This week I had the opportunity to stop at a store I hadn’t been to in years. The store? Staples. Yeah, you’d think I would be able to go to one regularly, and I used to, but well, they closed down the one near me and I’m not driving 30+ minutes to buy some office supplies. And I only stopped because I was in the area and something just popped into my head – I needed a pad of junior ledger paper. That’s pretty much all I needed. And why not just hang out for nostalgia’s sake, too?
When I go there, I was kind of surprised to see that Staples had merged with Party City? Or something like that. Staples is UPS, Party City, Amazon, and who knows what else inside (this is foreshadowing, BTW). I get in and start my browsing. Right at the entrance was something unexpected, a bin of random stuff – looked like returned products. Maybe this was part of the partnership with Amazon? Weird.
I find ledger pads. WTF? $14 and I have to buy a pack of 5? That’s like a lifetime supply for me. I keep on browsing. Nothing really catching my eye. Finally I found single pads, of which there were only two left. Now there’s one left. And while I was there I picked up some felt pads for a very special reason.
Nearing the back of the store was a big surprise waiting for me. Bins. Lots of bins, with people pawing and sifting through them like they would rummage through trash. It was, to put it lightly, unappealing. I think I blogged about my first and only experience with a "bin store" that lasted less than 5 seconds. Walk in, see what was happening, walk away quickly. And this wonderful experience was now here, at Staples! How the mighty have fallen! And also, how society has fallen.
So let me try to justify what might be a touch of hypocrisy. Yeah, I go to pawn shops and thrift shops. I have visited a Goodwill outlet a couple of times and have once sifted through a bin of media looking for any CDs for my collection. For the record, I didn’t like that experience. And I don’t like the experience or the visuals of people scrounging. This is fucking AMERICA. We are not supposed to be barbaric like this. I try to live by the motto "leave the world a little better than you found it." And believe it or not, I tried to add some organization to the pile of CDs in the goodwill bin. I straighten up and organize CDs at thrift shops. This is NOT what I see when I see people bin shopping. This is NOT the America I want to see. But sadly, I guess this is where we are. This is where capitalism has brought us, fighting over discarded scraps.
I don’t think I can recover the bleakness of what this post became, so I’ll just close mentioning that special reason for the felt pads. Maybe it will end with a smile.
My two indoor cats, Null and Sky, do not get along, so they each get half the house at a time. Usually for half the day or so, I will switch them so they get to experience the other half of the house. Null is usually in the living room area and Sky gets the bedroom area. When Null gets tired of his time in the bedroom and wants back into his domain, he scratches at the door. But Null is not a small cat, so what he ends up doing is banging on the door. It is not tolerable and not ignorable. Until now.
These felt disc pads, which I have cut into half circles, have been affixed perfectly to the door frame, so the door has no give anymore. So today when I heard him wanting out, it was just the sliding of his paws on the door, not the door repeatedly being slammed against the door frame. Peace at last.
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