Your least favorite store or business to get dragged into

Childhood: Fabric stores. Five minutes in a fabric store would feel like an eternity. I still have no idea how long my mom spent in these places because time skewed like this, it could have been ten minutes or four hours. I made up a game to pass the time about an alternate universe where they were starved for fabric and had no way to make their own, and every bolt of fabric I touched got transported there. I'd imagine how grateful all its residents were, applauding my every touch, and what they'd do with each fabric ("finally my baby won't freeze to death").

I spent way too much time in hardware stores because my parents built their own house, but I kind of grew to like these as an adult.

I pretty much hate going into head shops with my husband (I just can't look at stuff for near the amount of time he can), and I am sure he would say the same for me about taking him to yarn stores.

Craft stores, like joann's fabrics or michaels. they are sad in an old-fashioned, obsolete kind of way and yet somehow always seem really busy and you have to wait forever at the checkout line. I may just be saying this because my wife asked me to drive her to joann's tomorrow for her to buy supplies to make xmas presents, and I don't want to.

Department stores with my mom when I was a kid and too young to let wander off. I'm talking Dillard's and JC Penney, UGH. The stifling boredom.

it doesn't come up often but i think of these two

pet stores - depressing, all the cages

jewelry stores - i am not interested in a single thing the store offers, i would rather be anywhere else

as a kid, definitely hardware stores. when we moved into our house in Maryland, my dad was doing lots of fixit work on it and it seemed like we'd have to go to the hardware store every weekend. nothing to do, nowhere even really to sit down.

Oh man no kidding about craft stores n/a, Hobby Lobby was the only place in Las Cruces where you could buy acrylic paints or canvas or art supplies of any kind. And the lines were soooo slow. So slow and long! I have no idea how the few people working there managed to ring things up so slowly. I admit sometimes if I was just buying a $1 pack of buttons or something to just walking out with it out of rage.

I usually didn't mind Michael's so much. It was weird and cheap and outmoded, but there was always something to play with, like unpainted decorative foam balls, or something. From kid's POV again.

It was always weird going with my mom to the store where my mom bought "garments" (Mormon underwears). You'd just kind of wait in line in this totally empty and nondescript room until it was your turn for the lady to hand my mom her size of garments. The absolute blankest of walls and decor.

It always makes me lol – kind of – when some really gendered store like a yarn store or a maternity clothing store has this one sad little chair with a "guy magazine" about fishing or camping or football from seven years ago.

supermarket. i can shop for myself and wander, but if i'm dragged in and delayed i'm an antichrist

Childhood: plant nurseries. Mum & Dad practically lived there, avid gardeners. There's only so much hide & seek you can play before you're sitting on a pile of bagged fertilizer waiting for parents to re-emerge from the fernery section.
It's not so much the nursery itself that I didn't likebut how goddamn LONG we would be trapped there.

Now: Barbecues Galore, barbecue sections of any store, Walmart. Mr Veg is forever on endless quests for wood chunks that arent mildewed, and lump charcoal that only appears at Walmart during summer where we go & buy 10 bags at a time. I can't stay in the car I have to help push a cart of charcoal >:(
But it's the price I pay for enjoying delicious barbecue, so

xpost Darragh otm abt supermarkets. Give me a list or there will be blood. Aimless wandering is death.

I guess this counts as a "business": when I was a kid my dad got into making wine at home as a hobby. for a couple of months it seemed like every weekend we'd have to get up superearly, all pile in the car, and drive out to some vineyard in the country so my dad could, I don't know, taste grapes or something to decide which grapes to use in his terrible homemade wine. it was always cold and i'd be tired and bored and we'd just sit on a blanket on a hill with nothing to do the whole time.

Grownups sure do have boring interests when you're a kid. That sounds pretty ugh

Oh man, when my parents were going to start an ostrich farm, we'd drive out to area ostrich farms so my dad could talk to people who owned ostriches & check out their setups. They were invariably in the middle of nowhere, and we lived in the middle of nowhere, so it was a long drive from nowhere to nowhere, usually four or five hours. And then it's just be some stranger's house out in the country and my dad talking to some stranger. Looking at the ostriches for a bit was interesting but after that it was just the worst waiting game. And then we'd sleep in the back of the truck because my dad was too cheap to pay for a hotel. Great times.

Secondhand bricks, anyone? Driving out to bumfuck nowhere for a pile of old bricks from some farmer's broken down old dairy, put on a pair of leather gloves, form a line & spend all day putting bricks in the back of the ute.
See also: firewood.

these are all kickass hobbies but jeez leave the tykes at home

I think I'd chew my own arm off before I'd go into a party supply store.

Oh, I love party supply stores, they're so weird and depressing!

I guess this is the "Ghost World" part of me talking. "Look how shitty this is, it's so pure."

You guys, nothing -- nothing! -- compares with the boredom of being toted to hundreds of political fundraisers without another child in sight, no siblings, and nothing to do.

Things I did while at political fundraisers in between dodging probing questions from strangers I had no interest in talking to:

* hid behind a potted plant and read (this is most of my childhood)
* made balloon animals
* walked on stilts
* sucked so much helium that i passed out (this was funny because no one noticed)
* ran in circles until i got so dizzy/tired that i threw up (parents still did not take me home)
* sifted through people's coat pockets in the coat check room

second place goes to JC Penneys

thrift stores in areas where all the decent stuff is gonna be gone and there's just overpriced musty crap everywhere

when my dad dragged me to work he took me onto this thing

http://www.psm-sensors.co.uk/images/atlantic_dawn.jpg

which was basically little boy heaven. we were let run riot usually.

