I went to K-Mart yesterday and it was soooo depressing. Everything was locked up! The electronic toothbrushes and waterpiks and teeth whiteners were locked behind a case and it said if you wanted it to go to the electronic section for an associate to get a key. The dvd’s, telephones, and anything else that couldn’t be bolted down was locked up too. I wanted a Mr. and Mrs. Smith dvd, but it was behind the case so I thought eh, why bother because it was $20.00 anyway, but I walked a little more down the aisle and say it on a display box of “holiday movies” behind no locked case so I got it. The shoe aisle had shoes thrown all over and they got under my cart when I was trying to push it so I just got out of that aisle. Some shelves had rust and sticky crusty stuff on them and made whatever was on the shelf less appealing. The ceiling had missing tiles and waterspots from a roof leak. The shopping cart had an unidentifiable goo on the handle. I really wasn’t feeling the Christmas spirit being there, but I got what I needed and left. I don’t think I’ve shopped in K-Mart in 8 years. Has it always been this way? I even went to Wal-Mart too and didn’t think Wal-Mart was as bad.
A lot may depend on the exact neighborhood, but most of my experiences with K-Mart in the last 15 years or so have been pretty much what you describe. Lots of merchandise locked up, for security, I assume–it wouldn’t be that bad if there was someone with a key who could unlock it when you wanted to, but there never seem to be sales clerks anywhere nearby who have a key that opens that particular case. The end result is that they probably don’t sell much in those parts of the store, because unless it’s really on sale, no one in their right mind would work that hard to buy it.
Shoe and toy departments are pretty much always trashed, too. Carts are pretty much unusable, when you can get them separated from the other carts, because the wheels are broken.
I generally only go to K-Mart as a last resort, or if there’s something specifically on sale that I want to get. We used to have a K-Mart within walking distance, but I still went out of my way to go to Target or Meijer instead, because I hated setting foot in the K-mart.
I worked at a K-Mart when I was a young’un back in '94. It was like that then also. This was back in Cleveland at the K-Mart on 65th street.
Yep…and 10 checkout lanes and two cashiers.
Sounds like you have described the average K-Mart.
Yucky and dirty and poorly run. Store of last resort.
…who will only give you change in nickles and sneer at you if you protest.
Gotta be the neighborhood. Never had a problem here. Same cleanliness, service, etc you’d find at Wal-Mart, Target and even Marshall Field’s. I will say it’s harder to find a clerk at K-Mart than the rest, but I suspect it’s more a point of keeping overhead costs low. You may have to spend a minute or two longer looking for someone to ring up the insanely cheap DVD-RW’s, but there are a few advantages.
First, with some perspective, most people don’t spend nearly as much time as they think waiting for service. It’s not like a surgeon in the middle of open heart surgery has to hit K-Mart for a valve.
Second, all companies suffer an image problem when you’re looking at what the people in the area do. Boogers on a shopping cart? A Shoe Dept. being in disarray? Toys scattered across the aisle? I’m sure it happens. I’ve seen it in some stores. It’s not indicative of a company in itself. It’s what the people visiting the stores do. And many of the same people are the pool of employees. Comes down to the area. Keep in mind many of those people are working at Burger King and Starbucks. Imagine what the quality of cleanliness and order is in that case.
I know it sounds quaint, and I don’t give a damn. A store is a building that holds stuff. The people (customers and staff) are what can create a problem. Go to any department store and the only things up here locked behind glass are video games, cameras, and home heating fuel. (Hey, it’s friggin cold up here!)
Of course, we leave our cars running in the mall parking lot while shopping and have less than 5 car thefts a year. What do us dullards know?
Upon entering the K-Mart here a few years back, I was almost knocked over by an overpowering smell of mothballs. Not just the smell… I could taste that chemical on the air. Made my eyes water, even.
I couldn’t bring myself back to the store until a couple weeks ago. Still mothbally. Blegh. No wonder their parking lot is always empty.
I think KMart has cut back on its staff due to its diminished profits. All of the problems that have been noted could be attributed to staff shortages.
Kmart was like that 15 years ago. Kinda grubby, kinda understaffed.
I still don’t see what Sears saw in Kmart. Yes, Kmart was emerging from a bankruptcy reorganization and was available for the right buyout, but…
The K-Mart in the East Village, in an increasingly gentrified section of the Village in fact, is the exact same way, so it ain’t necessarily the neighborhood. In fact, it’s in a fine historic old building and is having a gazillion-dollar luxury condo built diagonally across the street from it.
No parking lot, of course. Disarray and indifference and slopiness, present.
The K-Mart in the East Village, in an increasingly gentrified section of the Village in fact, is the exact same way, so it ain’t necessarily the neighborhood. In fact, it’s in a fine historic old building and is having a gazillion-dollar luxury condo built diagonally across the street from it.
No parking lot, of course. Disarray and indifference and sloppiness, present.
Slopiness. Sloppiness. Double-posting. So sorry, it’s late. :o
I had the same experience too, but left it out in my post. What the hell is that smell? I felt like my lungs were knocked out in there. It was heat and musty smell with mothballs mixed in at my K-Mart.
Oh yeah…that’s Kmart. There are several reasons Target and Walmart are kicking their butts, but what you describe is a key part of it.
Bottom line: they don’t care. Not about the customer. Not about the stores. They’ve given up. At least that’s my guess.
Back when I was doing retail inventories, the two stores I hated the very most were Lowes and K-Mart. If I to pick only one, I would hate K-Mart with all my heart and soul. Both places were invariably filthy and neither one was ever prepared for inventory. It was almost impossible to find anyone to resolve problems and when someone was located, they were almost always surly and uncooperative. The last time I was in K-Mart as a customer was three years ago; I wanted to buy a fishing license and eventually gave up in despair.
I absolutely quit going there years ago. The whole thing is just… yuck. Being sentenced to prison was better for Martha Stewart’s image than signing a deal with K-Mart! Now that’s hitting rock bottom!
Since they acquired Sears, you can expect the same thing there in the future. They are very hard-line about nearly everything they do. Morale at Sears is in the toilet.
In their defense, shoplifting is extremely expensive for a store. They SHOULD lock stuff up. The good folks can’t offset the bad ones. It’s a pain in the ass, but they have to protect themselves.
I admit to enjoying shopping at K-Mart, precisely because of the predictably empty, run-down appearance of the store. No one hassles me. Unfortunately, the quality of some of their products is even a cut below Target. If I’m going out to purchase some cheap appliance or other, though, I’d rather not contend with the suburban-yokel atmosphere at the more successful crappy chains. Dirty, almost no selection of products, but at least it’s quiet.
The best cast-iron skillet I’ve owned came from K-Mart – Martha Stewart, made in China, blah blah blah. However, the sides are low enough to make it a much more useful tool than the higher-sided skillets I think Lodge offers (I don’t think they make a skillet with sides lower than 3", could be wrong).
I can’t remember the last time I entered a KMart, but the last ones I’ve tried, both in Florida and Maryland, were dirty, cluttered, and smelly.
Waaaay back before there was a WalMart in the area I lived, KMart was it, and even then, they were unimpressive. They’d advertise something, run out, give you a rain check, and never have it again. All a charade. I honestly can’t believe they’re still in business.