Is This What ‘New Normal’ Shopping Looks Like in NH? 

This past weekend, I went to an actual brick and mortar mall.  I'll keep which one out of this because although this isn't a bad story about the mall or the stuff in it, but it might bum some people out.

It was Saturday, early evening and I hadn't been out all day except for around my yard, so we got in the car and headed to the mall to look around.  David had gift certificate for a store that had about $200 bucks on it!  I thought it would be a great time to get a jump on Christmas shopping, so off we went.  I hadn't been to a mall since Janurary, so I

The parking lot was not even close to capacity, but I've seen that from the highway driving by the mall, so I knew that was going to be the case.  Unfortunately, even before the pandemic, the mall had been losing people to online shopping.  We got a great parking space and went inside one of the big stores at the end.

We were looking around for some gifts and found a couple things for the kids.  Okay, great.  Time to pay.

Hello?  Helloooooo???  Anyone here?

We could not find an associate to save our lives.  I swear, we could have walked out with the whole store and no one would have noticed.  There were a few other people there, but they were shoppers, like us.  We finally found someone with a nametag and they took us to the counter, with huge plexiglass in front of us, to pay.

When we were leaving, we heard the announcement that the store was closing in 10 minutes.  WHAT?!  Since when does the mall close on a Saturday night?  Where are all the teenagers going to hang out?

Not sure what the future holds for malls all across the country, but I'm hoping that they will see the good in all of this.  Right now, I'm thinking they are going through a tough time.