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.
That’s impressive. Even the IT-managed corporate Windows 11 Enterprise installs at work have ads in it. Nothing like what you’d find buying a cheap Windows laptop from someplace like Best Buy with the Windows Home edition, but there’s still ads in places like the start menu. I can get rid of some of them, at least temporarily, but not being an admin on the machine I can’t seem to squash them entirely.
I use windows both at home and at work and have never seen an ad in either place. I really don’t want to sound like I’m dismissing other people’s experiences because that’s not what I’m trying to do, but I also haven’t gone out of my way to disable any special setting or anything.