Matthew Guzman has been shopping at the FamilyDollar store in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, since he was a kid, but lately something feels different. The service has gotten worse, the lines have grown longer and shoppers have responded accordingly. “It used to be packed here,” Guzman told me on a recent Saturday. “But it died out.” Guzman, who finished high school this year and makes $9.50 an hour as an assistant manager at an outsourcing company, ought to be right in Family Dollar’s core customer group. But that day, he opted out. Cringing at the $4.25 price tag on a broom, he walked across the street to a local 99-cent store instead.

Small decisions like Guzman’s have piled up of late, saddling Family Dollar with a string of disappointing quarters, declining sales and shrinking profits. Facing pressure from shareholders, the company sought to sell itself, leading to a war between bidders that has riveted Wall Street.

The retailer agreed this summer to be acquired by another discount chain, Dollar Tree, for $8.5 billion. But less than a month after that deal was signed, the industry leader, Dollar General, offered to pay $8.9 billion. Dollar General was rebuffed; Family Dollar’s board argued that a merger would draw the ire of antitrust regulators — the businesses, it said, are too similar. (Unlike Dollar General and Family Dollar, Dollar Tree is a “true” dollar store, which sells almost everything for $1.) In response, Dollar General raised its offer to $9.1 billion. When that bid was rejected, Dollar General went hostile, taking its offer directly to Family Dollar shareholders, who have until Oct. 8 to decide whether to tender their shares.

Shoppers have plenty of complaints about Family Dollar these days, but corporate America seems desperate to buy it. This apparent paradox starkly illustrates how lopsided and puttering our economic recovery has been.