By Darren Johnson
Campus News
If you enjoyed the Big Lots bankruptcy clearance sale earlier this year, you may want to head to a local Rite Aid, as they are going through something similar right now.
Here are some scenes from the one in Wilton in Upstate New York.
 |
Most of my photos are of empty shelves (the shelves are also for sale), but many of the shelves did still have products on them as of this past Saturday.
 |
Rite Aid is one of those corporations I have nostalgia for. My mother would take me to a local one a lot as a kid. I could buy candy or loose leaf paper for school. They had good and affordable notebooks and supplies.
In my young adult years, the Rite Aid near me was known for selling beer at the lowest prices. Say an ice cold Utica Club Ale suitcase?
Now the memories are fading away, for up to 70% off!
 |
 |
I wonder what company makes signs like these? They always look the same. I’ve been to closeouts for lots of chains; Sears, BonTon, Kmart, you name it. There must be a company that specializes in such signs and closeouts.
They also hire random people to sit by the highway with big signs pointing people to the closeout.
The workers usually just prop up the sign and sit in a lawn chair nearby, reading a book or their phone while cars whiz by.
How does one get such a job?
 |
I was not really feeling it, though, at Rite Aid, and just bought a couple of reams of paper at $3.50 each. My wife got some lipsticks.
 |
The employees have been there for a decade or two, or more, and now will be displaced. They seemed reflective about their time there. They’ve given a lot to Rite Aid. But maybe something like this can be a new start for them? Sometimes people stick with something just because it’s not bad — but maybe they’ll find a better employer worthier of their loyalty.
Drugstores have kind of lost their mojo since the opioid crisis, and Rite Aid was the weakest financially of the Big 3 (with CVS and Walgreens), so is the first of them to falter. Rite Aid’s decor has always seemed hokey and antiquated, compared to the other chains. Usually that’s a sign of corporate financial weakness, too.
Actually, with less competition, maybe this will help buoy the other drugstore chains a good while longer, despite competition from online drugstores, including now Amazon, as well as tighter profit margins allowed by the HMOs for prescription drugs. And chains like Dollar General undercut these stores for over-the-counter drugs, by a lot. But my local Greenwich CVS does an exemplary job, and I’m willing to pay more for their level of care and expertise. So maybe that’s where Rite Aid went wrong, as I always felt they were second-rate when it came to the actual pharmacy as compared to CVS. Walgreens I considered decent, as well, but Rite Aid more so was about the other stuff they sold; the candies, loose-leaf paper and cheap beer.
Facebook Comments