I find it amazing that payday loan shops can make enough money to stay in business. I’ve lived in eight different states, but I never noticed payday loan shops until I moved to Spokane, Washington, two years ago. Before moving here, I’d never even heard of a payday loan. I realize that they’re everywhere, but it’s funny that I’d never noticed them before. What strikes me as strange is that whenever I’ve driven past a payday loan store, I’ve never seen a car in the parking lot.
In Spokane, payday loan stores populate the main commercial drags
They abound in the seedy parts of town, too. I wonder if these places do their all business over the internet or whether they actually have some walk-in trade. I’ve never seen a soul around any of the stores.
I don’t care one way or the other about payday-lender controversies
I just think the storefronts with their empty parking lots are strange. Maybe people are embarrassed to be seen in the stores. But I see cars in the parking lots outside porn shops, seedy “love” shops, head shops, pawn shops, and weight-loss clinics. Somehow, the payday loan shops manage to keep their doors open for business. Wouldn’t it be just as humiliating to be caught at a porn shop or a weight-loss clinic as it would be to seen walking out of a payday loan joint? How about one of those smokers’ stores? A store just for smokers? Walking out of one of those places definitely advertises your lifestyle and mental acuity to anyone who happens to see. If the embarrassment is that you have to be poor as well as stupid to walk into a payday loan shop, don’t you have to be just as poor and even more stupid to walk into a bank? Or a pawn shop? Or a weight loss clinic? Or a smoker’s shop?
What about the banks?
When you look at what banks charge for short-term loans — (how about those $40 overdraft fees on $5 debit purchases?) – isn’t it just as humiliating to be caught walking into a Bank of America as it is a Payday Loans America? If it’s about being stupid, I think it may be more stupid to walk into a mainstream bank today than it is to walk into a payday loan store or a head shop. But it’s all creepy. Those payday loan stores with empty parking lots; those banks with cars parked out front and customers boldly coming and going; and those other questionable businesses taking up the retail space in between these venerable financial institutions.
