Shopping is an amazingly complex and subtle activity. One of the (many) things which makes Amazon.com fantastic is that they’ve exhaustively imagined the activity and designed their arrays of services accordingly.

Recognizing the complexity of the activity makes me feel better about having such a hard time. I ask for advice.

With the hangers, I had to draw a picture, because my friend thought I wanted some sort of stand with hooks on it. Anyway, the store she directed me to didn’t have them. I made a half dozen stops at different stores before finding one that sold hangars.

The plastic ones were 2 uah each — 25 cents. That’s when things got weird:

“Are they for you or for a girl?” the sales lady asked.

“Hangars?” I replied, surprised.

“You can buy a bunch and give them as a gift.”

I really doubt Ukrainian girls wouldn’t be offended by such a gift. She was talking nonsense.

Amazingly, as I continued home, hangars in hand, a lady stopped me in the street.

“Where did you get those hangars?” she said.

What a weird day…