A life-long friend of mine works for Sears, or he used to. He still works at Sears HQ, but was outsourced last year. He has the same job, same responsibilities, same location, just a different name on the paycheck.

It gives me bad deja-vu, as it is striking familiar to what happened to me at Nortel, a company of 90,000 some employees which no longer exists.

Drove by a mall the other day. Anchor stores are Sears, Penny's, Macy's.

Bad thing is that once they go out of business, they will take the smaller shops with them.

The concept of the indoor anchored shopping mall is becoming somewhat obsolete, likely because of the same forces that are crushing the department stores.

Basically, Amazon like companies.

What Sears used to be.

This weekend I realized we were out of paper towels and toilet paper. Minneapolis is a "2 hour delivery" option...I had them in an hour and a half.

Brick and mortar will always have their place, but I had that stuff delivered in the time it would have taken me to get dressed, drive there, get what I needed, and then drove home.

Local grocery has 2 hour delivery.

Just not out in the sticks where we live.

So I guess I need to go to the garage and dig out the tub of broken Craftsman tools. I stopped taking them back when I had to beg and argue with the clerk. The stock line was I abused them. My response was the tool wasn't guaranteed, my satisfaction was. Every damn time. The only way to get your new tool was to demand management. If you make too much of a fuss, they tell you to leave the store. Without the replacement tool.

But I'm older now, I can just stand in front of the register and argue until they replace the broken or frozen up junk.

quote:

Originally posted by darthfuster:
Watch for vintage Craftsman prices to skyrocket.

The majority of my craftsman tools are early 60's wrenches, socket sets. They were my great uncle's. Don't think I will ever part with them though. Pass them down to my son.

quote:

Originally posted by BBMW:
The concept of the indoor anchored shopping mall is becoming somewhat obsolete, likely because of the same forces that are crushing the department stores.

That's what happened to the mall near me. They then redid the entire mall into all outside stores that most people just walk into and out of (not go from store to store like a mall). It's great as it has a Macy's, Petsmart, Lowe's, Panera, Chase, Sears, Big Lots, Chuckee Cheese, and a bunch of small stores like t mobile, verizon, pier 1, etc. etc.

In Huntsville, Texas, a new Sears store just opened.

The final straw for me was the decline (plummet) in the quality and integrity of their people.

A couple of years or so ago, I was in the market for a new set of tires. To my surprise, Sears "had" the best price of any other place around.

I called and they assured me they had a set in stock and the price was the "out the door" price -- everything included.

I drove straight there and learned that the quoted price was not the real price. Even though I had quizzed the guy about fees for mounting, balancing, etc., he now said he must have misunderstood me. Then it turns out that the tires aren't in stock after all, and he starts giving me the hard sell on a different brand.

I walked out and haven't been to a Sears since then.

All I can remember from SEARS is their cheap polyester outdated clothes, their pungent perfume department, their understocked appliances department and their scant staff. The early 2000's was rather bustling for them but that's where it seemed to start to go downhill.

I feel really bad for the staff. I know a lot of people think of that kind of job as entry level, but unfortunately a lot of middle aged or retirement aged people worked there. And it's gonna be hard on thousands of people when they finally close their doors.

Growing up in the seventies my brother and I would wear out the Sears Christmas catalog. We grew up in a small town in California and the downtown Sears Catalog store was where you bought everything.

My brother bought some old catalogs last year and we had a good time looking at all the stuff we used to drool over for Christmas.

Good memories. I remember my parents buying Star Wars toys from the catalog back in 1978. Wish I still had those toys now!