RETAIL IS DEAD

Retail is dying. As former retail management, I've been watching the signs for years. A decade or more. Retail. Is. Dead.

The only thing keeping malls alive these days is the abundance of restaurants. It used to be big anchor stores, but no more. For years the mall near my home was vibrant and bustling. It was THE place to go, especially around the major holidays. Then, it turned into a ghost town, and walking through it became dangerous and creepy, creepier than the chase and rape scene in Lipstick. My hackles rose every time I walked through the place.

The food court is still a happening place, for sure, but even the stores around the food court were (and some still are) shuttered. Until the outside restaurants came. Oh, the restaurants won't put the food court out of business. Not even close, because these restaurants are mostly high-end. 

It's a different kind of clientele on the outskirts of the mall than there is on the inside of the mall. Outside are the spenders, the drinkers, the fussy eaters. People with credit cards to burn. Inside the mall the gangs of unsupervised school kids still roam wild like some kind of retail Lord of the Flies ... or Fries.

I went into Target today, and not some random Target off the beaten trail, but a popular one directly off the highway and along a busy industrial road. I needed a card, a few supplies, and maybe a grocery or two or three. 

Easy, right?

Not so much. Oh, sure, if I needed a gift candle, they had them. If I needed paper towels, they had them. Snacks and basics? What I found were row after row and aisle after aisle of empty shelves. Missing merchandise. And, no, this wasn't a seasonal changeover situation.

I am one of the few people left who still goes into a grocery store to shop. Pretty much everyone else I know gets their groceries shopped for and delivered. I just can't get past the idea of some youngster who's never grocery shopped in their lives after age three going into the produce aisle to decide which avocado is best or if it can be substituted with kale.

I don't judge you if that's your jam. It's just not mine, and therefore I must suffer and drive to the store, park, get a cart, and push past ever-dwindling amounts of people to pick out things that many times aren't even stocked. Or properly dated. I remember a time when I just grabbed the milk and casually checked the expiration date. Now, it's a bloody battle to find a sell-by date that is not within forty-eight hours.

Customer service is dead. Selection is dead. Retail is dead.