Endangered Species

The only customer in the home electronics store appeared to be returning something. The shoe store had a few shoppers, but there was plenty of room to walk around without running into anyone.

The few people ambling around the uncrowded mall were not carrying shopping bags. They stopped at the kiosks in the main aisle and looked at the tie-dyed T-shirts and the calendars and the gold necklaces, but pretty much everyone who wanted a gold necklace already had one.

The CD/DVD store looked pretty empty, too. The fancy card shop was deserted; the As Seen on TV store, empty.

It was 4 in the afternoon on a weekday. Most people were still at work except for teenage girls, who arrived in groups of three or four and disappeared into the movie theater. Maybe all these stores are packed the rest of the time, but while I was there, the mall was scarily empty. Maybe when the movies let out there is a rush.

But one little shop was booming while the others languished. It was the smallest store in the mall, and it had six clerks who were helping two customers apiece. It was the cellphone store, and you’d have thought it was giving away free bacon. I think one of the people in line was the manager of the fancy card shop.

The smallest store that’s probably paying the least rent is raking in the most dollars. Each cellphone costs, what, $200? $400?

“But sometimes the phone is free. No wonder there’s a line,” you might say. Yes, if you commit to a monthly plan that will cost you, on the low end, $2,400 by the time you finish it in two years, the store will give you some kind of phone. Not the best phone, but a phone.

So the cellphone store “gives” you a $200 phone and you give it $2,400 or more. Wow, what a bargain!

OK, I’m going to say a stupid old-man thing. Here it comes: “My first car didn’t cost $2,400.” The one I’m driving now didn’t cost much more. (I traded in my clunker for a beater.)