I went to a store I'd never been to before last night. I get the flyers in my mail and usually I throw them out. But there was something on the front page of the last one that caught my eye so I kept it. I pondered the purchase for a few days before going to the place.

The store was: Bianca Amor's Liquidation Supercentre.

Oh my GAWD was that a freak show. It was dark, so I didn't notice it driving up, but when you get to the entrance, its hard to not notice the plywood over some of the windows. Plywood. That was the first indication but you step through the door and its like immediate culture shock.

I thought maybe I'd stepped through a dimensional portal, and somehow ended up on the streets of Calcutta. The clutter than infested the place was just like a hundred movies you've seen about the congestion in India. There was just stuff . . . everywhere.

And not neatly, like you'd expect from a store. There was a box here, a box there. What made it worse is that this was obviously someone's idea of neat and orderly but it was just so . . . wrong on a variety of levels. I keep talking in similes but I felt like I'd wandered into a small town flea market. 37 year old merchandise lined up haphazardly into a vague resemblance of order, marked down drastically to make you think you were getting a bargain.

The lone cashier had a name tag made up with a Jiffy marker.

The /supervisor/ slouched back in a broken office chair, yawning loudly and frankly didn't seem to care if the store was open or closed.

The aisles were labelled with poster board and more Jiffy marker lettering.

The cash-out area was more plywood across saw horses.

You couldn't find a god damn thing in this unholy mess. I was desperate to leave but still wanted my $4 boxing gloves. Which, I suppose, is what draws anyone to this type of ungodly hell hole. Yes, its a living nightmare but you can get something cheap.

I couldn't get out of there fast enough. I don't know how you could work there. Which probably explains why I sign on the entrance offered $15 an hour to start. You'd go mad if you stayed any length of time.