THE STORE.....

Just today a customer brought up a subject I have thought about for years and years now. I'm thinking this whole subject hit me around 40 years ago when I was working down in Sacramento out in the North area around Fulton and Marconi Avenues.

The business world came out with this new fangled idea of a super sized store called "White Front". Remember them back then? I think the first one was on El Camino Ave. I remember back then being in wonder at just the sheer size of the thing and the amazing amount of products they carried. Seems to be what drove people into this new type of store back then was the prices. As we all now know, the whole business idea was they can buy everything in huge lots and get things much cheaper than the corner family market can. They then can sell things much cheaper.

Well history tells us those days were just the beginning of this new phenomena. Since then, probably dozens of those kinds of "big box" stores have sprung up across the country. Now we have Cosco, Best Buy, Office Depot, Office Max, Target, Staples. Then all the Hardware giants who cropped up in the last few years, like Home Depot, Lowe's etc, etc. Then there is of course the king and ruling master of huge, Wall-mart.

Now placing myself back to those years about 40 years ago, I can clearly remember having a slight but real little uneasy feeling in my gut about the whole new concept of these huge stores. What came into my feeble mind back then was the stories I had heard growing up about what life was like back in the early timber industry towns. I was told these little towns were developed and operated by the giant timber companies. These little towns were located way out in the boonies, way out in the forested areas where the trees were.

So the Timber companies would build these little houses for the workers to live in, plus the company put in these little stores for the workers. It was far too far to go to the nearest town to buy what they needed, so their only choice was the company store. I'm told they didn't even pay the slaves/workers in actual money. They paid them in company script. With this script, the slaves could pay to rent their little company houses and buy whatever food and sundry items they needed from the company store.

So having these thoughts running around my noggin, I saw this future potential for humans where when we said we needed to go to the "store", we meant "The Store". Just one store where everything one needed would be there. You would go to "The Store" for your food, banking, haircuts, pharmaceuticals, theaters, tires, butcher shop, clothing, shoes, glasses, hearing aids................well, I think you get the picture now huh? Looking around nowadays, how far off are we from that very scenario?

What also seems to be the inevitable outcome of all this is these giant stores pretty much wipe out all the Mom and Pop stores of every kind. How can these regular people trying to run a small business compete with these giants without their extreme buying power? When the giants buy shoes by the millions at a time, how can the little family shoe store compete when they only buy a dozen at a time.

The other negative issues would be just the sheer congestion involved in everyone climbing into their cars to go to this one store. Especially when they seem to locate the damn things right in the middle of neighborhoods where we live. The other bothersome reality is this whole new phenomena just keeps on creeping slowly but surely into our lives. So slowly that we collectively don't seem to be very upset about where this might eventually lead us.

I'm telling you right now that our local governments are only too happy to have these monsters among us for the income in sales taxes they generate for the bureaucrats in office who are supposed to be looking out for our futures. The very people we vote for ultimately could care less about our future needs in this regard. They only care about the mighty buck and getting re-elected to their cushy, do nothing lifetime jobs, with lifetime benefits. By the way, the ONLY money the local area gets is that sales tax. The millions and millions in profits go who-in-the-hell-knows where?......China maybe? The employees? Minimum wage with no benefits at all that I know of.

Now I'm sure there are many, many other reasons why we quite possibly should look into the future of all this with a certain amount of apprehension and fear even but I think we all get the drift of what I'm trying to say.......




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