pantry had single bags of Fritos Corn Chips at the low price of $2.50, which beat the regular grocery store price of close to $4. Amazon has cases of Fritos, but I don’t need 12 bags, nor do I have space for them. Ditto for six boxes of crunchy Nature Valley Granola Bars or a case of individual boxes of Lipton Soup mix.

The other loss is the amazing boxes the Pantry items came in. They were sturdy, and would be great for my upcoming charitable donation except for one thing. At Christmas, Pantry boxes were used to transport gifts and left behind, knowing there would be more Pantry orders. This morning, a Pantry box was flattened and put into the recycling bin, knowing that the Pantry order would be finished tonight and a new box would arrive in days. Oops. This seems to be another case of a lifelong curse of not so great timing. At least my timing and reflexes were good this morning while avoiding being flattened by a pickup truck.