Wow! Awesome!

Me going to work with Dad (plumber) = sitting in the ute listening to am radio while he dug out someone's blocked sewer.

gun shops. hideous customers, hideous staff, hideous products, hideous decor.

plus, if you got dragged in...

by cold, dead hands iirc

As a kid, it was pottery shops. My parents would take us on holiday along the coast and every pottery shop we passed (lots and lots in my memory), we'd have to stop and go in. It became a running joke between my sister and I, how BORING it was to hang around in these places where we weren't allowed to touch anything.

Now, it's either the gaming stores (EB Games and such) or those nutrition hut places that sell protein powder and vitamins. My husband can spend hours in either one and it drives me insane. I've never been a super patient person.

Long ago I was starting to enjoy Wal-Mart but over the past two years the crowding there has become unbearable and the people who shop there seem to have a lack of peripheral vision and do that weird aisle dodging crap. There are also people there that excuse themselves when they aren't even near you! What in the hell is up with that phenomena? Why are you excusing yourself for something you aren't doing? You aren't even cutting through me or anything, we're not even in the same vicinity! Damn Wal-Mart.

^And just to clarify, I feel like I'm dragging myself there. Which I am.

Christmas Tree Shops, i avoid at all costs. A million old ladys trying to get at cheap shit at all costs. Place makes me want to punch old ladys.

those huge cosmetic sections in department stores, when they're busy it feels like some sort of robotic human end times, orange faces everywhere and the perfume smells make my eyes water.

* ran in circles until i got so dizzy/tired that i threw up (parents still did not take me home)
* sifted through people's coat pockets in the coat check room

Kinda lol but mostly sad.

No store stands out from childhood -- my mother took all of us on all her errands so it was the grocery, the bank, the fabric store, the department store, the florist, stopping by the church organist's house to drop off music...pretty much ad infinitum.

For adulthood, honest to god, it has been RECORD STORES. Never was v interested in records.

I loved hardware stores (good smells of wood and solvent and oils, and lots of bins of screws and bolts and colorful things to look at and play with, plus you couldn't really break anything there so you didn't have to "behave"), and feed & grain/farm stores, because you could plunge your hands into the barrels of cracked corn and birdseed.

I'm very much someone who likes to have a list of what I need to buy, go in, get it and GTFO. So pretty much any store or business. I'm not fun to go shopping with, I get grumpy and impatient very quickly.

The one exception to this is RECORD STORES, where I can happily look around for hours on end.

my mum used to stop at a garden centre/greengrocers which was on the main road into the town where we lived, because it was always the last stop on whatever journey i came to really hate it and groan everytime she turned the indicator on as she was about to turn in. don't like the sight of it to this day.

as a child; garden centres, fabric shops (wish I'd thought of a cool game to play like Abbott, but instead I was just bored), clothes shops. Hardware stores, especially the big superstores, were OK, because I was already interested in making stuff. But Argos (UK catalogue store) was the worst. We would spend ages in there, even though the plastic coated in-store catalogue had identical pages to the free catalogue that you could take away with you. I couldn't understand - and still don't understand - why my parents just didn't decide WTF they wanted at home. That feeling carries over today to practically all stores with an online presence - you can check out all this shit online, why do you need to spend hours in the store???

I'm very much someone who likes to have a list of what I need to buy, go in, get it and GTFO.

^^^ yes

This thread makes me so sad because, basically, when I was a child, I absolutely LOVED fabric shops. I could spend hours looking at the pretty fabric patterns (I'm quite lucky I grew up in the 70s, so there was eye-bending paisley everywhere, which made me happiest of all.) If I was really lucky, my mum would buy me some "remenants" which were usually cheap enough to allow a child to cut to pieces for art projects and the like. I was completely obsessed with velvet for a long time.

I think my least favourite shop was the boring ecclesiastical bookshop. (not to be confused with the nice ecclesiastical tat shop that had hundreds and possibly even thousands of those stained glass sucker hangy things, and I liked looking at them.)

I don't often get myself dragged into shops these days. But my number one hatred is probably BABY SHOPS (not shops that sell babies, shops that sell ridiculous overpriced tat for babies, oh my god, my mother loves these, I did not REALISE there were so many baby shops in St. Ives ugh ugh ugh).

I used to hate shoe shops, as well, but I've learned to accept them.

i can spend hours in a Target though

Oh, and car shops. Oh my god car showrooms are the most snoozesome place on earth for a child. I have never been in one since, but oh dear lord, DO NOT WANT.

xp Then I've got you in my sights (bah dum pish!)

I think we played outside if possible, at a lot of places. Eventually I preferred being left in the car because I could at least read, but it wasn't always allowed. Man, until this thread I'd forgotten all about the INTENSITY of the boredom and trapped-ness of being taken shopping!

We definitely used to do things like hide under the hanging racks of clothes in mall stores and stuff. Probably embarrassed the shit outta my mom by being rambunctious EVERYWHERE, not like nice children who waited quietly.

