Availability of products in Israel is weak, especially outside of Tel Aviv. I spent months shopping for a mechitza for a shul and never found one. I looked in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. I supposed they exist somewhere, but I couldn't find them. Even office supply stores in Tel Aviv didn't have room dividers. Finally, a guy at my shul found one online and had it shipped. I also looked for months for a paper rack in which to hold parsha sheets. Finally, I found something in one of the tiny malls that they have here. Actually, the clerk found something in a catalog and I waited two months for it to arrive. Several times I stopped by the store because it was taking so long that I figured that either I missed the phone call or nobody ever called. The trip to the mall takes 1/2 an hour, so I wasted an hour round trip around four times. When it arrived, only half of it arrived, somehow several of the shelves were missing.
So online shipping is common here: Amazon, Ali Express, Shein. But since the post office is so lame, the packages are sent to various stores around town. You have three days to pick up your package or back it goes to the sender.
You have to know the exact hours, and each store is different. Some allow for package pickup at 11 AM. Some are 11:30 AM to 5 PM. Some are open later at night, some are not. The text message doesn't say.
Today I went to pick up a package on the other side of town. Since I can't afford a car, I had to take the bus. But since the bus technology is lame, my card stopped working and I had to get a new one because the card readers on the bus (except for the one by the driver) can't read my card, and the machines where you load on new money can't read my card and the portable machines that you buy and take home don't work even with a good card.
I had to go to get the package today because it was the last day before being sent for a return and last night I had to work late.
Fortunately, the Rav Kav store was open, but I had to wait in line for 15 minutes. Then I approached the grumpy clerk who grilled me like a border policewomen as to whether I really needed a card. This took some time because her machine could read the card so she didn't believe me. I convinced her mostly probably because she really didn't want to spend any energy arguing with me. Then I loaded on some money. I had left my house at 9:45 AM. By 10:28 and 57 seconds I had a working card as you see from the receipt below.
Then I waited for a bus for around 10 minutes. The ride to my destination included 17 stops! The trip took twenty minutes. The guy at the store spoke only Hebrew so communicating with him was stressful. He didn't even know numbers so when I gave over my ID number (and that was the second time today I had to give it, also at the bus card place it was required) I had to remember the long number which I do in English and translate.
The package was tiny, weighing only .04 KG. It's the length of a pen.
I don't know what's in there, some chachkeh that the stores don't carry. Then I waited 10 minutes for another bus and rode 17 stops. By the time I got home it was 11:35 as you see from the watch.
I spent an hour and forty five minutes racing around town to pick up a .04 KG package. In a normal society, this would have arrived in the mail.
In America, a store would have sold probably a better product at a cheaper price. If there was shipping it would be to my house. If for some reason I had to go the post office I would have taken a 5 minute ride in my car and parked in the lot.
This is my day off. In America I would have spent the morning at a shiur or studying some kind of Torah. Here I schlep around, wasting time.
I also spent 15 minutes telling you the tale, and I do that because I feel obligated to warn you not to move to Israel. In America, I might have written up my notes on whatever I studied. Here it's two hours of bitul Torah.
Anybody who tells you to move here, doesn't care about mitzvos or even Torah study. They only care about Zionism.
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