There’s a grocery store in town that is set up in a painfully frustrating way. The entrance leads directly into a long hallway, with shelves full of merchandise on both sides. The entry door is automatic only opens in; IOW there is not getting out through the entry door.
In order to get out you have to walk all the way down the aisle to the opposite end of the store and then turn around, into the main part of the store. The exit door is on the opposite side of the cash registers.
But here’s the kicker: all of the checkout lanes that aren’t in use are blocked by a cart that is chained up. There is no way out of this store except to go out through an open check-out lane. That means that, whether you buy anything or not, you have to wait in line with the other consumers just to get out of the store.
What justification is there for this practice, from a business standpoint? Other than forcing you to walk past much of the merchandise, and forcing you to buy something (to avoid the embarassment of having to wait in line for no reason)? And from a legal standpoint, wouldn’t this violate several lines of any city’s fire code?