Only three of my seven observations are about the shoppers. Only one of those three isn't a choice: seeming sad, at a much higher rate than at other stores—shit

Only three of my seven observations are about the shoppers. Only one of those three isn't a choice: seeming sad, at a much higher rate than at other stores—shit, even Dollar General shoppers don't look as down as Wal-Mart shoppers, though, given the rest of my list, maybe they just look sad because they're at Wal-Mart. Dollar General's fun (for me, dunno about anyone else who's there). Wal-Mart is... exhausting. Only time I see that much concentrated sadness in a store, that consistently, is when I find myself in a dying-rural-town grocery store that looks like it time-travelled from 1990. I don't remember whether those were sad places when I was growing up, mostly in those same sorts of dying rural towns. Wal-Mart wasn't, and their store function, service, cleanliness, and design all improved constantly through about '05, then abruptly reversed course and haven't stopped going downhill. Dunno what happened. Maybe Amazon happened, though that doesn't explain some of their oddly ill-looking paint color choices from the last couple re-designs.