Why are you still shopping offline?

Today I visited one of the largest national office supply outlets. I had a specific purpose in mind. I needed to pickup 2 wireless routers and 1 audio cable. What transpired caused me to wonder why anyone does any offline shopping anymore.

My experience at the store caused me to reflect on the many things we simply put up with at the store which we would never permit online.

To begin with I had to drive to the store. For me this was about a 25 minute round trip during a traffic filled rush hour. My best estimate is that I used 2+ gallons of gas. Arriving at the parking lot, I had to wait and circle before a spot was available. I thought “do that many people really shop for office supplies at 6pm on a Wednesday night?” Entering the store I realized why. It was a madhouse of teenagers and their parents. Should have guessed, mid August = back to school. I located the section for the networking equipment pretty quickly as it was relatively close to the entrance and well marked. The selection was pretty slim. They didn’t carry the model I wanted so I ended up settling with a the next best model (with the promise of 14 days to return) because that was the best one they carried. As I was searching through the routers for the right one, I overheard a conversation between a staff member and a customer. The staff member was telling the customer how bad Vista was and all that was wrong with it. I don’t like Vista very much, or really any MS operating system (I would pick windows 2000 if I had to choose). It was quite funny how completely wrong he was. He was attacking Vista on all the points that were it’s strengths, and clearly hadn’t every used it. This was the so called expert that the brick and mortar store provide. Honestly could you ask for more. If people really knew what they were talking about they wouldn’t be working retail.