John Oliver discusses dollar stores and why Irish Spring is not his soap of choice.
Video Duration: 21:53
YouTube Link: https://youtu.be/p4QGOHahiVM | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4QGOHahiVM
Invidious Link (privacy-respecting frontend for YouTube): https://vid.puffyan.us/watch?v=p4QGOHahiVM
Comments:
- John Oliver promotes awareness for work reform.
- Highlights systemic corruption in dollar stores.
- Calls out unsafe conditions and human rights abuse.
Oh excellent. I’m really glad he tackled this major, major problem, especially in small towns and rural areas. Dollar stores are predatory and should be reigned in. They’re also not cheaper than supermarkets. I went to a Dollar General recently because my daughter was desperate for a drink. They had bottles of water. Not huge ones, just normal Aquafina bottles or whatever. They charged me $2.75. If my daughter hadn’t been so desperate and we were closer to a gas station, I would have just gone there. And I’m just going to keep water in my car for her from now on.
Hey about keeping water in your car, be careful: cars get hot, and plastic water bottles leech chemicals in the water when they’re hot (particularly in direct sunlight, but true even in the trunk if it gets hot enough)
We have metal water bottles. We don’t re-use plastic ones. I guess the lid is plastic, but the water doesn’t go all the way up to the lid.
Not trying to pile on, but if the water sits for more than say a week, bacterial growth can become an issue. There is a method for storing water up to 6 months, but it’s a bit of work.
Can, but this is badly overblown imo.
Water alone cannot grow bacteria. They need a food source too, an energy source. Sunlight is probably not getting in, so where does the food come from? How do they fuel metabolism? Just like you, they need food and water.
“Dirty” water can grow bacteria, because there’s more than just a bunch of H2O molecules in it. Something like distilled cannot.
So, depending on the source of your water, you can be fine. Like, a lot of people use RO, and that’s pretty clean water.
I don’t think that’s a problem either. She tells me she’s thirsty basically every time I drive her anywhere. It’s like she gets in a car and her throat immediately dries up. But I’ll keep it in mind, thanks.
They’re “cheaper” as in “you walk out the door generally having spent less money”, but they are absolutely FAR more expensive in terms of how much you pay per quantity/volume of products purchased.
It’s a chain that’s specifically designed to predate on poor people. The business model is “separating poor people from their money by making them a shitty offer that they can’t really refuse”.
I wouldn’t go so far as to say that.
I can buy $5 worth of cleaning supplies to tidy up a temporary space. Broom, mop, detergent.
The supermarket - a broom is $10.
You’re not getting what I’m saying.
I’m not talking about how there are a small handful of reasonable use cases as a customer that make sense at Dollar General.
What I’m pointing out is that they’re intentionally nickel-and-diming poor people on cost-of-goods. If you compare pretty much anything Dollar General sells to the same thing at Costco (or, even better, the Kirkland brand stuff, which is generally at least as good AND less expensive), you’re going to be paying a LOT more per weight/volume/unit at DG.
Their business plan is to go into economically-depressed areas, undercut EVERY OTHER STORE IN THE AREA and force them to close, and then they can do literally whatever they want because they’ve cornered the market by driving the competition into the ground. And they use that monopoly to exploit poor people.
It’s super fucked up, and their business model has a demonstrably negative socioeconomic impact on areas that are already struggling socioeconomically.
Dollar General very, very genuinely needs to die.
That’s fair. I agree.
The stuff from these stores do not have a shelf life, you’re absolutely right. That broom example, maybe last 3 uses before it’s tossed.
And therein lies another aspect of why DG is horrible: not only do they push stores that sell non-consumables out of business, but also grocers.
In terms of foodstuffs, DG pretty much only sells low-quality and -nutrition groceries with extremely long shelf lives, like chips, bottled drinks, snacks, sometimes some crappy frozen stuff squirreled away somewhere - you know: junk food. No fresh meat, poultry, fish, fruits, or vegetables, ever. So not only does DG exacerbate socioeconomic issues in poor area, but they also exacerbate and create health problems in low-income populations that they serve, because they push all the stores that sell any food or groceries of reasonable quality out of business.
So the “dollar” in the name doesn’t mean anything anymore?
Apparently it means, “you’re going to spend one dollar plus some other dollars.”
I can see how that would make for a slightly unwieldy name for a store tbf 🤷
at this point all it means is that you spend dollars there and not euros or pesos or dinars
In the case of Dollar General and Family Dollar, it never has.
Dollar Tree, the last of the the actual dollar stores, has their prices set at $1.25 and are starting to add $3 and $5 items in their stores. It’s the only dollar store I will even go to. The rest are a ripoff.
Perhaps, I find the quality at Dollar Tree to be worse than say, Walmart, and sometimes even more expensive. I don’t have any practical use for dollar stores.
I only go there for canned goods and other food related items. That stuff is still pretty decent.
You buy food at these places? Oh my gosh, did you not watch the John Oliver video? rats. rats. rats.
Inflation means a dollar doesn’t go as far as it used to. You don’t see five-and-dimes or penny candy any more either.
Some things are still exactly a dollar, but often they have far less product in them. For example, a roll of tape with only a third as much tape on it as a full roll at other stores.
No way. This has nothing to do with inflation. We went down the toy aisle because even though my daughter is 13, she and I enjoy looking at toys, and there were toys for over $20. She likes squishy stress toys and there was a three toy box of squishy sushi toys. It was $15. You can get something similar at a place like Walmart for $5. Even a place like Spencer’s Gifts would charge maybe $10.
I know for a fact that maybe 10 years ago, the toys were at most $5. That’s not inflation. That’s just gouging your poor customers who have come to rely on you because any local store they might have gone to has closed and the closest supermarket is an hour’s drive away.
Dollar General is not a “dollar store”. It just happens to have the word “dollar” in the name. They are a normal general store whose bread and butter are poor neighborhoods or far enough out in the sticks that Walmart won’t build.
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Um…gross?