Dollar Tree.
It used to have been an unreal experience witnessing the existence of these stores when they came out. Everything for a $1. No joke. The quality of some things have had corners cut and the quantity might’ve been laughable, but there was a good solid purpose for these stores.
And then I started seeing the signs after a few good solid years of shopping there. The first sign was how they stopped selling eggs. This was before the Bird Flu. They stopped selling eggs because they simply couldn’t afford to buy stock and then the price hike to $1.25 happened.
And now they’ve hiked the prices again to $1.50 for some products in a handful of stores. Additionally, they’ve incorporated items going from $2 ~ $15 so they have long lost the role and title of being the most affordable places to shop.
Gone were the days.
I recently ran Windows 2000 in a VM to pull some files from some install discs (grabbing Microsoft Train Simulator content from disc images off of archive.org to play in OpenRails in case anyone reading this is the same kind of crazy I am) and it was kinda striking how usable it was even in a modern context. Sure certain shortcuts and niceties hadn’t been thought of yet but it’s surprisingly modern for a 25 year old desktop operating system