(I wish there were a converse thread of "favourite shops to be dragged in as a child" because I could quite happily spend hours and hours in Paperchase and also Liberty, these were happy fun "a reward for being so good on your mum's shopping trip" places which I still love to this day for this reason alone.)

Repeat offender was my mother, in craft stores. Even if it was just buying some glitter to put on cards or something. Should be a five minute job, right? Do you have any idea how many type of glitter there are? There's the powdered stuff that looks like it belongs in a chemistry set. Then there's the stuff like miniature metallic confetti. etc., etc..
Actually the worst offender was my father, in hardware stores. He would never ask the assistants for help finding things. So we'd spend forty minutes wandering around an aircraft hanger like enormo-warehouse, and often leave without the item because he couldn't find it. Whereas knowadays it takes me two minutes max. "Excuse me mate, where are the widgets?" "They're over there." "Thanks." £$^%^*&%^&%&***!!! IT'S SIMPLE!!!

my mother and grandmother used to drag me into this place called "Basketville" in sturbridge, ma. I fucking hated that place...it was nothing but baskets and they would spend hours in there.

Sometimes grown-ups like to go to places that make them feel good/relaxed and just...hang around there like their time is their own. Silly grown-ups. Don't they know all of their time is OURS???

I loved craft stores, and hardware stores! I mean, hardware stores... I could spend HOURS looking at the racks of brightly coloured paint chips. My parents used to try to persuade me I could only have one, and no, I could not bring home every paint chip in the shop.

When I was a kid I hated the hardware store. Now I mainly just hate waiting to pick up my prescriptions at the pharmacy -- otherwise I'm able to avoid most places I dislike.

I love fabric shops, though! JoAnns is kind of pathetic but they occasionally have good deals on stuff like flannel, but I love a good fabric store because sewing is my source of geeky relaxation.

I'd forgotten all about the INTENSITY of the boredom and trapped-ness of being taken shopping!

I don't ever miss being a child, and especially I don't miss that "having" to do things. It's easy to forget as an adult that you don't ever ever have to put up with being bored. Then: "Come along snoball, I have to look in this DIY shop for what will seem like several days". Now: "OK fine, you go and do that, meanwhile I will be doing something productive with my time."

Oh god, totally. Whenever I'm in an over-controlled situation now and have nothing to do but be bored, it makes me completely childish because I FEEL like a child again -- without agency and THWARTED.

Benefits of adulthood, see also: Other people trying to make you eat things you don't like.

actually i hated sturbridge in its entirety. my step-father despises target, every time he takes my mother he claims it makes him nauseous.

I'm very much someone who likes to have a list of what I need to buy, go in, get it and GTFO. So pretty much any store or business. I'm not fun to go shopping with, I get grumpy and impatient very quickly.

The one exception to this is RECORD STORES, where I can happily look around for hours on end.

― a fucking stove just fell on my foot. (Colonel Poo), Wednesday, 10 November 2010 14:34 (19 minutes ago)

I don't do the list thing, but I do get grumpy in most shops, particularly clothes shops. I like record shopping but I will still get grumpy if I'm there and skint, as I will be surrounded by temptation and have no way of bringing my desire to fruition.

I think that my mum, quite early on, developed a very sensible habit of, whenever she could not avoid taking two small children shopping, she would take them to a nearby bookshop (especially after we moved to the States where there was one in every mall), park the two small children in the shop, go off and do her shopping, and return to find two small children still mesmerised. (Initially she would install the father to watch over them, but soon discovered this was simply not necessary.)

I am slightly convinced that once she managed to get halfway back to Potter's Bar having left said two small children in the basement of Foyle's but she hems and haws when I bring it up.

I'd forgotten all about the INTENSITY of the boredom and trapped-ness of being taken shopping!

I don't ever miss being a child, and especially I don't miss that "having" to do things. It's easy to forget as an adult that you don't ever ever have to put up with being bored. Then: "Come along snoball, I have to look in this DIY shop for what will seem like several days". Now: "OK fine, you go and do that, meanwhile I will be doing something productive with my time."

― Les centimètres énigmatiques (snoball), Wednesday, November 10, 2010 8:53 AM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Oh god, totally. Whenever I'm in an over-controlled situation now and have nothing to do but be bored, it makes me completely childish because I FEEL like a child again -- without agency and THWARTED.

Benefits of adulthood, see also: Other people trying to make you eat things you don't like.

― I've got ten bucks. SURPRISE ME. (Laurel), Wednesday, November 10, 2010 8:55 AM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

ha this is how I feel when my parents or my in-laws come to visit. Suddenly you're back to being at the whim of someone else's schedule, and it doesn't really matter what you want to do. It sucks.

The bunch of chairs in a shoe shop or clothes store away from the melee is something I've always called MAN PARKING.

My mom never inflicted craft or fabric stores on me, which is lucky, although there are a number of decorative, varnished-bread-and-gourds centrepieces in baskets made by my mom that suggest going to a few. We had TWO craft shops in the nearest strip mall but I'd visit the fabrics one myself for things like slim grosgrain ribbons to make preppy-girl barrettes.

I would balk at being made to go into Sears or JCPenney because it meant I might have to wear clothes from there, which I would reject in ways my mom couldn't argue with: 'not my colour'; 'badly made - look, these seams are AWFUL'; 'Jenny has that one and I don't want to look like I'm copying' (ad infinitum, until she gave up) and basically I would wait until my aunt was also coming on the errands because that meant we would go to the nice mall and to Dayton's because aunt was anti-Sears etc unless it was time to buy an appliance, and very very pro-sales racks at posh shops. Downside of aunt coming along was the way the two of them could drink coffee in a diner for HOURS oblivious to children getting bored shitless.

