I know, I know. My hours are odd, but I’m not the only one awake at this time. So home alone one weekend—hands slapping sides of face, mouth gaping open—I decided to go grocery shopping at six, when the store opens. It was a frosty morning and I hadn’t yet shaken the chill from getting out from the covers and throwing on clothes before the thermostat fully awoke. I checked the store website. Hours: six to eleven. Off I drove. Not trusting any kind of authority, really, I was glad to see several cars in the parking lot. I gathered my reusable bags and approached. The sliding doors weren’t welcoming that morning. I tried the other side since sometimes they lock the south doors until later. Same results. Then I saw the hours: seven to eleven. Trust no one.
I had an hour to wait and the car was still cold. I drove back home, pondering the unreliability of the web. At least with a phone book you could take a big, thick tome in and point to the ad—“it says six a.m.!” Websites are, of course, not always updated. Maybe the six a.m. opening was a pandemic thing. (I’m still waiting for the web to tell me the pandemic is over.) Somebody, however, didn’t bother to update the website. And I was shivering. Steam coming out of my ears would’ve been welcome to warm my fingers at this point. Now, I know that neglected things fall apart. Abandoned houses can have trees growing through them, for goodness sake. But if you’re a colossal food chain can you not pay to have your website updated?
Broken links lie scattered like glass shards across the internet. The other day I tried to check out an independent small publisher only to land on the entry page to a porno site. The publisher had gone under and the domain name sold. Look, all I want to do is get groceries and get back home so that I can get my weekend activities underway. I may be on my own for the day but that doesn’t mean I’m planning to waste my time. Instead I have to go back home, back the car into its slot, unlock the back door (which is friendly), put my hands on the radiator for a few minutes, and then turn around, go out, and try again. I suppose I could use the time to surf the web, but honestly, I don’t really trust what I might find there.
