Floating Doc said:Full disclosure: I paid a good chunk of my college tuition with Sears paychecks. They were once one of the biggest employers in the country.
Yeah, me too. I sold shoes to put myself through college, lots of women wanting the college kid to help with their shoes....
Closest sears to me is in Michigan, closest kMart is.... not even sure.
I was reading somewhere that the current Sears/K-Mart CEO Eddie Lampert is going to be known as a business legend in college textbooks someday for stripping Sears/K-Mart of every single one of their assets to personally profit while somehow managing to convince the board that he was genuinely trying to keep the company afloat.
IIRC he sold almost all of Sears' real estate and the Kenmore brand to his own hedge fund, then leased Sears' former real estate back to the company for a profit, then closed a bunch of stores and charged them a lease termination fee. After Sears declared Chapter 11 in 2018 the same guy stepped in to buy the remaining assets at a discount and is continuing to strip the company while it is slowly wound down.
The last Sears in the Cincinnati area is near me, but was just recently announced to be closing sometime in the near future. I think I’ve been in it once this year, to get some crows foot wrenches that no one else had locally. It was pretty sad inside.
The nearest sears closed two years ago. The last Kmart goes away this december.
One my co-workers was a sears employee for years. He worked all over but mostly in the hardware part of appliances. The horror stories he tells. The store manager got bonuses based on money saved (not by sales made) and as such the store was freezing cold in winter and blazing hot in summer. Customers would walk in and walk right back out. There were whole sections of lighting panels that didn't work, and so much of the infrastructure of the building was broken.
I personally have seen what happens when you base bonuses off of savings. Everyone gets laid off and nothing gets fixed. The ship soon sinks
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