Comment by jacobolus

It is common for someone to say, for instance, "I need to go to the store" even if they don't have any particular store in mind.

A prescriptivist pedant might insist that this is incorrect, and they should instead say "I need to go to a store", but in my judgment as a native speaker, the version with "the" is more idiomatic, and the version with "a" sounds stilted.