I still can’t believe this.

It’s been almost two months since the 99 Cents Only Store franchise announced that they were closing all 371 of their stores and filing for bankruptcy. I was so bummed when I heard the news. I’ve been a regular shopper at those stores since the 1990s. It’s perfect for small essentials like toilet paper and toothpaste. And there’s a large store near where I work, which makes going there easy.

I remember that morning as I was driving to work, and there was a store location that I don’t often go to, but I did notice that the parking lot seemed much fuller than usual for that time of the day (it was before 8am, that location opened at 7am), but I didn’t think much more about it. It wasn’t until that afternoon that one of my coworkers mentioned the news about it shutting down, saying it was announced the night before, but I hadn’t heard it yet. I tried stopping at the store near my office on my way home to see what I could fill up on, but the place was packed, and I just couldn’t deal with the crowd or the wait.

I tried again that Saturday, as I had an ophthalmologist appointment in the morning (I’m still monitoring my eye pressure regularly), and tried again, this time at that other store, and once again it was ridiculous. You’d have thought folks were preparing for a zombie apocalypse. The place was packed, and the checkout lines were a mile long with folks pushing shopping carts to the brim. I swear it was even worse than stores were in the weeks leading up to the Covid pandemic (remember when everyone was hoarding toilet paper and bottled water?), I just gave up and left after a few minutes.

Yesterday I was running late on my way to work, so I didn’t have time to stop at a grocery store. So I still needed something to eat for lunch. I have a 15-minute break at 10am, normally that’s just enough to make it down to the 99 Cents Only store, pick up a few things, and get back. Since that’s gone now, I instead went to this small liquor store that is next door to it, so I could at least get some soda and junk food to get me through the day, and it was so sad seeing the now completely empty 99 Cent store and parking lot.

And, of course, this isn’t just about the personal inconvience to me. I can live without these stores. My life will go on. But that’s a lot of people who are out of work. And let’s face it, if you’re working at the 99 Cents Only store, it’s probably because you don’t have a tone of other options. So finding another job won’t necessarily be easy. And there are the people who live neighborhoods that these serves serviced, for them these shutdowns can be major inconviences. No matter how you slice, this is a bad situation.

I’ve seen talk that there may be some minor reprieves, like the Dollar Tree store company is buying up some locations and planning to rebrand them, and we’ll see how that works out. Hopefully that can fill a need for many.