Dollar Tree is not a great store, but what’s great about it is that it makes everyone who walks in feel like a gvir.
You tell your kids, “Help yourself to literally any item in the store. If you don’t like it, we can just throw it out later!”
You go through the store saying, “We’ll take one of these, one of these…” you’re not counting.
I don’t go often, because it’s too much gashmiyos.
It’s the ultimate, “I went in for one item and came out with 20,” store.
Particularly snacks. Every time you go, you look through every snack in the store, scouring for anything that’s kosher, so you can show up at Shabbos party and go, “Look at this variety we got here! They don’t sell these in the other stores!” with flavors you’ve never heard of before, because they’re the off flavors, like (this is a real item) Fruity Pebbles popcorn.
This is one thing the store specializes in – things you can’t find anywhere else, sometimes for good reason.
I was in the seasonal aisle at the end of the summer, and they had this wooden sign you can hang in your kitchen that says, “Oh my gourd.” Get it? Me neither. I always wondered what OMG stands for, and now I know.
There was also a large wooden sign with a recipe for pumpkin pie. Who’s hanging this on their wall? I understand if it’s a good recipe, so if your guests say, “This is great! What’s the recipe?” you can just gesture at it with your mouth full. But you don’t know it’s good when you buy the sign. It’s in the dollar store, so maybe it isn’t. Maybe there’s a typo.
Also, who makes pumpkin pie so often that it needs to be on a huge sign on the wall? If I had to hang one sign on the wall, it would be either salad dressing or cholent. Or banana muffins.
If anyone wants to get in on this, it’s like a $10 idea.
But they definitely sell certain things that shouldn’t be in a dollar store, like oven mitts. I would not trust oven mitts that I bought at the dollar store. Unless I’m two-plying them. And I’m someone who happily uses my yarmulke.
And some of the items are scams. I saw a package that said, “chocolate-chip flavored cookies.” So there aren’t even real chocolate chips in it? It’s chocolate-chip flavored?
I also saw “kosher dill pickles” without a hechsher.
And some of the items are totally useless. When I was in yeshiva, I bought a package of 300 Q-tips from the dollar store. I stuck the first one in my ear that night, and it came back out without the cotton.
And their tweezers were not useful in getting it out.
A lot of the items they sell are probably fine; they’re just unfortunately named.
For example, they sell a hand cream called “Udderly Smooth.” Is that supposed to be a pun? Oh my gourd.
I don’t get it. Will your hands be as smooth as a cow’s udder? Is it made out of cow udders?
The package says, “Does not contain any milk or bovine ingredients.” Clearly people were asking questions, yet they decided they’re going to keep the name but also write this on the package.
And then sometimes they have legitimate items, but in ridiculously small packages. For example, you can buy a package of one permanent marker. Although permanent is probably relative.
Surprisingly, they do sell brooms. Though they sell the broomstick and the bottom part separately, so it’s $3. It’s definitely convenient, because most of the time that you replace a broom, the stick is actually fine.
But I’m not sure how the dollar store makes money. Because at any given time, there’s only one cashier working. And nothing they ring up costs more than $1.50. How many items can one cashier scan in one hour that pays for the overhead and the employee and so on? Assuming the scanner works every time. Though they don’t really need scanners, do they? There should be just one big button in the middle of the cash register, that says, “1.50.” But even so, how are they breaking even? Is this a front for some mob business? Like you buy just the right combination of items, and the cashier opens a door behind the freezer?
There’s a freezer! That’s overhead too. Though I’ve never bought anything out of that freezer, because there’s no way they leave it plugged in overnight.
And they’re not making money through word of mouth either. It’s not a store that people talk about:
“You like it? I got it at Dollar Tree!”
It never really comes up anyway, because everything breaks the day after you get it. But you don’t care; you just buy another one. It’s the gvir mentality. You’re emptying the car of all the loose bags of potato chips, and your wife asks, “How many did you buy?” and you’re like, “I don’t even know.”
You lose count of how much you bought, and you get to the front, and you realize, “Oh, I don’t have bags.”
So with most stores, if you forget bags, you say, “I’ll just dump the items in the back of my car, loose. I’ll have chips for days. Find them under the seats while I’m cleaning for Pesach, like, “Yum! Garlic raspberry!””
With Dollar Tree, though, you can’t get the cart out the door. They have these shopping carts with a pole sticking up so they can’t get through the doorway. That’s another way they save money. That way, they don’t have to send the one employee out into the parking lot to collect the carts.
You just realize you have no bags when you’re at the cash register, and all the customers in the store are waiting behind you, so you can’t run out to get bags from your car, and you can’t wheel the cart out, and they don’t care. It’s like, “Just pick up your pile so it’s not in the way of the next person’s pile.” Like at airport security.
They do sell cloth bags, but those are the one thing in the store you would not buy. You have never paid for a cloth bag, and you’re not about to start now. I bought one. It says on it, “Do what makes you happy.” What makes me happy is not paying for a bag. Who passive-aggressively gives someone a bag that says this? It sounds like what a wife says when she’s not thrilled with what her husband’s going to do, but he’s going to do it anyway. And she packs him a lunch in this bag, so he feels guilty about it all day.
But you always need bags, because you walk into the store and think, “I can buy anything here. Anything. I’m limited only by what I can carry out of the store.” And everything you buy is fifty percent air. Or 100%, if you buy balloons.
You also lose track of what the prices are everywhere else. You come home and say, “Look at what I bought at the dollar store! And your wife says, “I got that for less money last week.”
“Oh. Well, it was $1.50. I don’t care.” You don’t let that ruin your simcha.
And your wife says, “Okay, whatever makes you happy.”
And you say, “That’s what it says on my bag!”
“You bought a bag?!”
The annoying thing is that everything in the store has to be $1.50. Nothing’s less. Even things that should be less. If they have something that’s normally 60 cents, they say, “We can’t sell it for 60 cents. There’s one button on the cash register!”
“I know! We’ll put them in packages of 2 ½!”
So some packages have way too many of something. Like the other week I wanted to buy a comb, but any comb I found on Amazon was $6. So I went to Dollar Tree.
The only combs I could find came in packages of 12.
What am I going to do with 12 combs? I don’t have 12 heads. Should I go in on this with 11 of my friends?
I can come home, like, “Guess what! Chanukah came early this year! You get a comb, you get a comb…!”
So all in all, I don’t know if anything they sell is quality, but it’s an amazing store to go to if you’re the type of person who loses things.
“What happened to my comb? I just had it!”
Why shell out for something nice that will last? In fact, this way you’ll be happy you forgot it somewhere. That way you don’t have to store it. Not to mention school supplies that your kids are going to lose on day one, before they even need them.
It’s also the go-to place to run out and get poster boards the night before your kid’s project that he just told you about.
This is not a sponsored article.
Mordechai Schmutter is a weekly humor columnist for Hamodia, a monthly humor columnist, and has written six books, all published by Israel Book Shop. He also does freelance writing for hire. You can send any questions, comments, or ideas to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.