Shopping With The Wife

Thulaganyo Jankey | Wednesday December 3, 2025 09:11

Otherwise, if you don’t have height, not many women would convert you into a husband quickly. If you don’t have patience, who do you expect to accompany your wife when she goes shopping? I think shopping is a woman’s attempt to get back at the husband who, naturally, regularly breaks curfew and forgets to use the toilet brush. So the descendants of Eve have found a nice way to deal with us. So when you leave the house, you have to have practiced nodding politely, saying yeah (which usually means ‘Wait, are you serious?’), and the smile of a politician. This is a man’s toolkit when they goes shopping with his wife. You walk into the store thinking, ‘We’ll be in and out in 15 minutes.’ Any man who says this clearly.

You just cannot. She’ll spend 20 minutes comparing two brands of paper towels, while you’re silently praying for China to finally detonate its hydrogen bomb to end the ordeal. By the time you (read she is) are done, you’ve aged five years, but she’s glowing like she just won The Hunger Games. And you? You’re carrying 17 bags of ‘essentials’ that somehow all weigh more than your dignity. We once passed by the BBS ‘market’. Most stalls were manned by women who seemed to have been drinking Reboost non-stop since the year 2000, and are very good and ensnaring gullible customers. We walked through long, narrow, crowded aisles between the stalls, and at every stall we passed, a salesperson tried to lure us in via such subtle sales techniques as grabbing your arm or shouting ‘Special, special’. If you respond by displaying any interest at all - and by 'displaying any interest,’ I mean ‘not walking quickly away’ - the salesperson will thrust a merchandise item into your hands and claim that it is the real thing, like the Air Jordan sneakers would have been signed by Michael Jordan himself. They would claim it was not some cheap knockoff Air Jordan, such as the other vendors will try to sell you. They will then tell you they are giving you a very special price. Even though the salesperson has known you at this point for less than 15 seconds, she has taken an instant liking to you, so she has decided to give you a price so ridiculously low, so totally crazy, that she will lose money on the deal and be forced to leave the vendor business and survive by working Ipelegeng cycles. That is how much she likes you. Women fall for it every time. Women love haggling.

They never agree to a price the first time. My wife must be the HOD at Haggling College. She has concocted punchy discount-inducing phrases as part of her haggling ammunition, some of which are • 'I saw this cheaper at the other stall.' - Even if the ‘other stall’ was selling bananas, it works. • 'If I buy two, you give me one free, right?' - Suddenly, shopping turns into a buy-one-get-one prophecy. • 'll come back later.' - Spoiler: She won’t. It’s just a mind trick to make the seller panic. • 'I'm a loyal customer!’ - She’s been there once, five years ago. • 'This is the last cash I have.' She says while holding a purse that looks like it could fund a small nation. • 'I have a very specific budget for these.' - As if before we left home, we sat down with our financial records and did a detailed spreadsheet analysis of our needs vs. resources, When a woman is in this mode, you cannot help but admire her. This is the work of a master in action. Even the body language is set to push for a bargain. When she first sees the price, she squints at the price tag like it’s written in ancient hieroglyphics. Her message is basically ‘This price cannot be real.’ As things heat up, she will pretend to leave, but walk so slowly that the seller has time to chase her. On the other hand, if you think shopping with a woman is tough and testing, try being sent by your wife alone to do grocery shopping. You get a list which basically looks like a riddle with 13 items that have to be bought from 17 shops! When you get to the shop, you realize that on your list, you have to buy bread. Now there are all types of bread: brown, white, gluten-free, Ouma, Woolworths bread, and sourdough.

Basically, 35 types of bread staring at you from the shelf! When you call headquarters, the wife will tell you ‘the one I always buy'. Men usually don’t know what that means. When you finally get home, you will have messed up something, and your wife will give you a look like you have betrayed the family or sold the kids to human traffickers. Where’s the milk?’ You will proudly hold up almond milk. She wanted cow’s milk! This is the problem when you send someone lacking physical coordination to operate chopsticks without injuring themselves on an errand. Such as a man!

(For comments, feedback, and insults, email inkspills1969@gmail.com) Thulaganyo Jankey is a training consultant who runs his own training consultancy that provides training in BQA-accredited courses. His other services include registering consultancies with BQA and developing training courses. Contact him on 74447920 or email admin@ultimaxtraining.co.bw