The way goods and services reached consumers changed a lot during the last two plus years thanks in part to necessity brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as changes in consumer buying patterns.

My journey in this new found territory of near instant delivery gratification has evolved from the previous accepted norm of waiting four to six weeks for something to arrive, to waiting two days, to expecting something to arrive within hours of it being ordered. Along this journey, I recently, discovered the convenience of direct from store delivery. Now, I find myself struggling with whether this is a good or bad discovery.

In the before times, if I needed something from Walmart I would hop in my car, drive three miles down the road, wander the aisles until I found what I needed, pay for said items, and drive home.

That all changed during COVID-19. At the height of the pandemic, I joined the throngs of people who enjoyed the convenience of curbside pickup. In this scenario, I still got in my car and drove the three miles to the store. But, instead of going inside, wandering the aisles, and waiting to pay, curbside allowed me the ability to order and pay for my items the night before. After driving to the store at the appointed hour,  I waited in my car as my items were brought to me and loaded in the car. Curbside was a game-changer.

Then, around year four of COVID, okay maybe it was year two, I decided that putting on pants and driving to the store, waiting to have groceries placed in my car, driving home and bringing the items inside was really too much work. That is when I discovered the mythical beast known as direct from store delivery.

I was no stranger to delivery. Amazon and other retailers have forged a well-worn path to my door. I ordered all of my staples throughout the heart of the pandemic using the free delivery offered by my Amazon Prime account as well as Walmart.

During one such order from Walmart, I was shocked to discover that my order arrived, not in a box, but in a shopping bag.

This single shopping bag alerted me to the fact that I could have things delivered directly from the store down the road without actually having to find pants, find my car, and make the three-mile drive to the store and back.

In the pre-COVID years, affectionately known as the before times, I would have bristled at waiting around to have someone deliver something directly to my door two hours after I ordered it. “Wait two hours, for something I can get within 30 minutes? That is crazy talk,” I would likely have said.

As restrictions enacted during COVID-19 are lifted, many people try to pretend the past two plus years were merely a fever dream, or as Ebeneezer Scrooge would say, “an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of underdone potato. There’s more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!”

But despite protesting in Dickensonian verse, COVID-19 was not a fever dream, or crumb of tasty smoked Gouda. While some things will no doubt return to the way they were before, COVID-19 forever altered the landscape of the world. Trying to pretend like the past two plus years did not happen does a huge disservice to all of the people who lost their lives to the disease, and to the efforts of those who would around the clock to ensure that we had tools to minimize the amount of people who die in the future.

As noted before, COVID-19 provided society with a chance to unite and emerge as a stronger world through a Coronassance where lessens learned from battling a common foe could have made us a stronger society. The post COVID-19 world could have ushered in new freedoms and flexibilities for workers who showed that one does not need to sit in a cubicle breathing recycled air and drinking stale coffee to be productive. As part of the Coronassance, people would learn to be more patient and kind to each other after baring witness to the fragility of all they held near and dear.

Instead, COVID-19 served to further divide society while hastening the rise of tribalism and finger pointing. Additionally, many companies where employees successfully worked remotely are now telling their employees to come back to the office or find a new job. Worse still, instead of people being kinder to each other, if anything fuses are shorter and people are more likely to engage in road rage and other violent acts against complete strangers.

Years from now, when future societies read about this time in the history books, assuming governors in certain states still allow history books to be read in schools, I wonder what they will think of the wasted opportunity we had to make a better society for those who come after us.

In some ways, I am guilty of giving into the laziness COVID-19 provided as a recent order from Walmart showed. I ordered 10 items on a Wednesday night and scheduled them to arrive direct from the store three miles down the road the next morning.

Could I have driven the three miles to get the items? Totally. But, since I did not feel like putting on my shorts and battling three miles of traffic and a slight detour due to construction, I figured I could wait a few hours to get my permanent markers, allergy medicine, windshield washer fluid, and cat litter.

I am extremely grateful to live in a society where I can sit on my butt and have things brought to me. However, I will admit that I often fear we are slowly turning into the society portrayed in the Pixar movie WALL-E where everything is done for us and we just doom scroll social media all day blind to the real issues around us. But that is a column for another day. Today’s column is about the double-edged sword of direct from store delivery.

When the morning after arrived, I was excited to get a text notification telling me that my order had arrived from its fraught journey three-miles down the road. My happiness soon turned to confusion and disbelief when I opened the door to discover that only my Sharpie marker had been delivered. The rest of the order arrived 30 minutes later.

I can only hope that the first driver who delivered a single Sharpie marker to my door had other stops to make after me. Otherwise, it seems a bit of a waste to have someone drive from the store to merely deliver a single marker, while another driver was just a few minutes behind with the rest of the order.

At the end of the day, I got all of my items. So, I guess I should not worry about how many drivers it took to deliver 10 items to my door. Although, I will definitely question whether I should just take the step of putting on my going outside pants and making the three-mile trek myself next time. That can be my small contribution to the Coronassance.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to head back to the store for something I forgot to order.

Copyright 2022 R. Anderson