JOANN FABRICS

f that place forever, i enter into some kind of fugue upon crossing its threshold

If I ever go out with my mom-in-law it's under the pretense of something fun like "let's go get some burritos and then go to a shop we both like," and invariably she ends up taking small eternities in the kind of clothing boutiques seemingly designed for rich ex-biker old ladies. The kind with $100 t-shirts that have like paint spatters and bedazzled fluer-de-lis. And now let's go pay her car insurance. Oh, and look at some purses! And greeting cards! And then to the tobacco shop where she reads all the bumper stickers out loud to me – and then wait while she smokes that first cigarette of the pack. "I can't believe you don't like anything here. You used to smoke."

I think what it is, is I hate shopping with other people.

Oh, I forgot about McDonald's! I hated going there as a kid because my sister would literally take an hour and a half to eat a damn happy meal. It defeated the whole purpose of fast food.

haha. unhappy meal by the end of it.

Man, until this thread I'd forgotten all about the INTENSITY of the boredom and trapped-ness of being taken shopping!

totes.

my mom's usual strategy, since i was insufferable when bored, was to hope there was a magazine rack and drop me there. i spent a LOT of time hanging out by magazine racks as a child. once i was old enough (12, maybe?) my mom trusted me enough to actually drop me off at, say, Barnes and Noble before she went to the grocery store next door. oh man what a relief that was

abbott otm: i basically just hate shopping with other people

like, i realize now that for me shopping is an intensely self-centered and narcissistic experience. and not just the simple acquisition of goods (amazon!), but the actual act of desultory "shopping." it's fun to wend yr way thru an old book store or thrift shop or w/e but if i'm there to acquire something ~for myself~ i probably don't give a shit about whatever it is you're interested in. moreover once i've found the shit i want, i really don't want to hang around while you figure out what you're getting.

this seems most pronounced in stores built around browsing---i can go into a record store w/o any specific purchases in mind, and enjoy sifting through the catalogue, but once i've decided i've got something i want, Shopping Is Over. hurry the fuck up with yr own mindless grazing (wtf do u expect to find anyway ffs) and lets get out of here

The bunch of chairs in a shoe shop or clothes store away from the melee is something I've always called MAN PARKING.

Yeah, because all women love shoes and clothes and all men hate them. That's exactly it.

relax

Going out to dinner with parents, mine or someone else's, is never ever a good time. It's like, ok, here we are in the middle of one of the best restaurant cities IN THE WORLD, and they insist on hitting the freeway out of town and going to Uncle Moe's Family Feedbag. Ooh, look! This chain restaurant has crazy MEXICAN crap on the walls! Don't you just get hungry looking at it?

Funny skit on German improv show in which the husbands are in like a kid's playground place in a mall. There's a ball-pit and posters of centerfolds and race-bars or something, and playboy bunnies to bring the men beers and coo at them maternally, while the men sit, slump-shouldered, in sandboxes and on brightly colored plastic cubes until their wives come to pick them up.

S/b "race-cars", sorry.

that doesn't sound very funny :-/

I demand a bouncy castle.

::grits teeth for inevitable onslaught of SB's but...::

I don't find that kind of thing funny at all. To be quite frank, I find it actually quite insulting to men and masculinity and TBH just goes against the entire demonstrated thrust of this thread, i.e. that everyone, of both genders, has kinds of shopping they fucking hate or love.

That's the point.

sounds like the hot chicks room.

It sounds like a sketch from The Man Show.

To be quite frank, I find it actually quite insulting to men and masculinity and TBH just goes against the entire demonstrated thrust of this thread, i.e. that everyone, of both genders, has kinds of shopping they fucking hate or love.

― Wheal Dream, Wednesday, November 10, 2010 9:49 AM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark

oh sure, but in middle america the man corner really does exist in some stores. basically this:

It always makes me lol – kind of – when some really gendered store like a yarn store or a maternity clothing store has this one sad little chair with a "guy magazine" about fishing or camping or football from seven years ago.

― Flavors: Onions and other flavors (Abbbottt), Monday, November 8, 2010 8:19 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark

tru dat, especially around here.

My mind's still boggling at the idea of a funny skit on a German improv show.

(I've seen a similar sketch somewhere else, and I don't watch a lot of German improv, tbh)

I am very very pro the idea of seats or waiting areas in *any* kinds of shops for non-shopping people (or even just for the older ones among us to have a bit of a sit down) but the proceding from this to the whole "look, men are simply fools who require beer and playboy bunnies in order to function in public" is just o_0 on a gender reduction level.

But whatevs. I guess I must be a man for using those seats myself.

Oh come on, I never find German comedy TV to be actually funny, but even I can recognize that the sketch is making fun of the exact mindset we also hate. Men who THINK that "going shopping" or w/e is like an intolerable level of girl stuff that no Real Man should have to deal with, they might as well be sticky little toddlers with plastic slides and baby bumpers.

It's ham-fisted enough to be distasteful or just plain tiresome, but it's not holding a view that's OPPOSITE to yours or mine.

