A woman walks outside a dollar store in the 7900 block of South Ashland in Chicago's Auburn Gresham neighborhood in 2016.
They “deliberately understaff their stores,” leading to safety violations and violent crime, while paying low wages. One thing’s for sure: Where some observers see predators, others see competitors. At the heart of the complaints is an understandable fear of competition from incumbent businesses that aren’t as sharply run and want local officials to protect them by blocking the expansion of the dollar chains.
Further, a glance at the map shows that the nearly 1,500 dollar stores in Illinois are spread over a reasonably diverse area. In Chicagoland, Dollar Tree’s footprint covers communities ranging from north suburban Northbrook to south suburban Homewood, as opposed to focusing only where poverty and crime are most conspicuous.
This is maybe one of the worst, most obtuse takes I’ve ever seen.
They *are* overpriced and poorly run though, so what’s your argument babe? The math’s not mathing