03-20-2020, 10:59 AM
Yesterday I went to one of the relatively few remaining mom and pop sandwich shops to stock up in case we end up on lockdown. As I was going there I thought about the fact that when I was growing up in the 1950s mom and pop book stores, music stores, diners and pharmacies were abundant, and for the most part remained so through the 1970s. The owners and subordinates as well were usually quite friendly and if the store wasn’t busy you could stay and talk with them for a while. I personally developed friendships with some of them at the time. But by the 1980s they really began to fall like dominoes, ruthlessly gutted out of existence by chain stores and fast food franchises which were pretty much the same everywhere. Employees were monitored so heavily that it became virtually impossible to develop those kinds of friendships. On this thread I shall seek your feedback on the reasons for the decline and have chosen to make this multiple choice. So here goes:
a).That we have become a much more mobile society with many folks expecting to find the same stores and restaurants wherever they travel.
b). That big business has thoroughly brainwashed the public into thinking that they could do it all better.
c). That we have become a consistently more convenience obsessed world with each generation being more so than the last. Mom and pop operations usually can’t provide the same level of convenience that today’s society demands and expects.
d). All of the above.
e). Something else.
a).That we have become a much more mobile society with many folks expecting to find the same stores and restaurants wherever they travel.
b). That big business has thoroughly brainwashed the public into thinking that they could do it all better.
c). That we have become a consistently more convenience obsessed world with each generation being more so than the last. Mom and pop operations usually can’t provide the same level of convenience that today’s society demands and expects.
d). All of the above.
e). Something else.