I was very surprised to learn, a few weeks ago, that BOTH K-Mart stores in my area (one in Westlake, one in Simi Valle) are still open.
Oddly, I can’t think of a single Wal-Mart in the L.A. area. Probably because their “modus operandi” is to open huge stores in small towns and dominate the local economy, which doesn’t work very well in a city of 10+ million…
Well there is a K-Mart on San Fernando Rd. south of Glendale.
I wonder what you mean by treating their employees badly at Wal-Mart, ParentalAdvisory? My father has been working there as a regular floor worker for about 9 years now, and he has full benefits, stock rewards, and retirement bennies coming up. He gets paid vacations, sick days, and holidays off. He gets paid for all the hours he works, gets all the breaks he’s entitled to, they have parties for the employees and picnics, and he’s been allowed to transfer to other departments that interest him. What part of that is treating them badly? Or is he just very fortunate?
Sounds like the Ernst hardware I worked at in Missoula, MT, in 1990. Ernst has gone T.U. now, of course, for many of the same reasons K-Mart did: big store, but non-compelling shelf stock, too few employees available to help customers, too few cashiers.
I couldn’t get anything approaching full-time work, and the pay was literally minimum-wage: $3.85/hr. Weekly schedules were generally not put up until the day before, and sometimes not until the actual day. And it was not possible to work a second job, as the scheduled hours were all over the clock…literally. Even if the schedule had been up a week in advance, it wouldn’t have helped.
I quit. Shortly thereafter, all the stores underwent a huge remodel, multimillion dollar job. It didn’t address the real problems, which were skimpy stock and not enough employees, who were poorly treated besides. And then all Ernst stores everywhere went under and closed.
Home Depot and Lowes do a much better job than Ernst did. Locally, McLendon’s does a FAR better job - predictably, they’re a mom-and-pop chain, just a few local storefronts. Good stock, and an employee in every other aisle. You can imagine where I shop by preference.
No, they’re just doomed, period.
Yeah, but K-Mart’s problems would take years to fix, even if they had no debt problems and lots of money in the bank.
It helps if such a company has strengths to build around, and discrete weaknesses that can be attacked. Damned if I can identify any of K-Mart’s strengths; their weakness is that they’re just a mess. Dirty stores, routinely out of advertised items, can never find an employee when you need one…the list goes on and on. They can’t do the basics right, let alone progress to the point where someone would want to shop at a K-Mart rather than a Wallyworld or Target.
And what of it? Neither of them remotely resembles K-Mart.
I’m not an accountant. All I’m saying is, see me in six months or so. (I’m also not a stockholder, so I have nothing to gain or lose here.)
I’m also not a financial whiz, and I admittedly don’t know anything about bankruptcies (except my own). Sure, the companies are different, and perhaps that has real bearing. Does, it though? Isn’t it remotely possible this could be turned around?
I mean, it doesn’t really matter. I only go to the one around the corner because it’s there, and WalMart isn’t. If it’s gone, I’ll just have to go further than usual. It’s not like a great chasm would open in the retail community - although not a few jobs would be lost.
I’m not an accountant or a stockholder either. But due to two of the local K-Marts being nearer than the nearest Wallyworld or Target, I’m a more than occasional customer. I try to avoid them when possible anyway. That’s my perspective, and what I’m basing my judgment of K-Mart’s (un)likely survival on. They’ve sucked for a long time, and in fact they sucked just this morning. If a turnaround is happening, it isn’t exactly manifesting itself locally.
It certainly doesn’t seem so, on a store-by-store basis. But I guess what I’m saying is that since we don’t have the entire-business perspective, maybe there are subtle improvements we don’t know about. Or, more likely, maybe there aren’t.
The addition of the self-checkout lanes is fairly new, isn’t it? Maybe it’s post bankruptcy, and maybe it’s part of the Grand Plan. Don’t know that it’s succeeding at all, though.
To be honest, for them to really break even or turn this around completely, they’d need to reinvent themselves a little. WM and Target both do what KMart does and used to do, and much better.
Not for nothing, but the K-mart in my area closed down all of the self-checkout lanes, so it’s apparently not working for that store at least.
The only think I like about K-mart is Joe Boxer underwear, outside of that it’s just a crappy store with pretty good prices.
I ;ike the cheap sneakers.
I work in a photo lab, & shoes get ruined by spilled chemicals really easily.
So K-Mart’s ultra cheap but serviceable sneakers are a ghodsend.
Small bitch–why doesn’t Target carry shoes in a Wide width? I can’t wear regular size. :mad:
Payless does…at least in women’s.
Try finding narrow tennies. :rolleyes:
I insulted a manager. I really did not like that guy. My mistake was that I assumed that I could go back some months after I’d quit for college and deal with it, but I realized I just hated everyone there.
I never had it that bad, but it got to the point (after about a month) where I just started dreading going to work and made up any excuse not to.
Unaccountably I found this rant quite amusing. Especially the petty triumphalism at the end. Good work.
:bows:
Quick answer: he’s not a woman. IIRC all the suits regarding employee treatment and discrimination against W-Mart were from women.
Obviously, Smiling Bandit hasn’t worked at W-Mart. 
The K-Mart in Sunland-Tujunga (on Foothill Blvd.) is still there.
Even though K-Mart invariably sucks, I still am fond of that K-Mart. It was the “only game in town” in downtown Sunland. At least all the time I lived there.
They just blocked them off in the local K-Marts in my area too.
Are they blocked off all the time, or just during certain hours? (They seem to do the latter with those lanes in our local SuperFresh.)
The K-Mart a half mile from my home closed a few months back. We suburbanites were alternately cheering and lamenting its untimely demise. (Untimely in that it should have closed eons ago.) Cheering because the store sucked. I went in once to get a can of tennis balls. It took me 3 minutes to find the things and TWENTY minutes to get through line. Lamenting because the nearest Walmart or Target is a good 20 minutes away.
I thought self-scan was a good idea, but in true K-mart fashion, they executed it poorly. First of all, they only installed two scanners, only one of which worked! Stupid, stupid, because you have to staff an employee to monitor the things in case of questions (especially during the training period when they are new), in case the price had to be adjusted (because K-mart’s scanned prices NEVER matched their ads), and for theft management. Instead of HIRING a person to man the U-scan, thus ultimately ADDING valuable check-out lanes, they simply took one of the much-needed cashiers off her lane!!! Net sum gain: zero.
They could learn a thing from Kroger. When they first came out with their U-Scans, they had TWO employees there to train people and/or get them over their fear of the things. They also installed four U-scan stations so that the line moves quickly, even if you are stuck with a 50 year old woman who’s so stupid and slow she is only qualified to work at K-mart ahead of you. They U-Scan machines work all the time, they are user friendly, and are weight sensitive so they can tell whether you bagged an item after ringing it up, thus cutting down on theft.
And now Kroger customers willingly line up for the U-Scan instead of using a cashier. Bottom line: Kroger saves a bundle in labor costs because they’ve effectively replaced 4 cashiers for the price of one UScan Monitor. They shift the work to the consumer, who cheerfully takes it on because it means he gets in and out of the store quicker. And Kroger’s profits go up…
Go Kroger! And I’m not just saying that because I have Kroger stock. And, Dan, I appreciate what you’re saying, and technically you are correct. But IMO K-Mart has already drawn its last breath. We’re just waiting for the coronor to officially declare it dead.
Wouldn’t want to. But at least at the one nearby they manage to at the least look like they’d rather be working than sl;ashing their wrists in the restroom.