Ever since we moved we’ve been gradually getting our bearings. We’ve figured out where we are in relation to the various supermarkets and chain drugstores in the area—the Jewels (Jewels as in multiple Jewel stores, not the so-called ersatz possessive-form slang vernacular “Jewel’sâ€), the Walgreen’s (or are they Walgreenses?) and Dominick’s (Dominiquorum?). We know where nearest stores are, and as far as we can tell, none of them are Bad Times stores.
Every store chain has at least one Bad Times location. The Walgreens closest to Chris’s old apartment, the one at Lawrence and Western, is a Bad Times Walgreen’s. I grew up near a Bad Times Jewel on Madison near Ridgeland. There is a Bad Times Dominick’s on Lincoln Avenue at Bryn Mawr, just a quarter mile or so north from the old Bad Times Osco, and together with the Walgreens they formed a Bad Time Triangle, a veritable vortex of shitty store-going experience.
What constitutes Bad Times? It’s not just bad service or poor merchandise selection. It’s almost never a single thing that can be isolated and remedied. No, it’s an elaborate matrix of factors that make you miserable practically every single fucking time you shop there.
Bad Times conditions produce varying results within a consistent pattern of badness. Your shopping cart gets swiped. You wait in line and then the line closes. They’re inexplicably all out of water, or candy, or something amazing like that. Everything you need is available only in some horrifyingly wrong form, size and/or quantity, i.e., tampons which come in boxes of two hundred and are the super-ultra-maximum kind with scented musical applicators. The ATM is down, always. You’re lost in the aisles and the song “We Didn’t Start the Fire” is playing. So many things around you suck to distraction that you forget half the things you meant to get, and you stumble home defeated and with the distinct sense that none of this bullshit would have happened if only you’d gone to the other Jewel or Walgreens or Osco or Dominck’s. Bad Times stores are the ones you find yourself going out of the way to avoid for one reason or another. Sometimes you can articulate why, sometimes you can’t.
Nothing ever gets cold in the beverage coolers at the Bad Times Walgreen’s. Shopping at the Bad Times Jewel-Osco in Andersonville is weirdly tedious, and it always feels like you’re pushing your cart through sand. One time, at the bad times Dominick’s, there was this cashier who wore makeup in such a way to as to make her entire head look like a fleshy Lucha Libre mask, and she barked orders at every one of us in line. “Have your Fresh Values card READY! In your HAND and READY! Take OUT your Fresh Values Card and HAVE IT READY!” At the Bad Times Osco a few years ago I smiled at an old man standing near the doorway on my way out and he followed me to my car and tapped on my window and said “DON’T I KNOW YOU?” He was holding down a button on his neck as he spoke. “I SEEN YOU BEFORE,” he said, in a voice that I think meant to be friendly but instead sounded like a tiny demon calling long-distance. I knew I hadn’t seen him before, because if I’d had I probably would’ve tried a little harder to resist the sudden visceral impulse to clutch my own throat. But as it happened, I was doing it right then, right in front of him. “I’m sorry!†I said. It was deeply awkward and not in the least bit a good time.
Bad Times knows no boundaries, lest you think Bad Times equals “ghetto.” My recent experiences have all been urban, but store can be in the middle of a manicured suburban Strippe Mall Named For An Olde Tree and still be infested with a bad case of Bad Times. Many places carry a certain variant strain of Bad Times in which nothing about the store itself is objectionable but bad things happen to you—you forget your wallet, or you leave your car headlights on, or you drop a case of canned soda and it starts hissing and you have to leave it in the aisle and scurry away like a water rat. And you can’t go back; you won’t go back, and you don’t for a very long time until one day it seems sort of silly and inconvenient to not go there, so you go, and you have Bad Times AGAIN, and you curse yourself the whole unhappy drive home. That’s what I mean by Bad Times.
Bad Times tend to make themselves known as soon as you visit the store for the first time, but do they ever go away. I’m curious about this, since the Bad Times Osco on Lincoln and Foster has now become a CVS—a chain I haven’t visited enough to know where its Bad Times locations are. Will the Osco Bad Times transfer seamlessly to CVS, just like its prescription records? Or will the change in management cause a butterfly effect disrupting the unique circumstances under which Bad Times flourished? Or what? I’ll have to go there again sometime and let you know. But I’m in no hurry.
