I used to dream fairly regularly that I was in a big, polished shopping mall. It's a basically fun and exciting place; I run around, go up the elevators, notice the dusty, barely-inhabited expanses around the outer edges, and puzzle over the alien looking control panels that block off the administrative areas.
I had one dream about a month ago where I was running around and appreciating the wacky architecture. Then I went outside, and there was a whole gang of thugs dressed in blue smoking and loitering. I nonetheless have to take the bus home, so I go 10 feet up the street into the shade of an overpass where I met an associate— a guy who looks like "beard" from Hotline Miami, and who also has the peculiarity of being the cashier in every store I visit. We exchange pleasantries until I notice a guy I knew from school lurking behind a concrete pillar. He's unkempt and overdressed for the weather. I call out to him and can't remember what we spoke about, but it became obvious he had become a paranoid schizophrenic. Something I said set him ranting and gesticulating and trying to calm him down just made him start doing taekwondo moves in the air, so I got the hell out of there back into the mall. The door opens to a long, empty corridor. I get through the entrance and the dude's right behind me. He hits me with a side kick and I go flying down the corridor and wake up.
Last night I dreamt I was in a bigbox store just trying to get some groceries, and the dude's there stuffing merchandise into a filthy sack. He starts shouting (at no one in particular) something like "OH NO! That's too expensive! If I steal THAT, the store will go out of business!" He was really worried that he wasn't staying within whatever set of social policies that only he understands, and which he had established for himself.
I've had a lot of dreams like that lately, where I'm trying to run errands but I can't navigate an endless labyrinth of rope-cordons, or because the bank has emptied my account "because covid" and no further explanation.