Why we are obsessed with checking our package

‘Order has been delivered’, I read in my email. Panic sets in. My package has not been delivered at all! I see NOTHING! They are lying! Help, where in the world are my poor dear new shoes?

The stress of today often has to do with what comes with online ordering. With three clicks on a webpage, you can buy those new boots, new bag, or cheerful earrings, but yes, then it still has to arrive safely. And that’s where the problem lies, especially in that hysterical December month, in which half of the Netherlands decides that ‘online ordering is quite convenient’. Packages disappear. Packages get lost. Packages do NOT arrive on time.

It creates a new addiction: checking your package via an app or email or website. Or rather, checking PostNL or DHL or something to see where your stuff is. Forty times an hour. And just keep praying that a nice neighbor has unexpectedly accepted your package and that you can pick it up there later. That she is home then. Because you will always see: you are not home yourself and then your package is waiting for you somewhere in your street. And then those neighbors are not home. For days. And your package just lying there in the hallway of a stranger. And you just longing for that new coat. It’s enough to cry.

Also annoying: a pick-up point where you can collect your package. They close every day at 6 PM. In other words: that’s no use if you just work every day. You suddenly have to take time off to be able to wear those new clothes. And perhaps the most difficult part of those online orders: that your husband is home at the moment when a gigantic huge immense box from Zara or H&M is delivered and you are forced to explain ‘that you really, yes really, need all those new jeans and eight sweaters and six dresses’. It always seems to be more in such a big box, honestly.

Oh no, sometimes that old-fashioned real shopping isn’t so bad after all. You have everything right at home, you don’t have to stalk your neighbor and DHL, and you can immediately hide it in your wardrobe. It saves a lot, you know.