OK I will admit it.  I am a bit of a Luddite when it comes to ordering stuff online and having it delivered.

I still go to the pharmacy and pick up my prescriptions.  I still go to Costco, or whatever our favored warehouse outlet is these days, and I still go to Home Depot or Lowes for stuff.

I am still willing to drive to two or three places to find things.  Being retired, I am sure, has a lot to do with this because I do have a bit of free time.

My wife has an Amazon Prime membership.  I use it occasionally, but it is not my first go-to.  I had to use it recently for some special rivets to repair my granddaughter’s kayak.  I visited two big-box stores and a local hardware store  and couldn’t find what I needed—or even someone who understood what I needed—so I went online.

Fortunately I rarely need to go searching for something these days, because I am retired.

THAT’S WHAT RETIREMENT’S ALL ABOUT; YOU DON’T NEED TO FIX THINGS ANYMORE IF YOU DON’T WANT TO.

Occasionally, however, I do get pressed into service.

This time it was fixing some cabinets in daughter Jenn’s basement.  I needed five black, 4-inch barrel bolts.   Not an unusual item, like those special rivets for the kayak.

So, close by me there is a Lowe’s and a Home Depot.  I went to Lowe’s first.  They had two of what I needed.  After a five-minute wait to get someone to help me my question was simple: Do you have any more?  She had to call someone to help her find out if they had any more.  The answer was maybe.  So I said: Can you just tell me yes or no,  because if you don’t have any more I will go over to Home Depot.  The response was swift:  you better go to Home Depot.

So off to Home Depot I went.  I found the aisle I figured they would be on but couldn’t find them so asked an employee and he said he was on his way to help someone else and would come right back to me.

While I was waiting I continued to poke around the aisle and I found the bin they should be in.  Everything BUT them were in the bin and as I looked around it became obvious  to me that whoever was in charge of keeping Aisle 19 organized had been sleeping for a solid week because nothing was where it should be and stuff was stacked everywhere.

So I left the store, waving as I did so to the person who said he was going to come back and help me.  He was busy over at the pickup desk chatting with another employee.  And yes, in case you’re wondering, I sent an email of complaint to Home Depot, for whatever good that will do.

OK, I thought.  Time for Amazon Prime?  Nope, give the ‘local’ hardware store a try.  Not ‘big box,’ yes, but not that close to me either, maybe five times the distance to the big-boxers.  But what the heck, do it.  I went.  They had two of what I need.  Nope, they didn’t have any more.  Could order them though.

It just made no sense to me so I said no.  Go to a store to have them order something for me that will cost way more than what I would pay on Amazon Prime, including delivery, and then I have to drive back to the store AGAIN to pick it up?  No thanks.

There are other outlets of the big box stores and a few other small independent hardware stores I could get to—being retired and having acres of free time—but at some point I need to call it quits and order online and get it cheaper and right to my door.

And the point of this is that the measure for ordering online without getting into my car is getting shorter every time I have one of the experiences I have described above with the barrel bolts.  It gets shorter every time a store employee gives me short shrift and every time the item gets harder to find on foot than on line.

I go to online shopping reluctantly.  I like to shop in person.    I like the contact with sales people.  And I like that once in a while I find someone out to solve the same hardware problem that I am tackling.

Call me an old-fashioned shopper, but I am less so every day, as I get dragged and pushed into the present day.