Roses

It’s an even more ghetto version of Big Lots.
First, a history lesson. Roses used to be a big department store chain. I remember when I was a kid there was one nearby that sold clothes, electronics, toys and more and was much like a Wal-​Mart, before Wal-​Marts came around. The Roses near our home closed in 1991, so I hadn’t seen one in well over twenty years. I’d long thought they had gone out of business.
Well, I was out driving around the other day when I saw the Roses logo on a storefront in the Eastland Shopping Center. I hadn’t seen that logo in more than two decades, so I was intrigued, to say the least. I remembered how awesome Roses was when I was a kid, and thought it would be great if they had come back. I pulled in and decided to take a look.
It’s a overstock/​closeout discount store much like Big Lots, but far more run down and seedy. I suspect that the Roses brand name was bought out by some other company somewhere along the way, because it’s far from the store of my childhood. Customer service was somewhere between poor and non-​existent, as when I tried to ask for help the sales associates ignored me and walked away.
The merchandise is a random assortment of whatever hasn’t been selling well somewhere else, so you’re sure to find clothes in unpopular sizes, DVD’s nobody wants to buy, toys no kid wants, and foodstuffs of brands you’ve never heard of. The aisles were cluttered with merchandise laying around and stuff having been knocked off of shelves.
The only thing I was half-​tempted to buy was they had a display of rakes, shovels and garden hoes for $ 5 in the front, and thought about buying a new rake for my lawn, but on careful inspection I realized just how poorly put together it was and figured it would break the first time I used it.
I also went to their corporate web page, wondering how that would go. Their corporate contact e-​mail address is a gmail account, and their sales circular of the week hasn’t been updated since December 2014, so the web site reflects the quality of the store indeed. I was mildly surprised when I checked their corporate Facebook page and saw it was updated every few days.. .but then noticed all the posts from dissatisfied customers saying all the same things I was saying, publicly complaining about the service at their stores.