Men hate shopping with their wives at malls, amirite? It’s joke as stale as time, especially among dudes who complain about having to tag along for something that’ll make their partners happy.
That’s why Instagram accounts like miserable_men have racked up more than 300,000 followers, and it’s why men are “helping drive malls into the ground” by shopping online, according to a 2016 Business Insider report.
To combat the boredom and frustration experienced by dudes like these …
… the Global Harbor mall in Shanghai has installed “husband storage pods” that include a comfortable-looking chair, a computer monitor, and a gamepad so the user can play old-school video games like Tekken 3 and Robocop.
Reviews have been mixed. One man told China newspaper The Paper that he doesn’t like accompanying his girlfriend while shopping but that she, in turn, doesn’t like him to play on his phone so the storage pod is a good compromise. Another told the newspaper that, because there is no ventilation or air conditioning inside the unit, he began sweating heavily after five minutes.
One woman made the point that perhaps when she was done shopping, she would have to wait for her partner to finish his video game—which would then contradict the entire point of the pod.
But this is an outrage for men as well. We’re more than just pieces of meat for women to stick inside a glass pod—like we’re a monkey in a zoo that people can gawk at for 15 seconds before moving on to something more interesting.
Maybe, you know, we could actually be helpful to our partners, maybe we want to be of use. Maybe we can find the pashmina that perfectly matches the dress you’re about to buy. Maybe we can help make the determination whether that the work outfit looks professional enough. Maybe we can have a say in the clothes and toys we buy our kids.
These pods are an insult to all of my brothers. They’ve literally put us men in a box—a box without air conditioning, mind you—and they want to dull our minds by making us play brain-rotting video games that aren’t even from this century.
Nah, I’m kidding. It would be cool if the chairs gave a massage and induced comfortable naps, though. This dude would definitely agree.
Or, you know, you could just stay home while your partner enjoys themselves.
H/T Geek.com
