I’m cheating on her. I’m having a torrid affair with “30 Rock” via Netflix.
It’s a good antidote to the depressing pall that comes over me when shopping at discount stores. I’m talking about you, 99 Cents Store! I haven’t been there in years, but when I went last week, I was followed around the store by a close-talking bargain hunter who kept asking me what time it is. I passed so many women who were rifling through bins of junk as if they were going to find something…cheaper?
Today I went to Marshall’s. I don’t know about you, but in my neighborhood, the Marshall’s is just as depressing as the 99 Cents Store and then when you go to check out they have: One. Line. Designed to piss you off even more than you already were after bumping your stroller in the too-crowded aisles and not finding anything in the 2-mile rack of clothes because all the clothing was on hangers with the wrong sizes on them, the One Line design made us creep and crawl through a hunger-induced haze of despair until we finally, FINALLY got to check out.
I am going back to my online shopping while I watch “30 Rock” and the baby is sleeping. Bah humbug.
Bah Hambug in deed. That sounds like the kind of shopping experience that owuld make me leave purported purchases in the store and run away screaming. You are better than I for sticking through it.
I hate. Hate. HATE Marshall’s. And Ross. And Burlington Coat Factory. Any store that has a hodge-podge that needs sorting through to find the good stuff. And in our area, everything is dirty too. I’d gladly pay the extra 2 bucks or whatever to avoid having to shop there.
I used to live near the Watertown Mall up here in MA and my roommates and I would call it “the suicide mall.” It had a Marshalls, a Ross, and a Filenes and I swear I wanted to die anytime I was near one. (And I was on my own! I didn’t even have to worry about two little ones!)
I think the only way to shop at those kind of discount stores are when you go to ones that are in really affluent areas. They’re usually a lot cleaner and better organized.
I agree with Lisa; good for you for sticking with it. I went to TJ Maxx during my lunch hour on Monday, hoping to find some work pants that fit! While this store is usually somewhat decent with their organization, it was clear that the post Thanksgiving shopping bonanza had gotten the better of them. What a disaster! When I finally found one fairly ok pair of pants, I took one look at the one open register line of about 10 people and chucked the pants and fled!