Shopping Quirks

Shopping is not the rational exchange of demand and supply that some would have us believe. No, it is a messy landscape of behavioural quirks and habits that are sometimes tragic, sometimes funny and always insightful expressions of human nature.

Here are some examples that you may have seen in a store near you. Indeed, you may have been there yourself.

Re-shopping: When a customer is served at the supermarket checkout promptly leaves to go and get some other products they have forgotten – thereby holding the queue up.

Dazed & Consumed: When shoppers get overwhelmed by the store environment and lose all sense of self-awareness and social graces. This leads to abandoning their trolley in the middle of the aisle or blocking others in a mindless confusion.

Chat & Cut: (care of Larry David) This is when you’re standing in a shop queue and someone joins the queue ahead of you to chat with someone they know. Before you know it they have also joined the queue, thereby cutting in ahead of you.

Listlessness: A pathological inability to stick to only buying from your shopping list.

Home shrinkage: When you are convinced that clothes or shoes fit you perfectly in-store, but then seem to magically shrink to unbearable proportions when you get home.

Chill me out: Someone opening chiller door and pondering while you wait and wait to get your hands on the item you need.

Invisible in plain sight: Being apparently invisible to store staff while others who approach after you get served.

Mystical shopping: Arriving home with items that have magically been bought without any conscious decision.

Hate shopping: You love it in the store, but hate it when you get it home.

Sleep shopping: When shoppers make their way through the store in a zombie-like state of autopilot. Experiments at Sainsbury’s have been done that show how sleep shoppers can fail to see people dressed up in gorilla suits walking past them in supermarkets.

Trolley Trash: Shoppers who have no ability to park their trolley in a considerate place. They leave them in the middle of an aisle, or in the car park where cars park.

Deaf Parents: Parent shoppers who let their kids run amok with no consideration for other shoppers.

Social shoppers: People who stand around the store talking with other shoppers oblivious to the fact they are blocking the aisle, or worse, the entrance to the store.

Manbags: Poor suffering men who follow women around while they shop. They are often seen sitting in husband seats in women’s fashion stores playing with their phones.