Disposable Cell Phones

Apparently I'm the only customer at Mini Stop who isn't there to get a cell phone.

I stop there every day on the way to work to get a snack, and once in a while there's actually a line at the register which gives me a chance to really look around and see what this place is all about. And apparently it's all about disposable cell phones. Everything else they sell at this otherwise standard convenience store is ancillary to their cell phone business.

Now I want you to understand what I mean by "disposable cell phones." They just have a shelf with phones on it. Not a display of packaged phones, no. The phones have no packaging. They have no chargers. They have no accessories of any kind. It's just a random empty shelf behind the register with a dozen or so random old cell phones strewn about.

A customer will get to the register, hand the cashier a similar phone, the cashier will put it somewhere away from the other phones, and will get another one from the shelf. Money changes hands, transaction is complete.

They don't even switch SIM cards or anything. It's just one random throw-away phone for another. They're not even the same model phone. (They're similar enough in that they're of the same standard circa-10-year-old handset that should probably be broken or lost by now.) I can only assume that the ones being returned are kept separate because they're the ones that need to be charged. After all, there are no chargers with these phones. Just... phones.

Is that really how this transaction works? You get a phone with some random number that you don't even know, you use it until the battery is flat, and you exchange it at any Mini Stop for the next phone with some entirely new random number that you don't even know? How is that even sustainable? You don't keep your contacts, your friends don't know your number, etc.

Just buy a damn phone. Do they not have cheap plans with throw-away phones here? Do they not have Go-phones and shit like that? This model seems horribly broken.