Further proof of the need for Feng Shui consultants.
As a fellow Chicagoland resident, I totally agree with you! I had a Jewel in Oak Park that I literally could not ever get in and out of in less than 30 minutes. I brought a book to read in the checkout lines every time.
And, as I travel a lot and have had the sad misfortune of visiting them in several different states, I can assure you that CVS is NOTHING BUT Bad Times. They apparently have a corporate hiring philosophy that prohibits them from hiring anyone who might actually help or be nice to a customer (even accidently). I am certain that extensive personality testing is done on applicants to ensure they are ready, willing, and able to be not only rude to every single person in the store but INSANELY rude. Really, I have to almost admire the effort these people are making to be So Damn Horrible in every single store.
Yeah. I’m still a little bitter.
But, I’m not wrong on this.
Marg, where’s your Bad Times Oak Park Jewel located?
I like the phrase “Bad Times.” The Boy and I have always called it the “Crazy Walgreens” ourselves (Belmont & Broadway–if you dare) and will walk a good half-mile out of our way to find a decent one. “Bad Times” is so much more encompassing though.
We had a K-Mart like that near where I grew up. I’ve been to other K-Marts that weren’t so bad, but this one… Every time we went, my mother would declare that we were Never Going There Again. But we did, because there were very few options in the area. But it was always bad. They were out of X. They had moved Y to some inexplicable new location. Item Z had a defect and was only one in stock. Pallettes blocking the aisles, shelves in utter disarray. There was one cashier on duty and her attitude was not helping anything.
Oh, totally agreed. I thought of the QwikShop on Belmont, just before Western (down the street from the Hungry Brain.) I always feel like I’m stepping into a vortex of crappy when I walk in there. (Usually in search of food because I’ve been at the Hungry Brain and got hungry on my way home.)
Related: I fear for the fate of Marshall Fields, because I haven’t been in a non-Bad Times Macy’s…ever. I’ve lived in NYC and now in LA, and every one of these stores is a Communist Russia of Joyless Retail. Just thinking about setting foot in one makes me want to scream.
Bad times– that is the perfect way of summing it up! We also have a Bad Times K-mart. We used to have a Bad Times Ames, too. It seemed like every time I went there there something happened like the cashier died or got stuck in gum or the kid in front of me was discovered to be a Missing Child, it never ended. I did always declare I Would Never Go There Again, and yet, once a year I’d think, “That’s silly!” and go, and once again have Bad Times. One time the Ames cashier handed me a flier and told me they were having some sort of Open House festivity there that weekend, with rides and prizes and such. And I said, “Ummm, I think I have something else to do that day,” and he looked at me in pain and said, “Most normal people do.”
Oh my God! My sister and I have referred to that Walgreens on Lawrence and Western as “Ghetto Walgreens” for as long as we’ve lived near it..at least five years.
Technically, it’s not in the ghetto. But it’s just a sucky, sucky Walgreens with really bad service.
Totally with Jill on that “Crazy Walgreensâ€. It’s not so much Bad Times as a total nut house. I still feel a little rush of glee that the Bad Times Dominck’s on Belmont burned down (no one was badly hurt). It was so Bad Times it had to set itself on fire!
It took me a long time to learn to stop going to the Bad Times Duane Reade right across the street from my office. But the convenience was far outweighed by the seething rage of the cashiers (a trait I’ve observed in every single Duane Reade, but who can blame them) and by the fact that never have I been in that store without a fight breaking out in line.
Mostly it’s just cursing and complaining about line-jumpers, but at particularly Bad Times, it can devolve into fisticuffs. I finally learned to buy my Diet Coke somewhere else.
your bad times osco that became cvs will stay the same, just a new name(i work for jewel) along with name brand changes. so i think it’s safe to assume that it will stay a bad times store.
I just lauged out loud so much that my cat ran away in fear. I always hear peole say “It’s funny because it’s true” and I think “God that’s a stupid thing to say.” But in this case, I don’t care. It really IS funny because it’s true.
