Shopping For What You Forgot: Blue Box Store v Red Box Store

Walmart, Greenville, SC. Photo by Andrew Donaldson

There are certain truths to life. Then there are certain truths to life when your life involves numerous other people. The former means plans hold up. The latter means no plan survives first contact with friends and family.

Thus, early on a Saturday morning after an evening of road tripping, I arose from my hotel room, ate my bagel and banana at the included breakfast at the hotel, and then went shopping for the various things various members of my household including myself needed for the day’s activities.

In this case, the day’s activities involved a family wedding. So it came to pass that I was hunting for a v—neck white undershirt, lest the South Carolina temperature get into sweating territory. Meanwhile, the youngest youngin needed makeup and girl fixingupperstuff. Off to the box stores it was.

An attempt was made at the Walmart, but that was unsuccessful. The t-shirts of the kind I was in search for are in the aisles with the socks, underwear, and so forth. This aisle of socks, underwear, and so forth however was mostly barren and looked as if it had been subjected to one of the viral videos of stampeding area yutes. My mind thought back to 25 years early, when a young college dropout me worked for the then still living Mr. Sam and wondered — had I left an aisle I’d been assigned to stock and zone looking like that — if my manager would have merely maimed me or killed me on the spot. Kid reported back a similar unsatisfactory situation in the finding of girl fixingupperstuff.

Off to Target it was, thank you Google Maps.

Target has the overall vibe of being full of folks who ought to be shopping at Walmart but don’t think their brand could handle the ridicule. To be fair, if Walmart hadn’t fallen off as badly as it has they probably would, and Targets on the whole do seem to be an ever-so-slightly notch up. But such social notches are rather important to certain folks. For myself, I dislike Target immensely, with some irrational feeling it’s a posing intermediate step between my preferred thrifting and Walmart to the higher level shopping experiences. Maybe it’s all the red. I don’t know. I just don’t like Target.

But I need a white v-neck shirt for this rare occasion where I’m wearing a white shirt and tie with a suit. I emphasize I need one. Target is emphasizing I must by 6, 10, or 20. I find a three pack, cut my losses, and with only some intermediate makeup shopping end my retail sojourn for the morning.

I’ve just accepted that traveling means adapting. Sort of like “running to the store really quick” is never really quick. In fact, if a family member sends you to the store to fetch something you have two options.

Option 1: Rush, get just what sent for, have the phone go off with additional items right as you get back in your vehicle.

Option 2: Sit in your vehicle, relax, allow some elapsed time, play off the inevitable call/text for additional items, then go into the store.

Thus, thus, very well, thus. It is of course a privilege to live in the land of plenty where box stores and relatively cheap goods are on nearly every street corner no matter where you roam across the fruited plain. We Americans really are spoiled in that way, that we can complain about the variations between the Blue big box store and the Red big box store like it’s some type of capitalistic War of the Roses. Maybe we should not be so cavalier about how good we have it when we forget something, or need something right quick, or just want something for the sake of wanting something.
Maybe.

But I still don’t like Target.