this post was submitted on 04 May 2024
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cries in rural town in Michigan
Is it harder to travel by foot in Michigan?
FUCK yes, at least if you live in a rural town. I live in a small farming town of 5Β 000 people. There is ONE grocery store here. Once a week, I go on errands (appointments, shopping, etc.) and I have to travel 25β30 minutes, or about 15 miles. And that's driving. There's no bus line, no train line, so if I wanted to walk, it'd take about 6 hours to walk.
How do you end up with a town of 5,000 people and none of them wanting to set up a store? My town has half that population and has two stores, though maybe that's why it seems resourceful to do so.
There are other places to buy groceries: for example, there's a small carryout down the street and a Dollar General as well. But those aren't really "grocery stores" nor are they big stores. There are also a smattering of small businesses of course.
There also might be one or two in nearby small towns (which are still like 10β15 min drive away even then).
But for a good number of tasks, you still have to go into town, so my point still stands.
To be honest, having both a grocery store and a Dollar General near me, I actually prefer the Dollar General.
As someone who has worked for Family Dollar (which is a part of the same industry ("discount variety store")), I absolutely hate that industry with a passion and refuse to shop at any store like Dollar General, Family Dollar, and Dollar Tree, etc. That whole industry is even more predatory towards employees than even regular retail stores are. That's how they get the items so cheap in the first placeβaside from supply chain injustices (read: slavery, same as most other industries), it comes out of the workers, both in pay and workload.
Anyway, I didn't initially mean to go off on this spiel, so I'm sorry about that, and in any case my original point is still valid, I feel.
That's alright. I didn't know about that, sorry about that. If the dollar stores were charities, I know I would've since there is a charity watch aspect of my job.
It's cool. You kinda don't know until you work there.