Kmart

My husband has worn the same type of boots for as long as I can remember. He buys a pair of Texas Steer boots every fall, beats the crap out of them working outside through winter and tosses them in the spring. He’s bought more expensive boots and ruined them in a winter so he sticks with what works. However, since every Kmart but this one has closed in the capital region, off we went on a damp November day.
The store is located in Rotterdam Square Mall, which seems to be going the way of Latham Circle mall, a couple of anchors waiting to depart. The Kmart is smaller than the ones that have closed but maybe that’s why it’s still open.
I felt like I walked into an episode of «teen mom meets duck dynasty», just really sad. I threw out my Kmart rewards card when the store near me closed so I had to give the cashier my phone number to get the $ 2 off the pair of slippers I picked up. It took her 5 times of me giving her my phone number for her to get it right!
The one star is for the fact that they had his size, but God help me, he’d better find different boots next year or he’s on his own! I will however go to Bennington while they have a store if he buys me lunch at Madison Brewery!

True story: I was waited on in line today by a clerk named Caprice (according to her name tag). Which seems oh so emblematic of what ails the K-​Mart brand these days.
The Last KMart Standing in the CRUST; take the kids and your business students studying retail there for an instructive field trip while you can.
The oddities of KMart: half their stuff is exactly the same as Target, but at the same price, and without the fairly pleasant and open store arrangements as Target; the other half is like it’s from a dollar store, only far more expensive.
They could have backfilled into a niche by making the superbargain department store shopping pleasant, or by having a more reliable branding.
Oh, and they remain perpetually understaffed and over-​reliant on multiple discounting strategies; this makes waiting in line for K-​Mart a gruesome, nearly endless exercise and deters me, at least, from shopping there except under the most bizarre circumstances. I nearly bailed on my purchase today but I was just too fascinated by Caprice.