The Supply Chain Hits Home

I went Holiday Shopping.  I left early, wore a mask, and avoided shoppers as much as possible.  

It was very possible.  There was barely anyone in the stores - not The Dollar Store or The 99cents Store or Kohl's.  The Container Store was eerily quiet; 3 saleswomen approached me before I was half way down the first aisle.  

In Michaels, I saw no other customers.  Hallmark was crowded, but they were having a Pandora Event so there were lots of salespeople and Pandora people and marketing people filling the entry.  One other masked patron and I were the only ones buying anything, and we were in the card aisles.

There was no merchandise, either.  

Just like at IKEA  last month, there was nothing new.  The shelves which are usually filled with tins and boxes and bags of all sizes and descriptions were empty.  Had I realized when I started out that this would be the case everywhere I went, I would have taken pictures.  

The Container Store had no pretty little containers in which brownies could be mailed.  We're downsizing.  All our items like that are on-line now.  I don't want to buy them on-line.  I want to spend my dollars locally.  I want to touch them before I buy them.  I need 70 of them; this is not a small decision.  

And it wasn't only supplies for The Brownie List.  H&M had nothing pink.  Nor were there ruffles or sparkles or unicorns.  I found basic sweats and leggings for the grandkids, but that visit, next door to the Container Store, put me in a mood.

I was resigned to paying full price and enjoying it.  If only there had been something to buy.  I found a perfect firefighter nutcracker for Giblet at Michael's - one of a dozen obviously left over from last year, with nicks and scratches and I swear they were grimacing right back at me, as if sharing my pain.  

And then I listened to the story going on in my head and I laughed.  I was having a regular person's bad day, not a perforated person's bad day - and it was all because of shopping.

I decided that there's a good lesson to be learned from this. Not finding made me question the act of searching.   I'm going to get creative with tissue paper and some weird clear cellophane bags I found along the way.  The brownies will be tasty no matter how they are wrapped.  

If this is at the top of my worry list, I'm a pretty lucky human.