like I went to taco bell and they didn’t even have napkins out. they had the other stuff just no napkins, I assume because some fucking ghoul noticed people liked taking them for their cars so now we just don’t get napkins! so they can save $100 per quarter rather than provide the barest minimum quality of life features.
So don’t shop there! They’ll do the bare minimum that still brings people in; the only remedy is to show them they’ll lose customers.
Wile this is something that can be generally applied to fast food restaurants, this is a problem with basically all industries, many of which exist in a space where their customers are stuck with them. EG a lot of people are stuck with walmart because they are often literally the only place around or the only place around people on the lower half of income can afford.
Same with those dollar stores. They come into poor areas and drive out the small local grocers, then you get a worse product and it’s your only choice.
Yes, they also work in a fashion where they don’t truly step on the toes of walmart, lest they also be crushed.
For the masses Dollar General is not a dollar store. That place blows.
Dollar Tree is the closest large chain that still adheres to cheap as fuck goods but the quality is super shit as expected often with quantity reduced to essentially match regular goods when bought in bulk anyway.
Family Dollar next best with discounts but not great.
Dollar General is often more expensive than regular stores.
It’s past Thanksgiving and I don’t even celebrate it, but I’m so fucking thankful to live in a European suburb. There is a small general store just down the street, two bakeries, a butcher, a car mechanic, a tire service shop, a bike service shop, two schools, two playgrounds, and too many smaller businesses to count. All within ten minutes on foot. Also three stops for six bus lines, safe sidewalks, and safe bicycle paths, so basically /c/fuckcars’s wet dream.
I’m in Canada. I’d love to be able to say I can totally ditch Maxi or Super C and stop supporting Loblaws and the Weston family, or Metro or Sobeys, but that would mean choosing either buying shittier produce from one of the large discount alternatives (Walmart, Super C, or similar) meaning I’d be encouraging another of those large super vertically integrated grocery chains that are driving up cost regardless, or accepting to pay 1.5x the price for all of my groceries.
Fresh produce I can get for not too expensive from farmer’s markets while in season, but for the rest, I have to choose between expensive local grocery, expensive grocery chain, or budget grocery chains that are owned by one of the expensive chains anyway.
My local grocery chain is a lot better quality than Walmart in some respects. But, the price tag is usually much steeper. Thank God for Aldi’s.
I like to support the little guy when possible but when it makes your monthly grocery bill $1,200 instead of $900, that’s a tough pill to swallow. That $300 wouldn’t necessarily break the bank for me but it’s a lot of money to a lot of people.
This is also a big reason that many Americans have poor nutrition. Processed junk food is cheaper than healthy food. Presenting better lifestyle or diet “choices” is an illusion when you have to have money to make those choices.
Even they are pricy, once the competition is quashed.
More importantly, don’t work there. Giving your labor to these businesses is just as bad, if not worse as spending your money there.
These are both really easy sentiments to have. In the real world, we eat the food we can afford and work wherever will hire us.
100% this. Lots of people don’t have options.
This is why we need UBI stat if we want to reverse this trend. People everywhere are being backed into corners by the unaffordability of everything and their desperation is being exploited by places like Taco Bell, Dollar General, Walmart, Amazon and is effectively forcing people to panhandle and do crime. By having the leeway to look past how the heck you’re going to feed and take care of yourself and people close to you, it opens up opportunities that the middle class takes for granted and things that weren’t even a question to the upper and elite classes.
“the food we can afford” is not descriptive of Taco Bell
Dude. Have you been to taco bell? You can get a well over 2000 calorie meal for like $15
And you can do that much more healthfully for a third of the price cooking at home.
The problem then becomes a lack of shelter, in addition to quality clothing and quality food.
those greedy bastard taco bell employees