The bookseller looked over his screen.
He had just entered the title of an illustrated book published a few months ago: “If you want to give it away for Easter, I can order it.” The next possible delivery date: April 2022. The lady at the door in the luxury store, in turn, where I only have a lipstick wanted to buy, said: "45 minutes wait, Madame." In the china shop only one of the two glasses was available.
The other one also at Easter.
Heart pounding on the way to the electronics market
Jennifer Wiebking
Editor in the "Life" section of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.
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Like many people these days, I went shopping - Christmas presents. More than I did in town, however, I waited, searched and asked there. We'll probably tell each other such anecdotes this year after the presents under the tree - sold out iPhones, palpitations on the way to Saturn. Also because of the pandemic. Buying gifts this year is different. Supply chain chaos, staff cuts and minimum clearances in the shops, at Christmas in the second Corona year, the expectations of consumption
on demand
meet goods that can at best be pre-ordered or are difficult to get. Is that now an impression of a shortage economy?
Because actually everything is there, and if it is not available in the city, it is certainly on the Internet.
Online shopping taught us that there is nothing that cannot be.
Unless it's a pandemic, and the Google search “currently not available” also applies to the water bottle with a silicone cover for sports.
In October it was said: The best thing to do is to buy gifts now
All of this was foreseeable, of course, the queues in front of the doors, the empty faces of the salespeople. They also say that nowadays they often no longer receive the goods from the suppliers they ordered, but rather are given something. Already at the beginning of October there were these reports: It is best to buy Christmas presents now because of delivery problems with toys, electronic items and so on. But who wants to deal with Christmas presents in October?
Now, it seems, Christmas presents are a little less important than usual, even in December. According to the Society for Consumer Research, Germans plan to spend an average of 325 euros on them.
Last year it was 330 euros.
The German trade association also reported at the beginning of December: Bad mood among consumers because of Corona.
In the pandemic, goods are scarce, and even what we can have doesn't seem to make us quite as happy anymore.