My wrong-sized shoes and the perverse problem with online shopping

Recently, my mum and I were in a rather desolate Myer when she told me about how shopping used to be a “real experience”. She favourably compared Myer in its heyday to New York’s Bergdorf Goodman in the swingin’ ’60s. There used to be a person whose sole job it was to press the elevator button for you, she said. “They’d just stand there, and ask how your day was.”

I looked around the largely empty department store and could only imagine.

In 2024, you would have better luck finding something like this at a museum exhibition titled The Good Ol’ Days than in a department store.

Online shopping removes much of the romance from the experience.Credit: Getty Images/iStockphoto

We are not only losing something romantic about the shopping experience – it’s increasingly being replaced with something that makes no sense at all.

Not long ago, I bought some Asics from a large British shopping site without noticing their shoes were all US sized. Instantly realising my mistake, I emailed the site within a couple of minutes of the money leaving my bank account. According to the customer service person – although I don’t really know if it was an actual human person and not AI, as they offered little in the way of service – it was already too late. If I wanted to get shoes that would fit me, I would have to wait until the incorrectly sized ones arrived from the UK, ship them back, wait for my refund, and then reorder the right size.

In a physical store, had I bought the wrong size, I could, of course, have simply gone back inside and swapped the sizes within minutes. In the end, I decided it was easier to settle for shoes that were slightly small. It may be true, as has been reported, that some customers misuse online returns policies, but I’m sure that most of us just want to get the right item the first time.

Online shopping is theoretically easier and more efficient. If you have a disability, or live a long way from your favourite clothing shop, you can have your desired products delivered right to your front door. It’s easy to browse a huge selection of styles and prices.

And yet, despite that ease, I love shopping in-person more. I like talking to people, especially sales assistants who have an interest in where they work and what they sell. I was in a Smith Street record store a couple of days ago and chatted with the sales guy for 30 minutes about the soundtrack of Help Me, My Love, an obscure Italian sex comedy from the 1960s that the shop had in stock. It was a blast.

However, as someone who worked in retail for many years, it’s clear that online shopping is turning some people into maniacs. Maybe they’ve spent so long arguing with an AI service bot about returns that they’re forgetting how to deal with real people.

Sometimes it was the little things, like throwing clothes on the floor, or leaving empty coffee cups in change rooms. But sometimes it was far worse. In one instance a customer came in wanting to buy a $65 T-shirt that was in stock on our website. When I explained to her that we were out of stock in the store, she lost it.

She kept repeating the same line, “But, it says you have it in stock here”, regarding the T-shirt that couldn’t be found as she shoved the latest iPhone in front of my face. It was as if she expected me to weave the shirt myself.

Online shopping is killing an industry that can be really fun to be part of. A friend of mine works at Dymocks, and loves recommending authors to people. She told me about her discovery of Italian author Natalia Ginzburg, and how she recommended the author’s seminal work Family Lexicons to a young woman who was obsessed with the work of Sally Rooney. The woman returned a little over two weeks later, and bought everything by Ginzburg that Dymocks had in store.

We’re in danger of losing those magical experiences when you find that perfect item in a shop. When my family was in town, my little brother went to four different toy stores on the hunt for a specific Wolverine action figure. A sales assistant at pop culture store Minotaur worked his butt off to find one for him as Wolverine was his own favourite superhero, and he loves “getting kids into Wolvie”. When he did eventually find it, my brother was over the moon.

I get that not all sales assistants always deliver the highest standard of service, but if customers were more polite and respectful, I think the sales assistants would follow suit. It’s not unusual for sales people to find the job boring at times, and they love having something to distract them. Conversation is fantastic, especially when it stems from an honest and engaged place.

Maybe building on this social aspect is the way that physical, real life stores can reconnect with customers and rebuild their businesses. While AI has made astounding leaps forward in the past couple of years, I don’t think a website or robot is capable of having a 30-minute conversation about an old Italian sex comedy in the same way as Frank from Smith Street.

Roby D’Ottavi is a writer and director based in Melbourne.

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