Genetically ingrained shopping habits.

Shopping with Dad and Vera was funny. Vera shops like me while Dad shops in a more male fashion. At times I could tell he was getting frustrated with us. After another futile attempt at getting both Vera and I out the door at the same time, I said, “Kind of like herding cats, eh Dad?” He scowled and nodded. He just doesn’t understand we shop differently.
I truly believe women shop to fulfill a very basic evolutionary need. It harbours back to the hunter gather society. For over 200 000 years we have been gathering to sustain our families. It was not as easy as just grabbing everything in sight. With limited space in our baskets we learned through, touch, colour, and smell which fruit would sustain our families best; that the perfect shade of a ripe apple, was different from a raspberry, was different from a strawberry, etc. That their textures were different and so were there smells. We learned to be selective and that yes just the right shade matters. Gathering takes time. Hours of careful selection followed by an equal amount of time for preparation.
Men on the other hand would stand around in small nervous groups, pick out the weakest looking animal in the herd, race in, race out then pound each other on the back in a fit of machoism.
So it is little wonder that after 200 000 years of genetic ingraining that a woman can take two weeks to find a pair of shoes that she will wear once, and that a man will buy a shirt in three minutes that he will have for twenty years. Evolution.