My boyfriend and I have a few Bad Times stores we do our best to avoid. Sadly, we’ve had to suck it up and start shopping at one of them because we’re poor and it just makes the most sense when you factor in the price of fuel.
Last week, as we walked in, we were greeted by a man yawning and stretching just enough to expose his enourmous, hairy Budda belly flopping over the elastic waistband of his khaki shorts.
Bad Times indeed.
We have always called the Jewel on Addison and Elston “Scary Jewel” because every single time we’ve been in there the lights are on way too low, creepy people slink around, fights start, we forget 1/2 of what we went in for and every time we say “never ever ever again will we go to Scary Jewel” but sometimes you’re just hungry on the way home!
I have a mega Bad Times Albertsons right up the road and I will drive in the other direction 5 miles to get to the other grocery store just to avoid it. Once I forgot chicken broth when I was at the other store so I went to MBTA and they were out. What kind of grocery store runs out of chicken broth?
And I’m sorry but people who have 3000 items in their carts should not be allowed to use the self check-out. I don’t care what kind of babysitter employee they put to watch over everyone. Nothing like having slow checkers and even slower self-checkers holding up all the lines.
I live a block away from the Bad Times Jewel on Madison and Ridgeland, and every time I’m there I wonder why I didn’t just get in the car and drive to a grocery store that doesn’t suck so much.
I’m always so glad when you have a new post, Wendy, especially when they make me laugh so damned hard that people think I all of a sudden got in a good mood or something and run to find out what could possibly cause such a thing.
EVERY CVS is a Bad Times Store. Every one. But especially the one where the cashier threatened me when I asked if she was going to hang up the phone and ring me up, and when I appealed to the pharmacist for help, he shouted “DO YOU WANT YOUR PRESCRIPTION OR WHAT”, and then the cashier noted that her cousin was pacing around the store in a menacing way, and I broke down crying when I was leaving and had to go directly to a therapy appointment and then drink a lot to calm down.
Wow, I’d forgotten that last part! Ain’t free-writing grand? I hate CVS and even thinking about it makes me want to swear. The WalMart by me also wins the Bad Times award…what a hellhole.
The Bad Times liquor store up the street transformed to Decent Liquor Store right in front of our eyes on day with the simple addition of the following hand-lettered sign:
“We no longer accept large amounts of loose change.”
There’s a bank across the street for the couch-coin scroungers’ convenience, and the lines now move at a non-glacier pace.
I agree with Kate and the “Bad Times Macy’s.” I’m so sad they bought out all the Filene’s in New England…it was my clothing resource when I’d go home to visit my family. I live in NYC now, and there is a horrible Macy’s shopping experience to be had on every corner. So glad I’m not the only one who’s first reaction upon entering is “I HATE this store.”
OMG! You speak the gospel truth…
The Bad Times Walgreens at Lawrence and Western is the only drugstore close to my house. I hate it! I went there to get baby shampoo once and it was in a locked case. Baby shampoo! In a locked case! Why?! So I had to find someone to unlock it for me who acted exasperated and then had to go find somebody else who supposedly had the key. After waiting in the baby aisle for half an hour I finally went to the front counter and asked again for someone to open the baby shampoo case and finally they got the crazy ass cosmetics department lady to do it. Gah!
I won’t even start on the nasty old biddy who works checkout or all the people who shop there and insist on using coupons but not bothering to cut them out of the supplement till they get to the register.
I left the Pathmark at Atlantic Center in Brooklyn vowing to never stray from FreshDirect again. Once they were out of onions. The next time it was broccoli. Finally, their cheese gave me food poisioning. That’s not just a Bad Times store; it’s an End Times store(except you can’t ever buy water)! I think Satan even works there.
First time reader and I loved it so much I had to chime in.
We have a Walgreens we call the “Murder Walgreens” because yes, there was a murder there. It is Bad Times without a doubt and it was bad before the murder.
There is a Bad Times McDonalds in the same parking lot.
Ditto the Macy’s talk – they suck all over the USA!
Oh my God, I fucking HATE the Giant near my house! It’s bigger, newer, and much closer than the Safeway. But I do my regular shopping at Safeway because Giant never fails to disappoint me. The employees are morons and the produce sucks. And whenever I make an exception to run in and get just that one thing I need and don’t want to get in my car and go to Safeway for, Giant won’t have it. Of course!
