After hearing from others who don't have CVS stores, it got me thinking about that: one tends to assume similarity of experiences, don't you think? For instance, as someone whose parents traveled a great deal, I was stunned to get to college and meet someone who had never been on a plane. Never? In your whole life? I grant you, we were all in our late teens or early 20s, but you know, if you've live in Guyana and Brazil as a small child, you assume that everyone has traveled. Or at least I assumed.
To this day, even though I know this is true, I have to remind myself of this, that my experiences, even generalized, are not everyone's. There are CVS stores in south Florida, and they're all over Massachusetts, and there were plenty in Charlotte NC when I lived there (1994-2001), but they aren't in plenty of places.
Though in Charlotte, it was Eckerd's* that were everywhere: a friend and I used to joke that you could never give directions that included "turn right at the Eckerd on the corner" because that didn't narrow things down much.
*Ironically, I just learned that CVS bought out Eckerd in 2004, so Charlotte must look much more CVS-heavy than it used to.
Incidentally, the Wikipedia article on CVS mentions receipt length as a thing.
I've never heard of Eckerds either. We have Rite Aid and Walgreens mostly.
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