The Five-Minute Errand That Ate Your Entire Saturday Alive

It is 10:15 on a Saturday morning. You are feeling good. You slept in a little, you have coffee, and you have identified exactly one task standing between you and a genuinely relaxing weekend: a simple errand. One errand. Maybe two if you're efficient.

By 2:47 p.m., you will be sitting in your car in the driveway, staring through the windshield at nothing, unable to fully account for the last four and a half hours of your life.

This is how that happens.

10:15 a.m. — The Plan

The errand is so small it barely qualifies as an errand. You need to return a package to UPS. That's it. The box is already taped. The label is already printed and stuck on. You just have to hand it to a person behind a counter. Five minutes, maybe seven if there's a line.

While you're out, you figure you might as well stop at Home Depot for the one specific screw you need — the one that's been sitting on your kitchen counter for three weeks because you kept forgetting to replace it. That's also five minutes. You know exactly what you need.

You tell someone in your household you'll be back by 11.

This is the last accurate statement you will make today.

10:34 a.m. — The UPS Store Is Not Where You Thought It Was

You've been to this UPS store before. You're almost certain it's in the strip mall on Riverside, between the nail salon and the place that sells mattresses. You drive to the strip mall on Riverside. There is a smoothie place where the UPS store used to be. The smoothie place looks like it has been there for years.

You Google the UPS store. There are three locations within five miles. You pick the closest one, which turns out to be inside a Staples, which is fine, but the Staples parking lot is inexplicably packed for a Saturday morning in a way that suggests something is happening that you are not aware of.

You park in the back. You walk in. You return the package. This takes eleven minutes, mostly because the person in front of you is shipping seventeen separate items and has questions about each one.

You feel, briefly, victorious.

11:02 a.m. — Home Depot: Act One

You know exactly what you need. A 1/4-inch, 20-thread, half-inch machine screw. You've looked it up. You even have a photo on your phone.

Home Depot does not have a layout that rewards people who know what they need. Home Depot has a layout that rewards people who have nowhere to be and enjoy walking. You enter through the garden section by accident. You find the fasteners aisle after six minutes and two wrong turns through lumber.

The fastener aisle is approximately the length of a football field. There are bins. So many bins. The bins are labeled in a system that makes sense to someone, presumably, but not to you. You find something that looks right. You find three things that look right. None of them are quite right. You take photos of all of them.

A Home Depot employee walks past. You make eye contact. They are gone before you can form a sentence.

You spend nineteen minutes in the fastener aisle before selecting the thing that is probably right. You will discover at home that it is not right. You will not go back.

11:47 a.m. — The Detour You Did Not Plan

On the way out of the Home Depot parking lot, you pass a TJ Maxx. You were not going to TJ Maxx. You have no reason to go to TJ Maxx. You go to TJ Maxx.

This is not a moral failing. This is physics. TJ Maxx exerts a gravitational pull on people who are already out running errands and feel they deserve a small reward for their productivity. You spend thirty-five minutes inside. You buy a cutting board you don't need and a candle that smells like "autumn woods," which you're not sure is a real smell but seemed compelling in the store.

You do not buy the thing you would have bought if you'd remembered you needed it. You will remember this on the drive home.

12:41 p.m. — The Lunch Situation

You're hungry now. You didn't plan to be out for lunch. You stop somewhere fast. The drive-through line is not fast. You wait fourteen minutes for food you eat in the car, which you feel vaguely bad about but also is fine, it's fine.

1:15 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. — The Sequence of Small Disasters

You remember you also need to drop something off at the dry cleaner. The dry cleaner closes at 2. You make it at 1:58. The dry cleaner is cash only. You have no cash. There is an ATM two blocks away. The ATM charges a $4.50 fee. You pay the fee because you are already here and you are not coming back.

Somewhere in there, you also stop for gas because the light has been on since Thursday and this seems like the responsible moment. The gas station's card reader is broken on the pump you've pulled up to. You move the car. This takes longer than it should.

2:47 p.m. — The Driveway

You pull into your driveway. You turn off the car. You do not get out immediately.

You ran one errand. You were supposed to be back at 11. It is almost 3 p.m. You have a cutting board, a candle, a screw that is probably wrong, and a dry-cleaning receipt. You are tired in a way that a Saturday should not make you tired.

You sit there for a moment, reviewing the day like a film you didn't fully understand.

Then you go inside, and someone asks how the errands went.

"Fine," you say. "Quick."

Oh, just like me.