Women and Shopping: The Bad, and the Badder

I’m a frugal guy. I don’t buy stuff I don’t need, and I find I really don’t need as much as you’d think. The Ex-GF is also somewhat frugal, though not as much as I am. However, her frugality is expressed differently, and her shopping style is also very different.

I’ve learned to avoid shopping with the Ex-GF… at all costs. And I mean at all costs. See, I understand the point of shopping – its to get in and out of the store as fast as possible with the item you came for, and to pay as little as possible.

The Ex-GF understands the bit about keeping payment down, but the importance of of getting in and out as fast as possible seems to elude her. She can spend hours in a store. And one more thing, which really makes no sense to me at all – she will often buy things she isn’t sure she wants. She brings them home, and somehow, after these items sit in the apartment for a while (where a while is anywhere from fifteen minutes to a month), she concludes one or another or all the items she picked up need to be returned to the store. (For the past two weeks, the item sitting in the apartment was a new sink for the bathroom, and yesterday it made its way back to the store.) Which means wasting even more time… dragging the item back and then waiting in line to return it. What the heck is with returns?