The Lie of American Convenience

Convenience culture goes against the family values we hear about so often in the US.

There’s this fundamental desire need in the US to have convenience at every turn. It’s in your grocery shopping routines, your pharmacies, big box stores, and food.

Healthcare in the US is offering convenience in the form of Telehealth and urgent cares.

Financial sectors offer convenience with buy now pay later schemes.

Grocery convenience offers the ability to order groceries on an app or food services that ship meal boxes straight to your house. I have personally used all of the above.

Honestly, I got to where I would punish myself by going grocery shopping alone until the last 18 months to 2 years of living in Tucson when Nate started going with me. Before that, I’d spend half my Saturday making a meal plan, writing my list, cleaning the kitchen, and heading to the store. Drive across town, walk the giant parking lot, wander through a 20,000 square foot store, then haul it all back to the car. And it didn’t end there, you still had to drive it home and pray you didn’t need to make any more stops on the way.

I got to a point where I knew the location of all my usual stops and planned my route based on not making u-turns. That way, if I had more than one stop, I wouldn’t need to double back down the road.

I hated fighting traffic, stopping at endless red lights, and circling for parking that didn’t risk my car getting dinged. Car dependence made doing basic necessary tasks into a chore.

Meanwhile, cars just keep getting bigger, with 20+ cup holders and built-in vacuums. No need to drag out the shop vac or head to the carwash, honey. Just overspend on this massive vehicle instead. They come equipped with charging ports for every personal device. And those cup holders? Even bigger to fit the ever-increasing drink sizes.

Tech convenience offers you the ability to have a smart home while those companies are scraping your data to sell off for big bucks. Another diatribe for another day.

Now there’s “teen Uber,” where teenagers can call rides so their already overworked parents don’t have to shuttle them. I’m not sure who is using that service, but my teens will never be in an Uber without me or their dad.

Big box stores like Walmart have become “supercenters,” one-stop shops where people roam aisles of cheap products, then push carts back to their cars only to abandon them in the lot instead of the corral. The irony of leaving your cart anywhere other than the corral feels uniquely American.

Over the decades, middlemen have popped up everywhere, selling convenience by connecting people to goods and services. DoorDash, for example, links drivers with restaurants. But to get visibility in their marketplace, businesses pay steep fees—sometimes 30% of sales. My friend in Tampa owns a food truck and has to raise prices just to keep margins healthy.

Then the apps tack on extra fees to customers unless they want to pay for a membership to not pay the fees, all in the name of convenience. On top of it all you’re supposed to tip your drivers because they’re not being paid by the business to deliver.

Unless it’s an emergency, I’d rather drive to the restaurant than pay more for the same food and risk wasted food on an incorrect order. Having food allergies in our home really complicates things a lot.

That’s not convenient. I can’t count how many wrong deliveries I got from InstantCart. One guy showed up nine hours late with a trunk of spoiled groceries, hookah smoke pouring out of every door. His hookah was permanently rigged on his dash. Funny in hindsight… but not convenient.

Signing up for services like trash pickup online takes 5 minutes but you have to call the company and tell them why you’re cancelling and the whole process takes 45 minutes. Don’t get me started on subscriptions that hold you prisoner.

Before we moved out of our home in Missouri to travel full-time in our RV I called to cancel our Dish Network. The employee on the other line asked me what we were going to do with our kids if they didn’t have TV to watch. I was flabbergasted. Nate and I talk about this interaction at least 2-3x a year.

Recently I was calling to cancel and port my US number from Mint Mobile to Tello and the loyalty department tried to sell me a plan that would cost double per year to keep my number with them. I had to tell him 4-5x no that I just wanted to get the account details and that I was using expensive international minutes at that moment for him to continue to sell to me.

I don’t know about you but being sold to constantly doesn’t feel very convenient.

The truth is, car-centric American society dressed up as “convenience” is a lie. It felt like being funneled around like cattle. Sure, I loved Cane’s drive-thru tea, but there was nothing convenient about it.

Convenience is packaged up beautifully in marketing messaging that makes Americans feel good about selling out their communities for independence. You don’t need to rely on anyone, just pay for this service.

The trade off is more siloed families leaving people lonelier than ever. I didn’t even mention the environmental cost of all of this. I’ll leave that to Nate to explain - he’s the environmental science major after all.

Americans make excuses to justify convenience while losing the social support they actually want. Americans aren’t gaining convenience, they’re losing time, money, and community.

Truth be told, I don’t think Americans know what convenience really is. Convenience to me is walking five minutes to the store to grab burger buns I forgot, making it back before the meat is off the grill. It’s the ability to hop on my bike to go grab tampons and toilet paper on my bicycle never having to wonder where I’ll park. It’s the ability to ride to the park with a picnic without a lot of planning involved.

In the US, I thought convenience meant a drive-thrus, a giant SUV, or an app that planned all my meals for me. But those things came with hidden costs; time, money, frustration, and a constant dependence on the car because I personally opted out of delivery as much as I could.

Here in the Netherlands, convenience looks different. If we forget burger buns, I can walk five minutes and be back before the meat is off the grill. The girls bike or walk to school instead of me sitting in traffic. Small shops are tucked into neighborhoods, and errands feel like part of daily life, not a whole Saturday lost to highways and parking lots.

That’s the difference. In the US, convenience was something I had to buy. Here, it’s something built into the rhythm of our days.