Speaking of male stereotype comedy and stores, I remember some Tim Allen routine where he said when he goes into a hardware store, his nipples immediately get hard. Which is something I never wanted to think about, Tim Allen's erectile tissue, but it often comes to mind when I visit a hardware store.

I have lost the ability to distinguish between "making fun of" and "colluding with and ultimately reinforcing" but I recognise that might be just me. Rinse and repeat to fade.

Anyway, we are really off topic and it doesn't matter.

Hmm, I just looked it up, and it turns out nipples aren't erectile tissue, but the response is due to smooth muscle contractions. I feel 20% better about Tim Allen's nipples.

xp

any mall. overwhelming and depressing. target or other "big box" (ugh) stores can be pretty dire also, but the WORST has to be a car dealership. not only is there nothing interesting to entertain yourself with, it will probably involve a looong, dreadful conversation with a salesperson :(((

Yarn stores are the worst for me. The first few times my wife took me there, I was able to distract myself with all the different sized needles and ball winders and stuff. Now I just get sick to my stomach whenever she runs out of yarn.

Part of this whole convo seems like a hazard of shopping in places were you drive to the store(s). If you walked there, you can keep walking across the street to some other place while your companion does whatever. Shouldn't be this big a deal as adults that people are getting sick or aggro about it.

when I go shopping with my girlfriend I just bring a book, it's not that complicated.

But we hardly ever go shopping together anymore, I'm an in-and-out-as-quickly-as-possible guy and she likes to browse

Yeah, I was gonna say...but not everyone likes to read, or can read in busy/loud places. Whatever.

anyway, whenever I go to the grocery store or whatever with my son because it always reminds me of how I hated to go shopping with my parents as a kid and I almost always end up buying him a toy car or something

Did anyone have parents who just let them stay home? I feel like everytime I had to go to the hardware store or fabric store it was when we were visiting another city. If my parents were going shopping in our hometown, they were just fine leaving me at home by myself, even when I was four or five. I guess that isn't normal?

I find clothes shops of any ilk except charity shops to be miserable places.

No, we generally weren't allowed to stay home alone. If we were, we probably had chores that were supposed to be done in that time.

Abbs, I'm the oldest -- are you one of the younger kids? I don't know/remember...but when you're the oldest, it seems like parents have the mindset for the next decade+ that they're still parenting babies. And you're, like, 15. It sucks.

i was allowed to stay home alone after 10 or so, but not before
usually i was carted off to a sitter (often elderly) or to visit a friend who had been coerced into playing with me (not an exaggeration on several accounts lol/sad)

this was a constant source of aggravation for my parents, as i was frequently vocal about being dropped off/picked up from places i did not want to be. the boredom was stultifying.

To be precise, *I* wasn't allowed to stay home alone. I'm sure by the time our youngest sibling was like 10, my parents were dying to run errands unimpeded and just tied him to a tree in the yard.

I'm the oldest kid. My parents let any of us go or stay if we wanted, while they shopped...a lot of times I'd stay behind even if they were doing something fun because it was the only chance to be alone. I liked just hanging out by myself.

i dont think i stayed home alone until i was like 13. my mother was very overprotective.

i lovvvvvvvvvvved being left home alone.

I was allowed to stay home alone from about 10 years old. Mum worked part-time, once she knew I was old enough to let myself in and get myself something to eat, I was pretty okay. She would only take us all around shopping together if we'd had to go somewhere else, like a doctor's appointment or something, she'd usually dovetail a few extra errands into a trip like that to get it over and done with. But once there were 3 of us it got too unwieldy and we were sort of crazy as siblings in public, so she started 'hunting alone' so to speak. But as little ones, it was sort of unavoidable to be taken somehwere and have to wait around.

As for upthread convo on shopping together as spouses: I'm not much of a shopper, and if I do need to buy clothes I'll usually go on my own because I really don't enjoy shopping anyway, and certainly not with other people. I don't like aimless shopping, I like to have a purpose and find what I want and get out.

My husband enacts a creative kind of psychological warfare if he does end up having to 'go shopping'. (This is increasingly rare for reasons you'll see). He follows me around the store, and if I pick something up he'll say "You should buy that!" or "do you like it?"...very benignly, happily even, not at all nagging. Which drives me nuts. He also knows that I hate being crowded, so he'll follow pretty close. What it does is get me annoyed enough to either leave, or speed up my browsing so I can get the hell out of there.

yeah wife and i dont do shopping together very well..she is queen of budget and i spend like I have unlimited funds.

My grandma was my daycare. I didn't get to stay home alone, but once she was ensconced in the fabric store I was allowed to roam the mall. Age 8 or so my favorites were the record shop, the drug store for monster magazines, craft store for model kits, and the "head shop" for blacklight posters and Coke cans with flickering lightbulbs.

The mall also had several arcade games, where I played stuff like this:

http://i259.photobucket.com/albums/hh310/yodelagogo/dogfigh3.jpg

urgh and when we would visit Nova Scotia, my grandmother would spend hours in Frenchies buying random shit...which she still sends to me all these years later from Frenchies. Of course its still sweet as i get a note attached "Grammie thought you would like these books on WWII and this winter hat with the Canadian Flag on it". I dont think grammy realizes im 36 yrs old now, but its the thought that counts.

