Have you seen them? My local Walmart in the front has a vending machine blocking a little bit of the door, but enough of the door blocked as to where it wouldn’t be able to be opened in an emergency. Also, I see some emergency exits that say “door can be opened in 15 seconds”. Should you really have to wait 15 seconds in an emergency to open the door?
This is mainly to deter theft. The 15 seconds prevents someone from rushing out the door with merchandise. However, these doors will unlock automatically and instantly with the activation of the fire alarm.
“Delayed egresses” are perfectly acceptable and allowed in most building codes. Common for stairwells and back of store doors that aren’t supposed to be used as a normal exit but are needed for emergency exits. They usually beep or have an audible countdown to discourage people (employee’s and the general public) from using them, and are pretty effective. They are fail safe and the fire alarm should automatically unlock them.
It’s slightly more security than having none at all.
As for blocked fire exits, the fire marshal should inspect the building every year and if it was a problem he’d write the store up.
Turns out that blocked fire exit didn’t have a sign on the outside indicating that it was a fire exit. That was a problem. They recently put up a sign that says “fire exit do not block” and moved the machine out of the way.