Shopping in America

Hey, who wants a plaid shirt?

I recently had to spend $125 at L. L. Bean, the store that makes my town of Freeport, Maine possible. This circumstance was the result of my returning a winter coat I purchased there two years ago and which, over time, proved to be "a piece of crap."  Finally tired of the down stuffing come out of the sleeves and the zipper never working, especially in zero degrees when you need it the most, I opted to take advantage of Bean's "lifetime guarantee" that allows you to return anything for any reason, forever. But you don't get your money back, you get store credit, and only for the item's last sale price.

So I spent about an hour wandering the aisles, looking for something to buy. (It certainly wasn't going to be another down coat.) The problem was that everything offered for sale in the whole store was made in either China, Bangladesh or the Philippines, most likely by people earning ten cents an hour, and it showed: Zippers stuck. Seams were crooked. Sizes were wrong. And mostly, things were ugly.

I finally found enough other pieces of crap to use up the money. But I left wondering why, if America is supposedly the greatest country in the world, our stores are overflowing with inferior merchandise made in other countries.