What is 'Frenchies'?

http://scotiawipers.com/

Fabric stores
Jewelry stores
Dillard's
Make-up stores
Shoe stores
Health food stores
Hallmark stores
any place that sells wares that are "scented"
Used bookstores with nothing but romance novels.
Outlet stores

I don't mind the big places. You can always wonder off to another aisle to look at mailboxes or ceramic chickens.

My mom was a reporter and would drag me to school board meeting, city planning meetings, etc. My memories of the time are surrounded by tall ashtrays (they were tall to me) with the little button I'd press on the side that would open up the two halves of the concave surface, damning the cold ashes to the dark pit underneath. Hours of fun.

i lovvvvvvvvvvved being left home alone.

OTM! Still do, tbh. Arguing successfully to not have to go places I did not want to go started a life pattern for me, I think. For better and worse.

What did the sticker say?

ARGH SORRY, wrong program.

any place that sells wares that are "scented"

Oh man, this really *is* the worst, especially for me because I can't smell anything. Going to Bath & Body Works with my sisters was always torture! They would stand around and smell everything and ooh and ahh, it was like going to a fireworks display that only you can't see.

i like going to Yankee Candle.

Oh man, this really *is* the worst, especially for me because I can't smell anything.

In this one particular case, you're better off, believe me.

Ha ha, the only shop my ex would flat out refuse to go into was Lush, on account of the stinkiness. Like, he wouldn't actually go within 50 feet of the shop. He'd claim that spending more than a minute in there made his eyes and nose start to water.

My dad asked me to buy him a scented candle for Christmas one year. Wtf, ok. I just picked out the one with the most dude-oriented name, "Ernest Hemingway." I asked my husband what it smelled like and he said, "Bull fighting, Paris, hunting, suicide."

^^^^^actual genuine LOL

cosign

I liked the Yankee Candle factory store, because you can buy the weird ones there that smell like "Grass" or "Sage" or other natural-ish scents. I invariably hate candles with names like "Beach Walk" or "Mountain Lake" or "Wedding Day."

xp LOLOLOLOL

New gmail status msg, without a doubt.

New screen name.

You should get him some of this for Christmas:

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4152/5017209035_420f2798a1_z.jpg

thats why those places need man-scented candles like bacon, beer, grill, bar room, etc...

You guys remember those cheap, dirty department stores like Ames and Bradlee's and Jamesway? God those places SUUUCCCKKED

we had a place here called the Fair, which was this enormous shithole of a place...of course my mother and grandmother loved it. I only cared for it when i was able to get a GI Joe.

Bradlees...AAAAAAARGH.

Caldor....ARRRRGH

thats why those places need man-scented candles like bacon, beer, grill, bar room, etc...

That reminds me of the Onion infographic for "Top-Selling Novelty Condoms," one of which is "Exotic Flavors of the Midwest, available in corn, bacon, or beef".

Grabbing it before Justen does.

New screen name.

― Bull fighting, Paris, hunting, suicide (kenan), Wednesday, November 10, 2010 1:17 PM (17 minutes ago) Bookmark

i will never understand why people think punchlines to jokes, totally out of context, are funny screen names

(nothing personal k-bro)

I dunno, that one has internal context. It's like clues on The $25,000 Pyramid.

for some reason i hate going into frame stores.

I think the reason may be that u gonna get raped. Monetarily speaking.

Poor Kenan always has to add that disclaimer.

haaaaaaa

not sure if anyone's mentioned it yet but for some reason my mum meeting someone while shopping was the worst thing in the world, just having to stand there holding her hand as she made occasionally patronising comments (don't mean this resentfully, you know those parental comments that all parents make)

snoball otm upthread, sometimes i'll do something silly like i dunno, walk past an ice cream shop and think "hmm i want an ice cream", then buy one, and after i just think "being an adult is GREAT"

my mum meeting someone while shopping was the worst thing in the world

lol so otm

my mum meeting someone while shopping was the worst thing in the world

Yep.

It's pretty sad to say this, but I don't much mind going in any stores now that I can just sit down and waste 20 minutes playing games or reading shit on the internet on my phone.

WORST OF STORES:

1) craft stores, fabric stores, sephora: girl stores, i guess?

2) nor am i fond of closetlike boutiques selling only women's clothing & accessoris, new or used.

3) loathe smell stores like lush, bath & body works, though i do like aveda. aveda smells pretty ok.

4) not super fond of the container store.

5) or hippie shoe stores selling birkenstocks & sturdy woolens.

6) religious book & trinket shops are horrid. this includes those of the new-age variety. full of creeps.

7) malls in general, and almost everything that might be found in a mall, including the people there, whether or not they are actually stores.

8) any store where the people are too friendly and want to talk to you right off the bat, wander around asking everyone if they need help.

9) upscale menswear stores that make me feel like a hobo (which i more or less am, but)

10) dollar stores

basically you don't like any stores. Storeist.

• Guitar Center

abbott otm. ostrich farms are def THE WORST.

ctrl + f IKEA

0 of 0

Ikea is too much commitment to get unwittingly dragged into, probably. It's agreed upon beforehand.

I am a strictly purpose-driven shopper at Ikea. "Ok, I need some dishes, some picture frames, this pillow that I just found, and this is I'm out."

you can be singular in your purpose at Ikea but you still have to walk through th eentire goddam store

ikea enough of a novelty to ake it an event tbh

Yeah for real, lighten up, Francis.

http://www.i-mockery.com/minimocks/movie-assholes2/francis-buxton.jpg

Guitar Center OTM. Though it is fun when you have to enter one and there is nearly inevitably some dude playing Led Zeppelin or Metallica riffs on a cheesy axe.

