Just five minutes into Seniors’ Day at my local Shoppers Drug Mart, I’ve loaded up on Pampers, a container of organic flax meal, an electric toothbrush, Life brand vitamins and Advil. I am not a senior. I am at least three decades away from retirement. But here I am, on the last Thursday of the month, snaking my shopping cart around walkers and bundle buggies, hunting for what I need. My mother has split off into another tributary in the store. Divide and conquer. In a sense, I have invited myself to the monthly meeting of her club, where members get 20 per cent off, and I am behaving somewhat overzealously.

There’s no rule against shopping with a senior on Seniors’ Day and taking advantage of their discount. It’s doubtful that the company cares about the finer details of borrowed seniorship. The store is full.

“They give you a $10 off coupon if you spend $50,” my mom says to me as we line up for a cashier, every till buzzing. It is in this line that I realize how devoted Shoppers Drug Mart customers are. Loyalty is rare in this depressed retail environment—a time when, save for special mom-and-pop survivors, a cherished butcher or cheese vendor or a barbershop, most of us have collectively turned away from the small and into the viable expanse of the big.

The chain has not escaped criticism for its aspirations. In late 2007, negative reaction burbled up when construction of a super-sized Shoppers started on the Danforth, pushing out the Ralph Day Funeral Home and a few other small businesses. Inevitably, though, the issue was forgotten. Now residents of Greektown are in that very store late at night, filling their prescriptions and buying their Toblerones. That’s what happens when a big box goes urban; convenience converts even skeptics. They find themselves drawn to the possibility of buying their vitamins and their hair elastics and even some of their electronic gadgets (certain Shoppers now even sell Wiis) in one amenable shopping environment, while also tending to the health of their families.

We go there mostly for necessity: toilet paper, cold remedies, prescriptions (which constitute some 50 per cent of the company’s sales), kitty litter. The proposition that then engages us is the huge amount of choice we see and the other things that we feel suit our lives in a way that is not entirely, convincingly, necessary but is certainly somehow justifiable.

And there is another hook. I can cash in my thousands of Optimum points, accumulated steadily through 10- or 20-times-the-points promotions, only to rack up more Optimum points to bring me back for more shopping tomorrow or the day after. This is every retailer’s reverie: the loyal spend while earning loyalty points to enable them to spend again—the sweet circle of shopping life.

Like newspaper boxes, parking meters and Starbucks, if something is ubiquitous, it becomes part of the background of a city, almost invisible to the people who pass by it every day. We become unmoved to consider how the thing that is everywhere came to be, and just how much of the city’s real estate it consumes. And that’s why I was surprised to discover how many Shoppers Drug Marts there are. Across this city, 127 have planted their patriotic red and white flag posts—the corporate colours, accented by sky blue. (More than 1,170 exist in Canada, operating as Pharma­prix in Quebec.) There are also 65 Shoppers Home Health Care stores, which sell canes, walkers, wheel­chairs, braces and more.

The Optimum card, launched 10 years ago, is the more agile competitor to Air Miles, a card that is aligned with Rexall Pharma Plus. By comparison, Optimum points accrue more quickly, and they’re appealingly easy to use—each receipt tells you how many you’ve got. All you have to do is carry the card in your wallet. Approximately 2.5 million of us, or nearly half the GTA population, are Optimum cardholders. Nationwide, 9.5 million are active card users of Optimum.