Cyber Browsing

I've been trying to get interested in the whole internet shopping thing, and it's not going terribly well.  I find shopping in the real world to be a bit of a slow death, let alone in the cyber world.  A waste of one or two perfectly good hours looking at stuff while shuffling along at an infuriatingly slow pace through a retail outlet the size of the Pentagon.  Shopping is tediously boring at the best of times, and it seems that the cyber version isn't terribly interesting to me either. 

Although, at least in the cyber world you don't have to put up with apathetic retail assistants.  Things have changed alot since the glory days of retailing, when specialised salespeople would inform customers about the merits of a given product with an air of servitude and grace.  These days you have to deal with shop biatches who avoid eye contact in fear of having to actually assist you, or worse, are so perky and lively you just want to give them a smack in the back of the head. 

And then they try to sell you clothing items of high quality, which means they are designed to wear out in eight months instead of six.  And shopping online also means you don't have to put up with trying to negotiate your way through a sea of baby strollers, which are pushed fervently through the mall, and are apparently designed to ensure your child can survive a sudden and unexpected encounter with a herd of charging wildebeest. 

So women all around me have been banging on about their online shopping purchases; wearing faux fur coats from New York and red boots from Swaziland, or somewhere similar to that but probably a place that has a functioning economy, thus the ability to ship clothes to women all over the globe.

Anyway, I do believe I have just failed at online shopping.  This evening I spent a good eighteen minutes or so browsing the websites Google decided met my exacting search criteria; that being online shopping.  I looked through about thirty identical looking t-shirts on one site before I decided that I would prefer to stick a hot poker in my eye rather than look at any more.  How does one find anything they are looking for? 

Scrolling down the sidebar under Styles, I was offered timeless, contemporary, bohemian rhapsody, modern romance, disco fever, and casual.  Casual!  Yes, I know what casual is.  Let's go there.  I found the Style: What's this? tab to be particularly unhelpful.  Under casual tops, I could choose from knits and tees, blouses and button-down shirts (what's the difference?), tanks and camis (difference?), polos, sweaters, fashion hoodies, blazers or rompers in ruffles, silk, cotton, loose boatneck, assymetrical, rayon, blah, blah, blah.

Most of these websites are user friendly.  When I say user friendly, I mean completely infuriating.  And the FAQ section is always special.  Neither questions nor frequently asked, this is the section of the web site that compiles all the spin the company wants to snowball you with in one convenient location.  Question: What is the preferred customer discount plan?  Answer: Duh, an opportunity for us to assist you in hemorrhaging money. 

Who the hell has the time to follow fashion anyway? Probably about six people in the world. Which might explain why runway models are always wearing some of the weirdest crap, none of which ever makes it to your local retail outlets.