King Dollar Inc

Twas a day when I would rarely think of entering a dollar store — I thought they were just full of junk, and had no real value to offer me. However, my wife has turned me into a convert of the dollar store, and over the past couple of years, I’ve been leaving my formerly «elitist» viewpoints about such establishments behind, and have become more «enlightened» to the joys of cheap-​o shopping. After all, there are so many wonderful discoveries in store for you every time you enter a dollar store.
Now, when I talk about dollar stores, I’m talking about stores where all items are ONE DOLLAR or less — so places like «Dollar General» don’t really qualify — they have items that are ALL prices, so I don’t even know why they have the word dollar in their title; it feels a tad misleading.
For those who are new to the dollar store, this particular branch of King Dollar would NOT be a good place to start. Perhaps other stores in the King Dollar chain are better, but based on my first experience with this one, I probably won’t give them a try.
Upon first entering King Dollar, it seems to be pretty similar to all of the 99 Cent Only stores I had been to before. The price was a tad higher, $ 1.09 or less, but that aspect didn’t really turn me off too much. The selection was decent, and I was pretty excited to see some interesting food items that I hadn’t seen elsewhere. We picked out a few purchases, and went to the register. It was one of the old fashioned kind, where the clerk types in the prices. Now, none of the items we purchased HAD prices on them, yet many of the items in the store were priced LESS than $ 1.09, according to the shelf. Yet, when the clerk rung us up, he just typed in $ 1.09 for each item. I wasn’t positive, but I thought we had picked up at least one item that was less than $ 1.09, but I wasn’t going to quibble over 30 cents, so I just went with it, and commented to my wife on it as we departed. (Most other dollar stores have a bar code scanner, which rings up the price that is reflected on the shelf, and pretty accurately at that.)
As we left, my wife was feeling a bit peckish, so she tore into the bag of chicarrones (yummy fried pork fat, similar to pork rinds but with a lot more fatty stuff to it) she had just purchased. These aren’t your regular pork rinds, but smaller pieces with much more fat — they tend to be a bit chewy, if you’ve ever had them. As she bit into one, it was super hard, and almost impossible to chew. We looked at the bag, and indeed, it was out of date. (who knew pork fat wouldn’t taste good forever???) After looking at her bag, I examined the two or three other food items we had purchased, and we discovered they were all out of date; one package was more than a year past it’s expiration date! Naturally, we decided to return these items, and walked right back into the store — mind you, this was less than five minutes after making the purchase!
As it turns out, they wouldn’t give us a refund, despite the fact that the items they sold clearly shouldn’t have even been on a shelf. They did allow us to «exchange» our items for others, and we picked out a few non-​food items.
Pretty poor management, in my opinion — I don’t expect stores like this to be perfect, and I know that anybody can make mistakes, but this seemed a little excessive. With so much competition in the marketplace, especially among discount stores of this type, there is no need to patronize one that will sell inferior product, and then not even provide a refund for items returned within five minutes. Go to the nearby 99 cent store (next to the Goodwill off of FM 1960) — I assure you your experience there will be very nice! And if you’ve never set foot into a dollar store before, please don’t hesitate to – I guarantee you’ll find SOMETHING worthwhile.