“””Basically, lonely people go to stores because they need a friend, and they want to talk (and talk and talk and talk) to the cashier about their children, their vacations, their roof repairs, and everything else. It’s endless.””””
That’s absurd. I go to stores and never experience that.
I see the chatty lonely people on a fairly regular basis. They’re almost as bad as the foreign-language speaking people that neglect their kids and shop in groups of 6 or more, thereby taking up entire aisles to other shoppers can’t pass.