(All this petty ranting has me feeling like I’m channeling the guy who writes “They’ll Do it Every Time” Oh, Yeah!)
We have a Bad Times Target near us where the entire store layout is almost the mirror image of the usual Good Times Target we normally frequent. It’s the almost that gets us, so it feels like the Twilight Zone when you’re in there; you keep trotting down the wrong aisle, and everyone in there starts to look like a slightly wrong humanoid alien, and those big red balls outside the store? Are alien spores waiting to erupt in a cloud of space sperm and impregnate all the human women within a five mile radius. We don’t go there.
When I was in grad school we used to call the Safeway a few blocks from my house the “Sad Safeway” or even “Suicide Safeway” because it was so damned grim. It always seemed sort of. . .dark and shadowy and slightly damp, with limp produce and a withered deli case. But it was a good place to buy cheap ramen and cat litter, and the staff was nice.
Then I heard Ted Bundy worked as a bag boy there for a while, back in the early 70’s, and everything fell into place.
(It was torn down a few years ago).
oops, I meant the Bad Times Dominick’s on Broadway, not Belmont. I got a little distracted thinking back on how terrible and frustrating that place was, I guess.
i’m surprised nobody’s mentioned Target, which is where nearly every Bad Times thing you mentioned has happened to me (I’m talking about the one at Logan Boulevard near Western). We called it the Bad Juju Target, and even though we kept swearing to Never Go In There Again, we sometimes really had to, so we started this practice, which might help some of your readers: Beginning as we pulled into the parking lot (in which we have had several near-accidents and witnessed at least two actual accidents), we chanted “Bubble of protection, bubble of protection,” with our arms around each other’s shoulders, we continued chanting until we were inside the store and had our cart. That seemed to help a little.
Could not agree with you more about the Bad Times Jewel on Madison and Ridgeland. It has ALWAYS sucked. However the Jewel that was on North Ave, between Austin and Ridgeland, with the parking lot on the roof, was hands down the WORST EVER.
OMG TOTALLY WITH THE BAD TIMES!!
I never knew why I hated the Rite Aid on Franklin so much, why I dreaded going there, why I left so exhausted and pissed off every time, why they organized their store with weird diagonally aisles that made no sense whatsoever, why there’s never any bug spray but tons of strange rubber items, why my prescription is never ready no matter what time I say I’m picking it up, why the pharmacist is such a low talker, why it smells so funny, why its patrons yell things like “Talk english!” to innocent latina grandmothers, why the lines are so long and why I leave every time needing to go home, have a shot, and take a nap.
And now I know! It’s the Bad Times Rite Aid! Wendy, you are so the man.
At my favorite Bad Times Big Y Supermarket, I was subject to a bizarre argument between the bagger and the cashier. As I approached the register with my giant order, the bagger left to go to the next register….
Me:(in a “funny” tone of voice, not bitchy) Is there something about me that makes the bagger leave when it’s my turn?
Cashier: (Shrug)
Me: (start bagging my groceries)
Cashier: (shouts to bagger)Hey! She wants a bagger.She says you walk away whenever she is here.
Bagger: Hey! I’m moving around, just like they told me to do.
Me: That’s not what I said!
Bagger:I’m moving around!Get off my case.
Cashier: Don’t tell me. She said it!
Bagger: I’m just doing what they tell me.
Cashier: Don’t kill the messenger. (gestures to me very aggressively) She’s the one who said it.
This is a somewhat abbreviated version and I haven’t captured the venom in the cashier’s voice. It was so appalling that it was funny. I laughed the whole time I was telling the manager.
Loyal reader for a year, virgin poster:)
Everyone seems to be adding their Bad Times stories, but I don’t need to. YOU ARE IN MY HEAD. I have gone to, then avoided, then returned to, then felt ashamed of myself for returning to each and EVERY one of your Bad Times mentions. That Dominicks was the most recent one. Wow. Sometimes you really are in my head.
First time reader here, too, and I love that I laughed out loud through this whole post and all its comments.
