A Penny for your thoughts. (The 99p Store)

Member Name: thedevilinme

Product:	The 99p Store
Date:	07/08/08 (262 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Its cheap!

Disadvantages: Its cheap!

As the "Credit Crunch" marks its first anniversary there's nothing more enjoyable in your lunch hour than to wander around these discount stores and watching middle-class people having to do some shopping there. Actually there are a lot better things to do in your break, especially looking at girls in those lovely summer dresses that are the fashion, but I thought that would make a good opening. Before the economy began to stumble the well-healed wouldn't be seen dead in places like this, strictly the preserve of the immigrants and underclass. If you didn't have a foreign ascent or extremely tinny jewelry and nylon clothing then you were turned away at the door by the bouncers. But now we see people with ties sneaking in to buy their tube of Pringles for a quid as their credit card bills suddenly got bigger. Word spread and now the well-to-do classes have to confront the unthinkable - give up Waitrose for the 99p stores! This is very traumatic for Middle England and is like having to leave the four-wheel-drive in the garage and actually walk the kids the half-mile to school.

The likes of Aldi, Netto and these Poundland stores have seen big profit bounces in the last six months as recession has rumbled in like a summer storm as punters switch away from the big chains, the irony being that it was customers of the same sort of cheap shops in America that were given mortgages they could never pay off that caused the credit crunch around the world in the first place, and so these cheap stores profits surged. Because these stores offered cheap junk food the customers had a little bit more cash in their pockets and so thought, I know, I'll buy a house I can never afford from the money I saved here. Brilliant! The white-collar people who made juicy commissions up the chain from box-ticking these insane mortgages all piled into Americas equivalent of Waitrose to spend their riches. Everyone's happy! Until now.

Whilst Aldi and co are as busy as dooyoo trying to work out what to do with the moneysavingexpert.com clicking cartel, the likes of Waitrose were seeing the exact opposite. Waitrose clientele are so posh they park up early in their Landover's before their weekly shop and have picnics from the hampers on the tailgate. But now the economy is rocking the nanny and the 'help' has been briefed on how to handle cheap stores, a list or do`s and don'ts dispatched with the many to mix with the working class. I, on the other hand, have no class, and will buy anything from anywhere (except Peacocks). Cheap is cheap and I don't mind queuing up with bums off the street if it saves a buck. Brand names are made in the same third world sweatshops as generic and home label stuff and that extra money you spend on the brands never end sup in the hands of child labor.

What's in the 99p store...?

We have two 99p stores in Northampton town centre alone and two Poundlands, not forgetting 'Ricks Nothing Over A Quid', quickie mart, a hint to how classy the place is. We were on the end of the recent surge of Eastern European immigration to England, 30,000 transient Poles coming to Northampton in the last three years or so, one seventh of the town's population. Koblenz is the next biggest populated town for Poles they say. The clerks are mostly Eastern European like the clientele in the store, and if these places could sell Vodka I expect they would do all their weekly shopping here. The Poles love nothing better than boozing and parading their sexy ass girls around town. It's amazing how many plain Polish girls have great bodies. What's with that? It won't be long until their bodyweight shoots up in England through all those choccy mulit-packs in these places. Cadburys Cream Mini Eggs tubes for a quid! That is value.

The store is set out like any other, sweets at the till racks so the kids whine for them when the purse is open, all the once a month purchases hidden at the back of the store near the bunged up fire exit. The 99p People excel in those cheap multi-packs of sweets and crisp, the core diet of women who have just been dumped or who have never had a boy friend to be dumped by, the later because they eaten to many multi-packs of the said sweets and crisps. As the economy dips its noticeable that one of the few companies to have an upturn in profits is Cadburys, a 17% rise in just 6 months, chocolate and sex the answer to many female insecurities in times of trouble. Needless to say I bought lots of choccy for emergencies:-)

Everything is, you guessed it, 99p, and there are obvious savings from your local supermarket. But these places are also quite cute, tempting you to buy stuff that looks cheap on the 'eye level is buy level', and so goes in your basket, but you soon discovering its cheaper elsewhere, which never crosses your mind at the time as you presume these are the rock-bottom deals. Suddenly you looking down and you have a 350gram bar of Dairy Milk in the hand that's 89p next door at Woolworth's. The guiles of budget shopping!

You don't get everything in these places, of course, the shops are pretty small, and in my stores it is an eclectic mix. The best way to describe the stock is the sort of stuff you find at your local market square, everything from school uniform to VHS videos, cosmetics to garden gear... Its worth rooting through as there may be some gems there, Northampton's store on Abington Street having ten copies of the whole of series 2 of the brilliant Larry Sanders Show on video for your buck. They do novelty items too; the funniest one is a plastic motion sensor frog! If you put it in your rockery and burglars want to gemmy your window in the summer then it croaks three times. Alas it's not very loud and certainly not waterproof, not exactly ideal for the great British summer. I still bought five to hide in my mum's garden for when I go around on Sunday. I can be a very naughty boy. Ribeeeet!

The staff are zombies as you would expect, and surprisingly don't have a wisecrack when you say keep the change and buy yourself something nice, mainly because they are foreign and only speak one line of English, which I think you can guess. I always say keep the change. It feels good and fittingly cheap for the surroundings. You don't have the polite luxury of giving away your coppers (the worlds fourth most valuable bulk bought commodity these days) at Poundland! In fact, if you melt down your pennies they are worth more that way with copper prices being so high. It's better to do that than take your Roses jar full of coppers to the bank and tip it in that machine that turns them into notes, but slicing off the banks ten percent. Even the Gypsies give you a better deal than that on copper. Although they do deal in only the best British Telecom copper these days so can be picky on what they buy. I wonder if they glow green at night?

Summary: Its cheap!