How to buy paint online
You bought a hole and created, then deleted, another hole, and now you must paint over the deleted hole in order to make it look like the rest of its wall. This has happened many times before in human history. You’ve got this.
You walk over to the tool room, where the sellers of your home left some paint cans 9 years ago. You see one with a smear of what is definitely the correct color on it. You prepare the space: put up tape, put down cloth, get a roller ready. And then the grand reveal: you open the can to find that there is a weird-looking grate inside, resting on top of some thick red liquid that clearly looks like cursed enemy blood. The color it should be is called “Repose Gray.” Cursed enemy blood is not Repose Gray. Your walls are not covered in blood of any kind as of present, but who knows, man, life is long.
You’re a successful knowledge worker with a thriving personal life and an upcoming major trip, so you, a busy person, decide to buy some paint online. The project can wait a couple of weeks! You don’t have the time to run out to a hardware store and make this all happen. You’re willing to pay a premium for this service. You’ve done it before and you will do it again.
Friend, have I an opportunity for you. On the internet, you can buy paint online, in the exact color & texture you’re looking for. The process is very simple. Many smart people have put all of their effort into making the process of buying paint online as easy as possible. Money exchanges hands, then paint, and then everybody is happy. Let’s begin, shall we?
First, you note down the color of paint, and you search the web for it. You easily find that the paint is manufactured by a major national corporation, and the color in question has not been discontinued. Relieved, you go to their site. It looks like many stores you’ve been to in the past. You select a quart of paint in the color you want and go to the next step, where you select the specific kind of base.
Some paint bases have primer in them, and others do not. Some are satin, some matte, some glossy. Fortunately, since you did your homework during the moments when you had a blood tank in your home, you know exactly what to select. Next step!
You are then presented with an upsell. Oh, you sneaky foxes, you know that this is a project. Rollers! Why not. Your current roller is sad & firm, and replacement rollers are $8. You have $8! Why not. Add a stir stick while you’re at it. Tell your story!
Now you must create a new account. Why not. Pick a password. Enter your mailing address. No, you aren’t a corporation. Submit! Bam! Paint!
Now the next step after that is to select a store to pick up your paint at. You, as mentioned, are a busy millennial who cannot be bothered with such antediluvian operations, so you select delivery, except wait there is no delivery option, so now you’ve hit a bit of a roadblock.
Open a new tab, search the web for home delivery of this brand of paint, and find a Reddit post that says you can only have the paint delivered if you are a corporation. You own a small business, and sometimes small businesses get a bit of a loophole on picayune matters like these. So you go back and migrate your brand-new account to become a corporation, and then you enter some corporate information, then try to check out. In the meantime, your cart has completely disappeared. You cannot add anything to your cart because there is no longer a cart. You try to figure out what happened, and realize that the paint company has to give you a special ID number to denote you as a home repair company, such that you are allowed to receive paint at your home like a cool oligarch.
At this point, you give up on the paint company. You recognize this as a sacred part of your own journey, and since you never make the same mistake twice, you mentally file away that you will never patronize this company again.
More searching, and ten minutes later you realize that a major home repair chain carries the brand of paint in question, and they do home delivery. You have never supported this chain before, because a competitor exists four blocks away from your home and they don’t. This does not deter you. You add the same color to your cart, only now the bases are different. You pick something similar enough, and you buy a gallon because now you probably need to paint the whole wall with it. Stir stick. Roller brush. Check out.
You are now asked to pick a store for some reason. Apparently one chooses a local store from which the paint will ship? Unclear. You’re new to this planet. Either way, you’re handed a list of stores, and you pick the one closest to you. This causes your cart to silently clear, because apparently the color in question is not in stock at the store you have selected. You only realize this after backtracking to the paint color’s page and seeing a list of stores that carry the color, on which yours is not listed. Of course, you only discover this through process of elimination, not through any sort of error labeling or anything. As I mentioned, buying paint is easy & simple. You’re on minute 40 of this. You work in tech for a living.
Anyway, you choose a different store, one that is further away from you, and the paint adds to cart, and so does the roller, and so do stir sticks, and then you go to check out. You are asked, again, by another large national corporation, to create an account. You do so, and this time both your store selection and cart contents are helpfully & silently cleared for you. You add everything to cart again and check out. Oh hey, Apple Pay! Like I said, buying paint online is easy & simple.
A day later, your can of paint ships by FedEx from a warehouse in North Carolina.