Shipping and Handling . . . Priceless

I was reminded at lunch today why I hate brick-and-mortar shopping. In large part, I suppose it is a male-tendencies vs. female-tendencies thing, but when I shop, I want to be able to go to the item, pick it up, and buy it. Cybershopping and search functions obviously make this a lot easier, but they come with the added burden of transaction costs and delivery fees.

So, today I want to the Barnes-and-Noble to look for a collection of shape-note/sacred harp hymns (as on the Cold Mountain soundtrack) on CD. It seems I had plotted myself an impossible task. First, what's the right category to look in? Isn't pop, it isn't classical, and it isn't country. It might be folk (no luck in the folk bin) and it's certainly Christian (but all the Christian selections were contemporary).

So, I tried the magic electronic search machine. But again, browsing was no help, and searches could only be run for song, artist, or album, not for style. So, frustrated, and with the sales person mired in a telephone call, I left. But, running search on the Bn website immediately yielded several results. (I have a BN gift card to use, or I would have taken my business cyberelsewhere).

Does my story portend the death of bookstores and recordstores? Probably not. Good bookstores are great places to hang out and to find something you didn't know you were missing. But chain stores may be smelling the doom and shifting their collective weight towards online marketing and sales.