“Oh!” exclaimed a wealthy suburban consumer this afternoon as she drove through her town’s main commercial thoroughfare. “I didn’t know they’d put a Barnes and Nobles’s up over there.”

“Oh, and they put a Chili’s up too,” she added. “That must’ve just gone up there. Do you want some Chili’s?”

Local suburban officials confirmed the woman’s allegation, additionally citing fourteen other new “big box” stores that “they just put up over there.”

Other passers-by also took note of the new Barnes & Noble. “This will really add distinction to our suburb,” one said. “We used to have a few independent booksellers in town, which made us really weird. Now that we’ll be indistinguishable from every other suburb in the U.S., I’ll feel much more like part of the ‘in crowd.’

“And now the people in our community can use these big box stores as a means to funnel their money to a few executives who live nowhere near us,” he concluded. “It’s so clever, you’ve got to love it!”