Tuesday, June 23, 2015

Shopping - Men vs Women

Sunday Morning - 8 AM - Early to wake up on a lovely cold sunday morning. So lazily lay on bed with my eyes closed when suddenly my wife comes and shouts me to get up. She murmurs something about going to shopping early in the morning (say 10am). Just as I hear the word shopping, my sleep just runs away. I am wide awake, not because I am exited about shopping, but its because my wife and my mom have already planned for shopping and I know its gonna be a long.... very long sunday.... Yet again my role here is to be a driver and a baby sitter (take care of my kiddo) when my wife and mom are shopping. 
"So what shopping?"... I blurt out... and 
my wife starts saying - "just couple of sarees for the function that is scheduled in couple of month's time".
"Couple of months away..!!!, and shopping so soon...."
"No more time is available after this weekend, so get ready soon, we can come home early if we leave early...".
Certainly that did the trick, i start thinking, alright, its just a couple of sarees and we are going to be home soon, so my sunday is not totally gone... Cool. 

So I get ready and by sharp 10am, we are on our way to our pre-defined shopping place.
10-25 am - My wife and mom enter the shopping place. I am in the car looking after my kiddo.
10-35 am - Kiddo is troubling me a lot and I plan to go for a small ride.
10-55 am - After a small ride amidst heavy Sunday traffic, I come back to the same shopping place.
11-10 am - Again my kiddo is troubling me and does not keep quiet in the stagnant car. So decide to take him to a ice-cream parlor for a juice which we share together
11-25 am - An hour gone since we reached shopping place first time this day, so we reach the ice-cream parlor and order our favorite Mexican soda.
11-45 am - Sipping all the way to glory, we are done with our small ice-cream parlor outing.
11-55 am - I call my wife on the status. They say, another 15 mins. So I continue my wait at the ice cream parlor.
12-05 pm - Its just not valid to stand in front of ice-cream parlor and watch other people hog up all the items one by one. Hence I decide to place my next order, a hot choco fudge.
12-25 pm - Its almost done, we have finished our hot choco fudge and it was yummy. What next...!!! ??? Lets check the status as its already an hour gone. Call... no change in status. Another 15 mins to wait.
12-40 pm - Now, we are not feeling hungry anymore, but there is a nice hotel in front of us. We want to have something light before retiring for the day which was supposed to happen early but we decide against it. Half the sunday is gone.
12-55 pm - Waiting.... Still Waiting.... call.... Same status.... another 15 mins.
13-05 pm - My kiddo is full, he is getting ready for his next task... Sleep... So he is quietly staring at the front window sitting on his seat. I know its time for him to sleep. In a blink he is asleep. I am all alone...
13-15 pm - I get a call... Finally, Thank God... they say they are at billing counter swiping my credit card to glory... Ask me to return to the shopping place.
13-16 pm - I get a message on my cell - credit card transaction of Rs. 16,245/- ONLY.
13-35 pm - I am at their shopping place, only to see both my wife and mom carrying two bags in each hand. They dump it in the boot and with a smile wife tells me... "We got additional 4 bags free". Stunned at the sentence, I do not know how to react. If I were the shopkeeper, I would not mind giving another 50 bags free because its WORTH... NOTHING for the goods they have sold... And yet I only nod my head and get back to concentrate on getting back to home.
14-00 pm - We are back home for lunch. And I wonder what happened to the plan and focus about the shopping. 

Analysis goes this way -
1) They had decided to go shopping for 2 sarees and came back with around 6 sarees and 3  dresses and of-course the 4 free shopping bags.
2) They had decided to go to shopping early and come back early and yet we are here at home at 2 pm which is not early by any standards.
3) The shopping is for a function which is more than couple of months away and I wonder whats in store for coming weekends.
3) I lost my sunday once again.

So what exactly happened here? The women lost their focus on seeing bunch of sarees in the showroom, lost the focus and bowed down to the might of the various choices shown by the shopkeeper. Totally a lost battle. I could not imagine how that can happen. Maybe that's the power of the word called "SHOPPING".

So next day, myself and my friend decided to go for shopping ourselves. We decided to buy a pair of jeans for each of us. All this we had to do within our office lunch break.
13-15 pm - We are on our way from office to buy a pair of jeans.
13-25 pm - Enter the shop. Walk straight to Jeans section with all other sections blinded to us. We only see jeans there. Shopkeeper shows us 6-8 colors of jeans.
13-30 pm - We have tried out couple of them for our sizes and we have made our choice.
13-35 pm - We are at billing counter with 2 jeans in separate shopping cover. Supposedly the shopping covers are free here too... ;) Swipe the card for Rs.2,500/- ONLY.
13-37 pm - We are out of the shop. So the whole 12 mins, we were focused on what we wanted and got what we wanted and our shopping was done in flat 12 mins... 

If only women could understand this logic of focused shopping.

So does this mean men are more efficient in shopping than women? Lets reverse this trend to say men shopping at an electronics outlet or a sports outlet and women at a super market. Who will take more time? So thereby I can only conclude that its all based on our own interests. We spend more time in what we are interested in.... Do you agree?