I grew up with a Bad Times Ames and then lived in another town with yet another Bad Times Ames. I seemed to always be stuck in line behind the mother beating her children, or in an aisle that closed after I had put all my stuff on the belt, or trying to wade through misplaced items on the shelves just to figure out they discontinued whatever I wanted. I hate Ames!
When I was in about 7th grade, though, the Bad Time Ames in my hometown burned to the ground. From then on, it was always known as Flames. Love it.
We have a Bad Times Walgreen in San Marcos. The rudest, nastiest clerks I’ve ever encountered.
When I moved here I had to transfer my prescriptions 3 times! I’d go in, give them the paperwork, they’d lose it. Repeat. Repeat.
They messed up the first 5 out of 6 refills I ordered, and I still have a less than 2 in 3 chance that they will have something when they say they will.
While standing in interminable lines, I have watched them curtly refuse meds to diabetics, non English-speaking Hispanics, asthmatics, heart patients, and the elderly. The suffering they’ve caused is incalculable.
Walgreens is the worst pharmacy I’ve ever been to, and I’m 63! How can these nitwits worry more about losing a few bottles of Advil, yet care nothing for their customers? For that matter, how do these nitwits stay open in the first place?
Whew! All better now …
Why, I was just in the bad times walgreens on lawrence and western this last weekend. Bad Times indeed. It seems as if everytime I go in there, there’s a crazy person yelling in a foreign language and/or following me around the store. And what kind of drug store doesn’t have an f’in lawnchair in the middle of August? Perhaps my new crazy friend was trying to warn me. What sounded to me like “BLEAAaaaHH! WAERROWAAAH! MAEROOOO!!!” actually meant something like “Run, child, for this is the bad times walgreens and there are no lawnchairs!”
Being sorta new to the ‘hood, I then left the bad times walgreens and headed to the bad times osco turned cvs on lincoln, where I asked if there were any lawnchairs. They said no, but I did see quite a few pink / soccer ball chairs right by the exit. Those bastards!
Fortunately, the strangely unghetto CVS on Damen and Lawrence had quite a selection of lawn chairs, but that store is only 6 months old or so. It’s only a matter of time for them.
bad times, indeed, are to be had at the oak park jewel on madison and ridgeland. i knew it would be bad but i went again this past tuesday right after working out. the florescent lights burned my eyes less than 5 min. into the store and i barely made it home since i was seeing stars driving down ridgeland. they suck. living in oak park is hard enough without having to put up with this store
Oh, man — I can’t believe no one’s mentioned Wal-Mart! Are there no Wal-Marts in urban areas?
We have a Bad Times Lowes. In addition to the rude and condescending “helper” people roaming the aisles (Why do you care why I want foil-backed insulation? I just want it, okay? Don’t look at me like I can’t possibly know what to do with it and ask me what I’m using it for! Just SHOW ME WHERE IT IS! And if I ask you if you have a particular kind of caulk, don’t walk me over to the caulk aisle and proceed to read every label out loud to me. I, myself, who can also read, have already DONE THIS.) and the crazy layout the puts door hinges closer to toilets and lightbulbs than to, oh, I don’t know, screws and nails and other actual hardware — there’s something slightly off about the height of the ceiling or the lighting or the width of the aisles that just makes me want to curl up in a corner and weep. And the parking lot is a death trap! And let’s not forget their jacked-up subjective return policy. We call it the Lowes of Doom, but I think there’s something to this Bad Times concept.
Is it Lowes? Or Lowe’s?
Huh. Apparently it is Lowe’s. Well, I’ve learned something new.
oh, the bad times home depot — how i HATED it. i would drive from tiny ace hardware to tiny five-and-dime to avoid this bad times.
bad times home depot had fabio staffing the paint counter — he had long, wavy blond hair with bad roots and wore white poet’s blouses (they had ruffled collars and cuffs, seriously), and all the male associates thought that you were hitting on them. yes, because a single woman looking to replace her air filter WANTS YOU SO BAD IN THAT ORANGE APRON BABY WOOO.
My sister just sent me the link to this article-genius. I’d add the Jewel on Broadway to the list (I would have added the Dominicks on Broadway too, but it burned down- super Bad Times.) I want to refute the Target on Logan as a Bad Times place- I kind of love it, in its overcrowded glory. The one on Addison makes me nervous, what with the escalator and all. But the worst bad times-place of all has to be IKEA. Crowds, poor lighting, general chaos- it makes my head spin, but I keep going back for the cheap low quality stuff.
