If we keep at this long enough, we can point out that we’ve warned everyone on the SDMB about SEARS and KMART. I’d rather be a Wallmartian than shop at either of those places.
Take heed fellow dopers…it’s for your own good.
Note that K-Mart actually bought Sears, but thought the Sears name had more value so converted to that (similarly, Southwestern Bell bought AT&T, but converted the corporation to the more widely known AT&T brand).
So Sears likely sucks (more) now than before because it has been infected with the K-mart mentality.
At a minimum you should have gotten a rain check out of the deal.
KMart does indeed suck. I think the mismanagement has drained all of the life out of anyone working there. It happens to be, by a long shot, the closest department store to my home, and I only go there when absolutely necessary, or when I’m basically 100% sure they have what I want at the price I want, and I need it right away. I still walk in with a nervousness that the trip will go wrong somehow.
The one that killed me, that made me personally furious was around their rewards card. Long, slow moving lines, was on line at least 15-20 min already, and I was finally on deck. Cashier asks the person in front of me if they have a rewards card. Answer “no”. Cashier - “would you like to sign up for one?” Answer “no”. Cashier - “Can I check to see if you’re already in the system?” Answer “ok, here’s my phone #”. Cashier “You’re not in, but since it’s already started, can we finish the application?” Answer “Sigh… ok” and another 5 minutes is spent with Ms. Hunt&Peck sloooowly entering the name and address…
Was the person in front of you also buying uber small amounts of a homepathic placebo?
I have very few opportunities to say “awww, it’s too bad you don’t live in South Carolina where we don’t have this problem because we do something awesome”, so allow me to do it here. In South Carolina you always get the BOGO price even if you just buy one item. Mmm-hmm.
Well, I know from recent experience that Sears (more precisely, Sears Outlet) sucks. I don’t have recent experience of Kmart, so I can’t comment on whether they suck more or less than they did before 2005.
Sears Holdings is now run by a Randian libertarian nut whose background is in real estate investing, and who seems determined to drive the company into the ground. I suspect this is the cause of at least some of the current suckage.
This MIT Guy would disagree.
The rest of the article suggests that Melatonin is “modestly” effective at inducing sleep.
I despise homeopathy as much as the next guy, but Melatonin isn’t part of that particular game.
Call me a bitchy little prig if you like, but you’d better have video before you go accusing me of holding up the people behind me.
To quote part of my response to russian heel:
Reading: still a useful skill in our electronic age.
Why doesn’t the OP just use generic Benadryl, which my booby hatch uses to help even the most, er, nervous get to sleep? It’s cheaper, wears off by morning, stops the snot machine so he and his spouse snore less, and he won’t care if anybody snores (or if there’s a small earthquake) because he’s asleep.
I worked at KMart a few years ago. We were hounded every minute of every day, about rewards cards. They kept track of how many we did per hour, and if it was less than they wanted they would humiliate us about it. What a horrible place to work. I still shop at the one where I use to work, and I occasionally see the HR person who hired me. She always asks me if I’ll come back to work. Um. No thank you.
Missed the edit. I also worked there Black Friday once for 9 hours straight, without being allowed to leave my register once. Yeah, KMart sucks.
It’s really quite Kafaesque isn’t it?
As bizarre as walking into K-Mart is, everyone there just seems to accept it.
Now friends, what would the world be like without Kmart? But honestly, I wouldn’t expect half off a bottle if it was a BOGO offer and they only had one in the dosage I wanted.
Also, anyone else wonder if Lampert’s in it for the real estate value of the stores?
I read the OPs response and appreciate the fair responses.
It just reminds me of people that complain about McDonalds, who cannot understand why they cannot get 5 star service out of an entity that offers $1 cheeseburgers and pays their employs minimum wage.
As for the Melatonin, I’m reminded of being stuck behind the the lispy, bespectacled zipped-up turtlenecked customer at Subway that starts asking the hapless South Asian behind the counter to describe what various species of lettuce they are going to put on his carb and red meat loaded hoagie, because after all, he has an allergy. 
The mind is a weird place, and why one thing reminds us of another isn’t always readily apparent to oneself.
But since you felt the desire to share this, could you perhaps make the connection more evident to the rest of us?
Maybe they’d come to haggle over placebos too.
I came in here to mention what I suspect is the same K-mart (B-tree?) Also, the idea of a big truck filled with racks and lighting fixtures and slack-jawed employees is amusing and yet completely realistic-sounding.
That’s Radio Shack. 
Hmm… I wonder how those stores like K-Mart manage to have low prices? Do they cut back on service? No, because I am sure once people had a bad experience they’d realize paying slightly more elsewhere was worth it and never go back, right? And K-Mart has been around for decades. Got to be a lot of repeat customers. How do they do it?
There are actually clinical trials that verify the efficacy of melatonin to help with sleep disturbances.
http://jcn.sagepub.com/content/early/2008/01/08/0883073807309783.short
http://www.bmj.com/content/bmj/292/6529/1170.1.full.pdf (PDF)