So, as so often happens, the biggest problem was that it was acquired by someone uninterested in actually running a business, instead of destroying things others have built and looting the wreckage.
Nobody should call people like Lampert businessmen; they’re looters.
A local closed Kmart building was bought out by the county board of education and converted into a high school and school bus depot. Good use.
That is a good point. I think (in this theoretical system I’m thinking about) that a line-item summary screen could pop up before payment. Scroll through your items, and contest one if wrong. But scanning each item individually would still take longer when you could get right to contesting with an attendant who would act a lot like the ones who oversee a bank of self-checkouts now.
So what you’re saying is that Bain Capital touts their services as if they’re an Intensive Care Unit for sick businesses, but really they’re just hooking those businesses up to a plasma machine and sucking out whatever they can before they die.
I think I’ve been watching too many weird sci-fi shows on Netflix.
ISTM that one difficulty with this sort of thing rather than self scanning is that the RFIDs need to have INDIVIDUAL serial #s instead of just a product code. Otherwise, how can the system identify when multiple examples of the same item are in the cart? This has got to complicate matters.
Note that the warranty is specifically for “hand tools” - aka wrenches, screwdrivers, sockets, etc. and not power tools or any other electrical item. Their power tools are crap.
An RFID tag can carry lots of information that supports all kinds of uses, including a GTIN (Global Trade Identification Number, which is the “product code”) and including other GS1 application fields, such as sell-by date, weight, lot#, and even serial #. These help prevent selling expired or recalled products.
It’s not an either/or situation where an RFID tag is only capable of delivering a serial # or product code.
The father of two of my best friends happened into a career at Kmart sometime after his professional football career. Things seemingly went really well for him there - until they didn’t. With the downsizing that has been happening for the past few decades, he lost his job/was forced into early retirement and never recovered. Divorced from his second wife, had to live completely on his own for basically the first time ever. He had a stroke recently and has basically lost the will to take care of himself. You can’t blame Kmart for all of that. There’s a whole system that lets people fall and fall hard when businesses let them go. There’s of course a bit in there about self-care, though.
My only other major memory of Kmart is going to Super K 30 minutes away and discovering a pair of blue-tinted sunglasses that I fell in love with. Lost them months later at college orientation. Learned that even if they were Kathy Ireland sunglasses and probably made for women, I shouldn’t be so limited in what I look at. Never found another pair that looked so good.
the Craftsman warranty is really the model of consumer protection in a truly fair society (Craftsman was the name of Sears tools).
they were built to not break in the first place, which is the opposite of everything now. and if somehow it did break, you handed it to the guy you bought it from (or any guy at any Sears store you might be nearer to while traveling) and they’d hand you a new one. all the red tape and sending it back to the factory was handled by the retailer, not the consumer. no recipts, no apps, just “our word is bond.” the word Craftsman embossed into the metal WAS the warranty. just the ecological impact of products designed to not end up in a landfill EVER is laudable aside from the consumer protection aspect.
like everything in late capitalism, it didn’t last. I believe the trademark may have been sold. I wouldn’t hold your breath on no-recipt exchanges with anything made under that name anymore, though.
the giant space with the smooth tiled floor would make an awesome conversion to a skatepark. I wonder if the ceiling would have clearance to ride 12 foot ramps or what the max clearance would be?
If it’s anything like Apple Pay/Google Pay/contactless payment cards, which more or less work with the same tech, the range of “a couple of inches” might be a massive issue too.
I’m pretty sure that “Holding Company A” is Sears and “Holding Company B” is “Eddie Lampert”, as the CEO of a publicly traded company pre-bankruptcy, at best he put the “douche” in fiduciary duty, at worst, what he was doing was criminal.
We had RFID working on a large truck, carrying plants from a nursery. The interrogators worked fairly well over five metres or so but it took some juggling.
Contactless payments are tweaked to only work over short ranges.
I envisage an amazon shopping cart with interrogators working over a metre or so.
It would have a screen showing the contents so you can pick up errors.
Your counts are off dude. There are only 31 left of which 24 are in the actual US.
Odd thing to brag about, SMH.
Have greedy capitalists so converted any K-Marts?
WAIT> There’s still 43 Kmarts!?!
I didn’t see skate parks, and it doesn’t seem greedy capitalists are leading the charge, but here’s a cool podcast about various re-uses:
Libraries, offices, etc.
the abandoned super kmart here was used as a warehouse for katrina and ike relief supplies and then nothing. aldi’s built a store in a corner of the parking lot.
I like to see these things being reused. One problem with trying to bring in another retailer is that, quite often, the previous retailer owns the space and won’t sell it to anyone they think is a potential competitor.
Worse, sometimes store chains will buy out an abandoned space entirely to keep competitors out, and let it go empty for years if they can’t find a “suitable” tenant.
