I don't shop in physical stores all that much, mostly because I've been stocked up for a while, or get things delivered. But today had to kill some time in an open air shopping mall so stopped into a bunch of stores.

In many of the stores, I could personally tell they had removed a few smaller product stands but still looked pretty full, so if you weren't aware you wouldn't notice.

Most of the clothing retail stores had LARGE sections of discount/clearance areas, as if they aren't sending those back to the warehouse, and are instead using that to help fill the store.

The one that shocked me though was a small mom and pop toy store. They have 4 rooms in this store, with the last room being as big as the other 3 rooms combined. And they had 10 store employees moving what little remaind from the last big room, into the main front room to make the store seem fuller (but even that trick wouldn't work, it was sparse). And putting up brown crate paper to block the 3 entrances into the big room with "Employees Only" written on it. The employees at the store were exchanging contact information and talking about how they weren't sure if they'd see each other again since shifts were being cut and "they'd likely be out of a job soon."