The United States of Hoarders!

A few days after my new neighbors moved in a couple of years ago, I was sweeping my garage with the door open, of course.  My neighbors saw me, and in that very American way jokingly said the vast empty space, maybe they could store some of their stuff in my garage.

Ha ha, we laughed.

Whether we live in apartments or mansions, apparently we Americans collect a whole lot of worthless crap.  A few years ago, I wrote about in Planetizen.  I wrote there:

Of course, as many of us have observed, but for which data don't exist, most homeowners seem to fill their garages with refrigerators, freezers, bicycles, treadmills, etc., and then park their cars on the driveways or by the curb. When things have to be put away, households find that they have more stuff for which they need additional space, which is where the self-storage business comes in.

No, don't worry, this post is not about the self-storage industry.

It is about how this American "virtue" of accumulating crap has been made easy by Amazon and the malls-on-wheels revolution. 

Now, to become a hoarder is as easy as simply barking your shopping list at one of those "smart" boxes!

Thanks to a perfect storm of factors, Americans are amassing a lot of stuff. Before the advent of the internet, we had to set aside time to go browse the aisles of a physical store, which was only open a certain number of hours a day. Now, we can shop from anywhere, anytime—while we’re at work, or exercising, or even sleeping.

Ah yes, those old days when the malls were open only for a certain number of hours, and one had to physically get to the stores in order to buy the crap that we did not need.  Now, the stores are available to us 24x7, and we can shop for underwear while in our underwear!

All told, “we are all accumulating mountains of things,” said Mark A. Cohen, the director of retail studies at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Business. He sometimes asks his students to count the number of things they have on them in class, and once they start counting up gadgets and cords and accessories, they end up near 50. “Americans have become a society of hoarders,” Cohen said.

I should start worrying that my non-hoarding behavior will be viewed as being un-American and that the FBI will soon come knocking!

Back in June, as students were vacating their apartments and dorm rooms, we noticed piles of stuff lying near the waste bins.  A mattress had also been discarded, and it looked to be in much better condition than the one on which I plomp down every night.  The ease of buying things also means the ease of dumping things.

 In 2015, the most recent year for which data is available, Americans put 16 million tons of textiles in the municipal waste stream, a 68 percent increase from 2000. We tossed 34.5 million tons of plastics, a 35 percent increase from 2000, according to data from the Environmental Protection Agency. Over that same time period, the population grew just 14 percent.

Keep that in mind the next time some crazy person says that population growth is the greatest problem ever!

Maybe I should think about renting out my garage space!

Malls on wheels

Up until very recently, when we wanted to buy anything, we wore something relatively decent and walked or drove or took a bus to the shopping area.  The mall.  Which, of course, confused me when I was new to the country because the place to buy stuff is a mall, and an important landmark in the country's capital is also the Mall.  I suppose this is America's unique way of saying that business is the politics of the country ;)

Now, the shopping malls are quickly dying. So much so that in a truly American manner, there is a website that is all about dead malls.  You can even purchase dead-mall merchandise; only in America!

Malls are dying because it has apparently become too much of a pain to go somewhere and shop.  Instead, you can be in your underwear at home and placing orders on websites.  Soon, your purchases arrive at your doorstep.  You can even open the door when you are still in your underwear, and pick up the packages.

One can easily imagine the role of goods transportation.  Trucks have now become mobile malls, and truck drivers have replaced the ones at the delivery windows of the old.  "A side effect of the e-commerce boom is a shortage of truck drivers and an overwhelmed shipping industry."

So, what would you do?  Either hire more drivers, or make the drivers haul bigger trucks, right?  Yep! "carriers including Amazon and FedEx have been — unsuccessfully so far — lobbying Congress to allow nationwide use of longer trailers, hooked one behind the other."

Hiring more drivers is not easy:

The number of truck drivers has held steady at between 3 million and 3.5 million over the past two decades, according to the American Trucking Association (ATA). Freight volumes are expected to surge by about 37 percent over the next decade. The trade group estimates the industry now has a record shortage of 50,700 drivers, and expects that number to skyrocket to 174,000 by 2026 if "nothing happens."  

And even when the big trucks transport goods from one city to another, there is the challenge of the last mile--to get to the customer in his underwear waiting for the package.  Amazon tempts the gullible through its Flex program, which sucks the life out of those who sign up to be the last mile drivers.

Meanwhile, instead of walking around in malls, and interacting with fellow-humans, people are sitting at home in their underwear, staring into their blue screens of death and feeling lonely and depressed.

The real winner in all these?  Jeff Bezos, who certainly knew how to make suckers out of us all!

On the coming end of small talk :(

There was only one person working the sales register at the store, and she was experiencing technical problems.  The two young women ahead of me in the line were getting antsy--not anything unusual in a contemporary world of everything right now, right away. One of them took out her smartphone and checked something; maybe some earth-shattering post on Snapchat!

"I'll be with you women soon.  Thanks for waiting" the sales clerk at the register said.

I suppose I did not matter.  Well, she joined a long line of people who ignore me ;)

Finally, it was my turn.

"I'm sorry for the wait" she said.  She did not sound sorry at all.  She couldn't care, really.

"Hey, you can make up for it by giving me 25 percent off" I joked.

"A charm discount, eh."

"Oh no. In my case it will be a charm tax then. One look at me and people want to charge more" I replied.

As I walked to the car, I wondered whether the days of talking with a sales checkout clerk are numbered.  With all the online shopping, and self checkout at stores, this human interaction will become a part of history.

I was reminded of the discussions in a class a few days ago.  Most of the students were clear in their preference for less human interaction in commercial transactions.  "I don't like to make eye contact" said one.  And when I said I love small-talk, one shook her head expressing vehement negation.  It was clear that an old-fashioned humanist like me will become even more of a misfit!  A hermit I might be, but I love humanity.

It was a day to run errands.  I headed to another store. The winds made the raindrops come from the sides and not from above.  I parked and hurried into the store.  A crew of young employees was busily restocking the shelves.

A few minutes in the store and I was done.  No lines at the checkout.

"Your day going well?" asked the young woman.

"Yes, indeed."  And then added, "you are not missing anything by staying inside. The weather outside is crappy."

"I'm happy that this is is not my day off" she replied.

"That'll be a bummer, right?  To work when the days are gorgeous, and then when you get off work it is all horrible weather?"

She smiled.

Apparently the days of such small-talk are numbered.  Thankfully, so is my existence!