I agree CVS=Bad times. The Sav-Ons in Southern CA are all becoming CVS soon, a prospect which I dread. I grew up near a Bad Times K-Mart and a Bad Times Target (both in the same shopping center in East L.A.). They constituted Bad Times for me because my mom bought all my clothes there 🙁 also both stores were dirty, full of moms screaming at tantrum-throwing kids, and there was always at least one aisle where someone had spilled a soda. When my family moved to Pico Rivera in the late 80s, we ended up close to another Bad Times K-Mart, which was even worse than the East L.A. one. (they replaced the dark, gloomy cafeteria and popcorn/Icee stand with a Little Caesars. It didn’t help.) They finally closed it down a few years ago, and the building remanins vacant to this day. I don’t know if the Bad Times concept extends to bookstores and restaurants, but if it does, I nominate the Borders on Sunset Blvd. as a Bad Times bookstore – good luck getting to use the bathroom as the surly, distracted employees seem unwilling to part with the tokens required for the facilities. Also they didn’t want to validate parking last time we drove there. As for Bad Times restaurants, is it just me or does Burger King seem to be going into a Bad Times streak? The BK on Firestone Blvd (Downey, CA) ran out of basic stuff all the time (no Coke syrup?), was reduced to using plain white wrappers and cups as it was no longer supplied with BK logo goods due to non-renewal of the franchise, I think, and eventually closed down last year. It is now a relatively clean, well-staffed McDonalds. The same thing happened to the Bad Times BK on Rosemead/Garvey in El Monte — it’s now a Starbucks. However an older gentleman crashed his car into the parking lot there recently, injuring at least 5 people — harbinger of continuing Bad Times??
Wal-mart in Forest Park, IL is the 10th circle of hell!!!
I am not a very superstitous person but Wendy, you hit the nail right on the head about “bad times stores”. There’s just “something” about them – Like they’re built on an indian burial ground or something.
Regarding “my” bad times stores,
First, As Christine said in the post above, that Walmart in Forest Park gives me the shakes everytime I go in it too. They are forever re-designing the store and it is a total bitch to find anything; The aisles are too narrow, there are a pant-load of abandoned carts sprewn about, some even on fire like in Escape from New York”; The clinetle, is shall we say, a bit ornery and the parking lot is as dangerous as the deck of an aircraft carrier.
The Ridgeland/Madison Jewel in Oak Park has been bad times since I was a kid. In fact, that whole entire block of stores is “bad times” including the Clark gas station, and the 7-11 too. It’s almost a bad times Bermuda Triangle, if you will. There might have been some Frontier Massacre there in 1830 or something.
Lastly, probably the most surprising Bad times location to me is the Naperville Post office. Now I know what you’re thinking, all post offices are mandatory bad place experiences. But, this one is a bad place experience even when comparing it to to other post offices – in Naperville. Damn, nothing bad can legally happen there – in the happiest place on earth (West of Disney Land), yet it does.
Every friggin’ time I go there (because it is closer to something I need to do) I rue the moment I step in a minute later. But I am stuck, like a bug in a roach motel. The clerks are not overly rude (you can’t do that in Naperville…) they’re passive aggressive, slow on purpose, and for some reason, there are a ton of customers that appear to never have sent something in the mail before. They’re trying to send a severed head, stuffed with Heroin, to Upper Volta and they’re trying to get the best rate via Zeppelin to save a nickel. Shit.
Thanks, Wendy! I recently moved to Ravenswood and was thinking about stopping by the Bad Times Dominick’s on Lincoln today.
But to those who diss the Dominick’s on Broadway near Wellington, the one that burned down: it wasn’t so bad the dozens of times I was there! And now, residents of the area have to either go to the crazily-expensive Lincoln Park Market, Market Place or Treasure Island, or the distant and impossibly huge Jewel a mile north on Broadway.
I’ve always had a theory that the Bad Times Dominicks on Lincoln is some kind of front for demonic activity (this is what happens when you watch too much Buffy). And that would explain why once they still had St. Patrick’s Day cupcakes in late April.
