My sister and I took her three grandchildren shopping for an afternoon. Their mom had a dentist appointment and the regular care provider was not able to take them. It was a rainy day so we thought the mall would be a good place to spend some time. One of the first stores we saw was a dollar store. The children were excited because they each had money to buy a treat.

The goods on offer didn't look very appealing to me although I was impressed with the displays and the amount of dollar store merchandise. But upon closer examination you could tell how poorly made the items were. My sister’s granddaughter was looking at hair accessories. They were bright colors and so had immediately caught her attention. She was deciding which color she wanted. The boys were looking at bags of plastic soldiers. I mentioned to my sister that the items seemed of poor quality. She laughed and pointed out that I was talking about dollar products. It was supposed to be cheap. The children had so many things to choose from that they could not decide what to purchase. We were in the store for thirty minutes before we were finally able to take their choices to the checkout counter. As we were standing in line I noticed that there were packs of gum in the brand I like. They were six packs packaged together. This seemed like a great deal for a dollar so I picked one up. My sister picked up a couple bags of candy for the children to have in the car.

We had spent so much time choosing our purchases that we only had a few minutes before lunch time. I offered to take the packages to the car so that they would not get lost. I was almost to the door of the mall when I heard one of the boys calling my name. He came running up to me to make sure that I would remember to lock the car doors. I reassured him that his purchases would be safe. Before I went back in the mall I opened one of the packs of gum I had bought. It was so old and hard that I could hardly chew it. I told my sister that my purchase was not even worth the small price I paid for it.

We took the children to lunch then dropped them off at their home. My sister tried the candy that she had purchased and found that it was old and very poor quality. When she was complaining about this I reminded her about what she had told me - it was dollar store merchandise and was supposed to be cheap. I do not think that either of us will be returning to the store.