Today’s post is in the old-man-yells-at-cloud genre. It’s a sequel of sorts to a much older post of mine, in which I complained about the difficulty of buying shoes .
I want a timer for Pomodoro type tasks. My phone has a timer, of course, and my watch, and my computer can do it. But I don’t want those.
I want a physical, analog timer that can sit on my desk in front of me. I have another requirement, and this is where all the trouble has been. I want to buy it in person, at a physical store.
I went to the local $megastore and to the kitchen section—nothing. I didn’t even see a digital timer. I went to a kitchen supply store, and they did not have one either.
I am not trying to buy anything obscure or specific. Just a kitchen timer. This is somehow difficult. I still don’t have one.
Obviously, I could just go on Amazon and have a plethora of choices. But I wanted to avoid that at the start, and at this point it’s a matter of principle.
My complaint is not really that I can’t find this timer. It is about the black hole of commerce that Amazon has become, pulling everything in, closing off even the option to get things elsewhere.
