I visited a Walgreens yesterday and the cooler was not working - Talked to cashier and he said it's been out for a month because they don't have the budget to fix it. This is absolutely not normal.

Rite Aid, Walgreens and CVS are all mostly ghost towns in around where I live (Greater Seattle area) and when you go in you find locks on common items like the cooler to get a soda, various items in the candy aisle, and various other items throughout the store.

A local CVS has no carts, no baskets and no bags. Because if bags are left somewhere accessible people will fill them and walk out without paying.

Some have customers. Some seem to consistently have empty parking lots and no customers.

Some have staff. Some seem to have one person in the whole store. Because they are understaffed, items are frequently out of stock. No budget, equipment broken, items out of stock, higher prices due to high rate of shoplifting... these stores appear to be in a death loop.

I'm not a full on doomer. A lot of the collapse talk I think... we must be overreacting and hopefully things will be ok in the end.

However... the kind of stuff I'm experiencing at some of these stores is so bizarre and abnormal that I can only be led to believe that it's an indication of something. The economy is not well. People aren't shopping. Many people are stealing. We appear to be in the middle, or perhaps only early in the process of a cascade of retail bankruptcies. It doesn't make sense that a lot of these stores that were profitable 10 or so years ago suddenly have no customers and can't afford to fix the drink cooler. I'm not exactly sure where this is headed but it seems really really bad.