I continue to have my odd fascination with the demise of the Sears and Kmart chains, which are now one company which is vanishing faster than Bill Cosby Fan Clubs. They were once retail giants and Sears actually dates back to 1893 — I did not mistype "1993" — and was once an American institution. I've read just about everything online I could find about this crash-'n'-burn and the consensus seems to point to one reason: Bad management by folks who did everything wrong but will somehow still walk away from this disaster with millions. Why can't you and I get a job like that?
Last night, I walked through the one nearest me, the Kmart in which I occasionally shop. As of today, it's seven days 'til closing. I don't know if that includes Thanksgiving but don't stop in. Everything is 80% off and about 80% of the store is empty. What's left on what shelves are left is a lot of stuff you wouldn't take at any price.
It looks to me like the goal was to sell off everything in the building, fixtures included. And once they had a good amount of it out, I think they brought in the contents of a warehouse or two and put out tons of stuff they couldn't even sell in the store when it was an ongoing business.
80% off is quite a jump from the last time I was in there a month or so again. Items were 20%-40% off their marked prices and I did find some bargains. Last night, I literally could not find one thing that was worth carrying home for free. The book rack was loaded with copies of one of those novels allegedly written by Glenn Beck. I should have gotten a photo of one of them with the "80% off" label and captioned it "Sticker refers to author."
I did take this shot of Wonder Woman and Frozen flip-flops in toddler sizes for $2.00 a pair. I'm guessing that's still about a 60% markup…
I wish I could describe the eerie mood in that place. A fair number of people were roaming around and they all seemed to be muttering, "There must be something here I can use." Mostly, it was cheap clothing, largely unsorted or unlabelled as to size.
I got to chatting briefly with an older lady who had found one shoe that she liked. I helped her rummage through a table of other footwear, searching desperately for its mate. I guess it was worth the gamble to spent fifteen minutes searching because if she'd found it, she would have scored a decent pair for about three bucks. She stopped when I suggested to her that maybe there was no matching shoe.
There were also a lot of toys, not a one of which I'd heard of, many of which looked like they'd been sold, returned and had their boxes taped closed. Completely cleaned out were the departments selling anything you might want to "stock up" on like canned goods, pet food, cleaning supplies, shampoo, toothpaste, etc.
They did seem to have a lot of extra-large brassieres in day-glo colors for a buck apiece. If this had been before Halloween and I ever got any trick-or-treaters in my neighborhood, I would have bought a bunch of these and handed them out, maybe along with some of those Glenn Beck books.
All in all, it was an odd experience and I think I can explain why it interests me so much. I'm really bad at so many things — math, science, physical labor, interpretive dance, getting Sergio to pay me for my work on Groo, etc. Every so often, you read a news item like "Man Goes to Dentist for Cleaning, Winds Up Dying" and you think, "My God, I could have been just as good a dentist as that guy." I could have run Kmart into the ground and they wouldn't have had to pay me millions of dollars to do it. Just gimme fifty bucks and a couple of them bright orange brassieres.