Of course, once, when I bought some olive loaf there, the deli woman (who was in her twenties) asked me if it was for my grandma. “Only grandmas like olive loaf,” she told me, with an air of great conviction. (My grandma has been dead for more than fifteen years, and she was more of a pimiento loaf person, anyway.)
To deal with the plural of possessives issue (or plural of word ending in S), I borrow from the Hebrew; add -im to everything. A fleet of Prius cars are Priusim. It’s pronounced “eem”.
This is hilarious! The Bad Times nickname now replaces ghetto Jewel (the little one that won’t die in Wheaton), big scary Jewel (Broadway & Montrose), and Evil/Dead Target (Niles).
I don’t mind hiking all the way to happy-land western suburbs to avoid any of these places.
Especially my Bad Times Walgreens (Wilson and Clark). Shudder. It’s where health and beauty aids locked in cases go to die.
We must live in the same neighborhood – I’m mere blocks away from the Bad Times Osco-now-CVS at Forter and Western and therefore also close to the Super Bad Times Dominick’s at Bryn Mawr and Western. The Osco-now-CVS sucked so much that I switched all my prescriptions to mail-order. I once was there during an averted shoplifting incident where the prissy manager and the would-be shoplifter had a stand-off.
The Dominick’s is so bad I’ll only go there if it an emergency (like in the middle of baking and I need an ingredient). I often tell my husband that he is only allowed to buy things from this Dominick’s if they are in a can or a sealed container because the store is so icky I don’t want to consume infected food. Despite living in the neighborhood for four years I can count the number of times I’ve been in this store on one hand – but every time I’ve been in there I see opened raw tubes of breakfast sausage in the chip aisle, opened jars of pickle, or something equally gross – I’d rather go hungry. I too have seen the Lucha Libra checker, but I assumed that it was more of a s/he situation and s/he just hadn’t gotten together enough money for the complete gender reassignment surgery. My husband, who has lived in the neighborhood longer than me, feels that Dominick’s shuttles their least attractive, most belligerant, mentally challenged, wires-crossed-in-the-brain employees to this particular store.
And you can’t go back; you won’t go back, and you don’t for a very long time until one day it seems sort of silly and inconvenient to not go there, so you go, and you have Bad Times AGAIN, and you curse yourself the whole unhappy drive home.
Yes. YES. And in answer to the “do they ever change?” quandary — there are MANY Bad Times establishments in the college town where I live, but I must say they seem to go in cycles. They will be Bad Times free for months on end, and then suddenly, every time you go there, the waiters or the clerks are mystifyingly, reality-defyingly rude, and your ex-boyfriend walks in with a bevy of starlets on his arm while you’re buying THE CHEESIEST COUNTRY HITS OF ALL TIME.
The Jewel at Ashland and Roosevelt is perhaps not a ‘bad times’ Jewel…but it is the most ridiculously ghetto Jewel I’ve ever been in. There are always girls getting into fights in the parking lot and the lines are always super-long, especially at like 10 at night when all you want is to get out of there. It serves the ABLA homes and the UIC area (which includes students, Taylor-street residents and people from the medical district)…so its sort of an interesting cross-section of people. Interesting meaning irritation of all stripes.
A red hot economy here (western Canada) has employers lowering their standards to the point that customer service is a rapidly fading memory.
The vapid, gum-popping teller at the BANK; the multiple-piercings cashier at the grocery store dragging codes over the scanner at a snails pace who yabbers on with the pimply faced bagboy about how hard she partied last night; the barely civil asshole at the coffeeshop who sneers at the handful of coins you drop into the tip cup (in ADVANCE of receiving your order!) and then fucks up your coffee (TWICE!) anyway….
I feel like an archaic old fart as I become exasperated thinking about what it was like when people actually did their jobs WELL or ended up weighing down the couch sooner than later.
Sadly, it seems there are more BAD TIMES places and experiences than good these days…
Okay, I’m freaking out, a little, because the Dominick’s on Broadway burned down?!! What??!! I used to work at the Hancock Fabricks right by there, and go there for lunch. And, every payday, I would buy lunch for the beggar with no legs that collected donations outside of the store. This is fucking with my memories. I feel depressed.