online shopping is required in this modern clown world

Certain events happen in my life that prove to me yes, this modern era is just plain dumb sometimes.

Spiral bound memo pads in 3x5 size, with the spiral being a metal coil. A simple thing. It's been around a very long time. The spiral bound notebook itself has been around since the 1930s. I don't know how long the 3x5 size of this has been around, but it has to be at least 70 years.

My preferred style of this memo pad is with the spiral on top of the page. It's easier to tear off pages and use either side of a page without the spiral getting in the way.

What do they look like?

Now you know.

There are several styles of this memo pad available. Top coil, side coil, metal coil, plastic coil, waterproof versions, every cover color you can think of, whatever.

I have a point to saying this. These are common.

But not at Staples!

Earlier this week I went to two Staples stores to buy memo pads like the ones shown above. NONE AVAILABLE. I go to the first store, nothing. I go to another one 10 miles away, NOTHING AGAIN.

Bear in mind Staples is an office supply store. I can understand if Walmart or Target runs out of these things. But Staples?! That store is supposed to have piles of memo pads in stock at any given time. I could even understand one store running out of them. But two in a row on the same day? Yeah, that happened.

After striking out twice, I said screw it and just ordered my pads from Amazon, which is what you see above.

Why didn't I just go to Walmart, Target, Walgreen's, CVS or even Dollar General to get my pads? The pads they sell either don't have the top metal coil and/or the paper used sucks and/or it's the chintzy 60-sheet crap (or worse yet, 50-sheet). I WANT GOOD PAPER AND MY 75 SHEETS.

Confused by what I mean by "good paper"? I'll explain by describing bad paper. Really bad memo pads have paper so thin and terrible that a regular ballpoint ink pen will bleed right through it. You can't even use the other side of the paper. One side only. On top of that, the ink has a hard time getting into the paper, so you press harder, literally dent the paper you're writing on and the next page. Then when you go to write on the next page, the point of your pen encounters little divots and valleys, and day ruined. Yes, the whole day. You should have bought the better pads...

...which I did. Staples USED to have these pads, but evidently those are up and gone like a fart in the wind. I had to buy mine online.

Let me spell out how ridiculous this is. I had to use a computer.. to connect to the largest computer network in the world.. to electronically make a purchase.. just to get decent paper in a small 3x5 size to WRITE SOMETHING DOWN ON.

Total clown world.

Published 2024 Jul 11