Shopping Experiences
 

Okay, today I went shopping for the first time in months (3-4 months to be exact). You would think that a normal shopping trip would be fine. Well, it wasn't. First of all, I bought a caramel milkshake to drink while my mom was doing clothes shopping. I took one sip and I realized that it was vanilla. I didn't know it at the time, but it was a warning for things to come. No, really, it was.

Soon I found my favorite video game store and was looking for Kingdom Hearts 2 (Yeah, it's a new release here). It was $99, or $59 if you trade in 4 games for X-Box, Game Cube or PS2. That wasn't bad, but I did pre-order a Ninja Turtle game. "Mutant Melee", actually. I ask the guy at the counter if it was in. He looks it up on the computer. It turns out that it never came in, and I had to reorder it. Now, last time I had to wait about three weeks for it to come in. Now I have to wait ANOTHER three weeks to see if they actually got it in. This is the first time I've been disapointed with my favorite gaming store. Then I go into another store, Myers, to see what they had. The video game department is on the second floor. That's fine and all, but there is one problem - the escalators were out. And there were no stairs. That meant I had to take the elevator, which had about 20-30+ people in it. I had to stand next to a kid who kept on screaming his head off about chocolate ice cream. I has VERY close to throttling him before it came to my floor. And it turns out that there was nothing up there anyway.

There were also things that included trying to go to a store about five miles away, yet the store was closed, buying stuffed animals that were either too bad or too good of condition to use, finding no parking spaces, being hugged by a random in a bear costume, and the fact that I developed a throbbing headache from the entire day.

But here is my question to you - what are the worst shopping experiences you've had? Or the best? Come and relive the memories here. I want reasurance that I don't have the worst luck when it comes to shopping :P

Let's see, there's two experiences I know of. Don't like scary situations, then leave the thread now.

1989 - I got seperated from my mom at age almost five when I wandered off to the electronics section of Toys R Us to see this amazing new toy called "Game Boy". I played Tetris for a good ten minutes when this man came by and sweet talked me about how he worked for the store and was here to take me back to my Mom. If it hadn't been for the fact that a store clerk was standing there and knew the guy was about a sicko looking as you can get, he would have probobly gotten me. Clerk calls cops, Mom comes to get me, sicko goes to pokey, and we see on the news that night he had already kidnapped two kids before, raping both, and having already killed one of them.

Yeah, that's pretty bad, but there's another...

1999 - I walk into a Wal-Mart to buy some food for Thanksgiving. I'm at the checkout when I realize I don't have enough cash to get the food. I walk outside to get my billfold out of the car. On the way out two guys rush in past me. I shrug it off and go on out. I get the money and go back in. When I get back in, everything's a mess, and people are pouring twoards the exit of the store. I see that the crooks had gone to the very register I had just left, had shot the customer who was just behind me in the gut, and chest, then I heard them pop another one as I was running out the door.

On the news that night, the cashier was reported to be dead from a chest wound through the heart, and the customer died soon thereafter. If I hadn't forgotten my money, I'd have a hole in my chest and be buried now.


Gotta' love ghetto Arkansas huh? Sh*t hole.

o_o Damn, that's scary. It's definatly a good thing that you had forgotten your money that day :o

:o holy crap that's scary! dunno what's worse, what coulda been and what did happen to you man...least you can think to yourself that you had a part that put that sick b*st*rd perv in jail, but that second one, jeeez... lucky you left the store for your wallet man...

okay here's mine from today... (not really a bad'un, more frustrating)

i got to work (a hotel), and my boss asked if i would go shopping for some cot-sheets since the hotel's have gone missing, so i said yep... goes shopping and man, is it not the busiest day in town ever! bloody folk everywhere - cant get moved! its like, stuck behind someone who is stuck behind a slow old wifey, who in turn is stuck behind an even slower old man, who cant get past a group of single mothers with theire buggies standing in the middle of the pavement shootin' the breeze...

then when i finally get to the shop (primark) i find they dont have any, and the girl tells me to try adams, get to adams, guess what?! dont have any (its a store for kids, dagnabbit!) so the chick tells me to try boots, so i go to boots, and they dont have either!! so she sez to try john lewis, so a try there and i find! finally!! so that was quite annoying... also, its pouring of rain out, so i've got my parker on, and i'm sweating my ass off in it, being in all the shops and all...

so anyway, i'd normally be pretty p*ssed off right now, but because i'm getting paid to go shopping (and i also nipped into woolies, just to check if they had any TMNT figs in, and into Game to check out the games :P ) it was alright! all in all i was in for about an hour, so thats an hour of paid work to go shopping!! and now, i guess i'm getting paid to type this up hehehe ocs i'm still at work!!!

Best shopping experience ever:
The look on the cashier's face when I buy thongs. 8)

no no no....even better....MALE cashier's face when I buy thongs. :roll: he only wishes he was good enough to be with me (j/k :P )


I'd hav to say my worst shopping experience was being in a strip mall that was hit by a F5 tornado while I was in it. That's scary stuff.

Where do you live!?

Australia *gives you a rifle and a machine gun* I have no idea why we have the good games released later here. A total lump of crap. Even stranger, movies and DVD movies are released on time here :lol: (Apart from the New TMNT DVDs...damn government)

Jesus Christ, man...I would've sworn off shopping by this point.

You guys get completely rammed when it comes to games. Besides having a ton of stuff banned, you also get charged a zillion dollars and get it even later than Europe, which totally sucks; cause Europe is constantly raped by the videogame industry.

That depends on where you live. If you're in Germany, you're screwed big time. It's not impossible to get the games there, it's just rather difficult. In Switzerland on the other hand side, we don't know the thing called "Indizierung" which is dreaded by German gamers. A Indizierung prohibits a company to advertise and display a certain game. This mostly happens to the usual suspects, violent games and shooters. Now thing is, when you get them for the PC, the issue's fixed within half a second, because then you get something we commonly refer to as a "Blood Patch", that restores the level of goryness and violence. I myself appreciate Blood Patches, because then you get the game the way it was supposed to be. But if you're a console player, you're screwed. Anyways, in Switzerland, we don't have the Indizierung, so we get every game without a big problem. We do have some age restrictions, but compared to germany, we're the garden of eden of gaming.

Not alot of experiences for me...

I remember getting lost in a TJ Maxx (if that's how its spelled) when I was like 8 or 9.

Though this isn't technically a "shopping" experience, it took place in a mall; when I was real young, I fell into one of those fountains you throw change into.

Boxing Day sales 1996. People everywhere. Screaming, yelling, fighting all over the last few rolls of cheap Christmas paper and crackers.

*Flashback to being cut off from family in a pack of rabid bargin hunters*

I was lucky to make it out alive...