Getting or Finding? Sad Truth About Shopping (Replete With Gerunds Galore)

I was in London visiting a pal, walking through Piccadilly and thinking this place is so old-fashioned! There are bookstores, record stores (yes, records), real brick and mortar palaces selling stuff we Americans get online in almost all circumstances. I mean - underwear? Geez, I can pull that off - and on - just by hitting click.

Are these Brits stupid!

Don't they know it's not about touching the textures, browsing for something new, or even, G-d forbid, finding the size once rather than boxing it up and trying again?

Gosh. Stateside, the idea of owning something and getting it quickly beats possessing the item we have desired, coveted, even sweat for. I mean, isn't the whole reason to EARN money to SPEND it?

U.S. citizens got it going on, baby!

Crap I spend so much time online these days that when I'm faced with a customer service person I'm waiting for him to be an avatar before speaking (kind of like when you call someone and they answer but you think it's v-mail). But in the H&M that day I was asked if I needed help in finding a CD or DVD, and I thought, how can I say no? I asked him where to find the CD singles, because those were a UK phenomenon a dozen years ago. The kid laughed. :"No, mate, we don't do those anymore." Failure. And the worst part? I could not go immediately to the next page.

Had I lost my social skills? I purred my embarrassment and moved on. Funny how he did not dissolve like those fancy Firefox pages....

The next store was a place that sold bags - garment and gym and airplane. I did not know what I wanted but I was sure it had to something with few pockets for me to lose things in. When I asked the pretty Irish lass, dressed Amy Winehouse like, she also laughed and said she had no such beast. But as a guy who loved magazine stores (and in each of those you're always told no to odd titles and somehow find them anyway), I mimed what I needed and the Faux Amy got it.

"Right. So you want something with two places to put things and nada else?" Ri-i-i-ght. Nope, I found out. Are you waiting for the irony? Their Internet store had something just like it. Did I want to go home and buy?

I'm home and sadder (and bag-free) for my experience. I wonder if the generation coming of age will only buy and instead shop. I also wonder, how will these dudes get their workaday experience while being a teenager? Based on a short survey of customer service as oxymoron helpers, I can assure you that robots can help us better. And will.

I do remember a thousand years ago being in a similar London with a stronger dollar and searching for an unreleased-in-States Everything but the Girl disc, in the rain, from store to store, with excited service reps looking in stockrooms, and me getting all riled up at the prospect of a Real Find. Today that would be laughable, cause I'd go to Amazon.Co.Uk and it would be in my mailbox before I closed the browser. Am I spoiled?

Maybe I shouldn't travel. Staying on the couch never got anyone so worked up, eh?

For an essay on the difference between looking and searching, read the book, dammit! 2011: Trendspotting. Go for it.