I can take IKEA if ppl know what they are looking for, at least to a certain degree, & are intent on finding & purchasing said items with minimal distraction or digression. It is the day-long odyssies that make me want to tear my face off.

I'm with Dayo on ikea. 7th circle of hell as far as I'm concerned. Get me to the basement with the glasses & cutlery and then get me the FUCK out

Oh and Yankee Candle...no. Candle places in general, section of stores that have scented candles...I can't do it. It's like the fragrance equivalent of a roomful of people talking at once:PINE! LAVENDER! MANGO! THE OCEAN! PUMPKIN PIE! CINNAMON! FRANGIPANI!

i kinda miss bradlee's, jamesway, ames, and caldor. i used to hate going to BIG LOTS but now i wish there was one near me.

Big Lots was a bad times store, for sure

it was like a panic store because everything is so disorganized and ugly

it reminded me of this retarded guy that used to work in the meat department at a grocery store i worked at. someone asked him, "where'd you get that cool tie?" and he said "oh, i got it at big lots."

3) loathe smell stores like lush, bath & body works, though i do like aveda. aveda smells pretty ok.

Oh and Yankee Candle...no. Candle places in general, section of stores that have scented candles...I can't do it. It's like the fragrance equivalent of a roomful of people talking at once:PINE! LAVENDER! MANGO! THE OCEAN! PUMPKIN PIE! CINNAMON! FRANGIPANI!

So, I'm the only person on ILX that likes this sort of thing?

ergh just walking by smell stores makes my nose hurt

the lettering of the Big Lots sign on the outside of the store was the ugliest shade of orange imaginable

in terms of retail locations K-Mart was second only to BIG LOTS for schoolyard insults. Example: "'_________'s parents can't afford Nikes, so he has to wear K-Mart Sliders." "Dude wishes he had K-Mart Sliders. I heard his folks buy all of his clothes at BIG LOTS." The only thing worse than BL was a fictional store known as "JJ Giveaway" which, as an adult, I would certainly go to if it actually existed.

Loved Big Lots. Christmas lights and tiki torches, both on sale in February.

this thread made me remember that sometimes I had to hang out at the hair salon while my mom got a perm

My brother would cite hair salon as his least favorite overscented place. By which I mean: he didn't like it because of the large variety of strong smells.

I think it's because of those experiences that to this day I still kinda like the smell of perm'd, burned hair

my mom still drags me to macy's when I go home to visit

my dad still makes me bring him to dollar stores but I like dollar stores

my mom too. and it's always macy's. and she's always got a coupon

haha everytime I go home my mom has a stack of $10 off $30 or 20% off coupons or w/e

I have to admit that I do have a macy's card under my name that she made me sign up for so she could get an extra 20% off whatever purchase she made that day

see also: my mom's mock outrage when she finds out she can't return a shirt because she bought it...a year ago (but she's still got the receipt and it's still got tags)

I wonder if this will still be a phenomenon 20 years from now. will people still reminisce about how their parents bored the shit out of them by taking them shopping? seems like most kids I pass by in grown-up shops have a nintendo DS or their mom's iphone or something and are engrossed in beating games. I wonder if kids still get bored today anymore.

Candle places in general, section of stores that have scented candles...I can't do it. It's like the fragrance equivalent of a roomful of people talking at once:PINE! LAVENDER! MANGO! THE OCEAN! PUMPKIN PIE! CINNAMON! FRANGIPANI!

;_;

I love those smellovision overkill shops so much. Lush, The Pier - OH GOD I MISS THE PIER SO MUCH. I could happily spend all day in a Pier just sniffing the candles. Lush kinda burns my nostrils out a bit after I've been in there for over half an hour, but oh, <3 so much, all the competing smells. See also: spice shops.

I have like secret fantasies about visiting those bazaars in Istanbul that have sacks and sacks of spices of all colours and exotic smells and just taking a giant nose dive, nose first into a pile of fragrant spices.

IKEA is another of those places (like Argos) where YOU CAN GET A CATALOGUE so why DO YOU NEED TO SPEND HOURS IN THERE?!

cause you need to sit in a chair, lie on a bed, etc. You can READ that a bureau is 200cm high but it's not the same as standing next to it. That said IKEA is kind of the ultimate answer to this question.

I hate being dragged into any store. I'm a precision attack shopper, and I have about one minute between feeling like I'm about ready to go and reaching a state of GET ME THE FUCK OUT OF HERE NOW ARRRGH so I always shop alone.* I decided to go recreational shopping with an acquaintance a couple of years ago, to see if maybe I was missing something, and it was a deeply miserable experience that I will never repeat.

I like malls fine if I can start by spending an hour or so in the Ruby Tuesday's bar.

And I LOVED Ames as a kid b/c my mom/grand mom would just dump me in the toy aisle. Also any store with a stationary aisle was a-ok because I could entertain myself for a good hour looking at pencils.

*Exception: Jeff and I are really good together at grocery shopping and, oddly, outlet mall shopping (we go stock up on t-shirts, underpants, work shirts, work shoes, etc. whenever we visit my family in Delaware, "Home of Tax-free Shopping") because we have similar strategies and philosophies. Also I'm good at going with Jeff to offer advice and support while he buys something because I know it will just be a matter of "That looks good, get it" or "Try this size... Good, lets go."

