What I find interesting is that your first recourse was looking online to find a place nearby to buy a corkscrew. And only after 1.2 km of walking to and from the store and frustration there did you resort to asking neighbors a few meters away in the campground if they could help you out.

Especially in France - should be good odds that almost every camper has a corkscrew with them!

But mainly it's how well we're trained to solve problems by buying stuff above all else, when connecting with our fellow humans might work much better.