Like, on outlet mall day, we look at a map of the outlets, plan our route, plan meeting points (You go into J Crew and I'll go into Clark's/Bostonian and L'egg's/Hanes/Bali and we'll meet at the kettle corn cart in 45 minutes), and pretty much reach retail saturation at exactly the same moment. Then we go back to my parents' house and drink beer and run up their pay-per-view bill like a couple of teenagers.

All my worst ones have been mentioned, but I will say that all of these experiences would have been much better if I had an iPhone as a kid. I'd sit in a fabric store all day if I had Peggle and 9 Innings.

I like Yankee Candle.

or drop7

you can be singular in your purpose at Ikea but you still have to walk through th eentire goddam store

― dayo, Wednesday, November 10, 2010 4:00 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

pro tip: ikeas have a corridor through the middle so you can get in, get to the section you want, and get out in like 10 minutes. like the secret passage in clue.

plus ikea is great anyway. always look forward to ikea, even if the crap i buy there almost always turns out to be junk.

DOLLAR STORES ARE THE WORST FUCKING THING EVER

What's wrong with them? Sometimes I feel the need both a neon orange plastic mini watergun and a gallon of milk at the same time.

And a gallon of lime Fabuloso.

And a dvd of racist bugs bunny cartoons in a cardboard sleeve.

and a balsa wood glider plane.

You know what the fucking best thing for dollar stores is? Glow sticks. [ / no rave-o ]

In every dollar store ever...

love the idea of dollar stores, but they always turn out hideous & depressing. they remind me that nothing is of value and everything will ultimately be discarded.

love big lots though. much the same as dollar stores, but every month or so they get a great heap of overstock DVDs that they sell for $3 dollars. have found lots of cool shit for super cheap. paul bartel movies, almodovar, 70s and 80s horror, treasure trove i tell you. no other reason to set foot in the store.

pro tip: ikeas have a corridor through the middle so you can get in, get to the section you want, and get out in like 10 minutes. like the secret passage in clue.

if you know how to use the secret corridors in ikea you've already lost imo

I remember now that as a kid, whenever my parents had any serious shopping to do, they'd drop me off at toys r us and I'd go straight for the action figure section. I'd ogle and grope the boxes of action figures, and when they were done they'd come back and pick me up. naturally they never bought me anything.

Does it seem shocking now that so many of our parents felt okay with leaving us unaccompanied in public? Would someone who did that with their kid now be immediately crucified in public opinion?

yes, because everybody is "OMG PEDOPHILES" nowadays

I got caught up on the "For Better or For Worse" series over a six-month span of hanging out in the paperbacks section of Food 4 Less while my mom grocery shopped.

K-Mart was a good time too...they had a pretty decent selection of star wars micro machines.

Pleasant Plains - yes! My big thing was "mom, can I go next door to the news stand to look at magazines?"

In relation to the first post; WTF is a "head shop"?

This might help: In every head shop ever

A store that sells drug paraphernalia and tie-dye shirts and little wizard figurines and Guatemalan wool sweaters. xp

HERE THERE BE HIPPIES

Aha. That makes sense. Fucking hate them.

when I was a kid I was dragged to car dealerships a lot. My dad was perpetually either buying a new car, test driving a new car, or some bullshit like that. Even when we went to other cities, there was a lot of time spent at car dealerships OR outlet golf gear shops. I fucking hate both of them.

Remember when supermarkets had great toy sections? That's where I was when Mum made me go grocery shopping with her. Looking at cap guns, bags of army men, barbie outfits

I made up a game to pass the time about an alternate universe where they were starved for fabric and had no way to make their own, and every bolt of fabric I touched got transported there. I'd imagine how grateful all its residents were, applauding my every touch, and what they'd do with each fabric ("finally my baby won't freeze to death").

thankin' u for the biggest laugh of my day

omg homo II otm - to this day i can't stand even driving along auto row.

I fucking hated when I got dragged to Spatula City. Those commercials are bullshit.

I made up a game to pass the time about an alternate universe where they were starved for spatulas and had no way to make their own, and every spatula I touched got transported there. I'd imagine how grateful all its residents were, applauding my every touch, and what they'd do with each spatula ("finally I can flip my pancakes").

primark in liverpool is one of the gateway's to hell; a vacuum that sucks hoards in and spits them back out dead-eyed, their souls replaced by a brown paper bag.

SOrry, I hate it when I come into a thread late (stupid time difference) but:

Childhood: plant nurseries. Mum & Dad practically lived there, avid gardeners. There's only so much hide & seek you can play before you're sitting on a pile of bagged fertilizer waiting for parents to re-emerge from the fernery section.

this was my FAVOURITE thing to do as a kid! Every time we went to the plant nursery I was in HEAVEN, all these plants everywhere it was like a maze and I loved it, I dunno why exactly. Its not like I've turned into gardener extraordinare.

My childhood bored dreads never involved shops. They involved granny's nursing home, church, and old people in general.

Oh but Mandee's thing about car dealerships reminds me, I hated that. My dad sold cars. Any time we had to hang out at his dealership waiting for him to finish work I loathed. The smell of new-car-rubber-vinyl-leather I cant stand.