Their demise is in the horizon although now they seem to enjoy unprecedented prosperity.
Today, just like many millions of Americans who received gifts that either didn’t fit or were unwanted, I set out to return a few items. There were two cans of paint at Home Depot and they were readily exchanged and I in turn bought an extra gallon of the same color. No hassles, very helpful and congenial staff.
Then I went to K-Mart to return a pair of shoes because one was an 8 ½ and the other an 11. I had no sales receipt as it was given to me but there was a price tag attached and it was clearly a K-Mart label with the original price of $24.99 reduced to $19.99.
The clerk was polite and asked me for my identification then she rang it up and she informed me that because it was a discontinued item she could only reimburse me .50 cents. I then asked to speak with the manager who also refused to allow me to get a comparable pair of shoes and said that he could not go against what the computer told him.
I was flabbergasted by this because computers do what people tell them to do and if one uses common sense and reason then the obligatory thing for him to do was to tell me to just get a pair and he would have had a happy customer. But K-Mart would rather keep that $20.00 than give an inch and so I told him I would never buy anything at K-Mart again as well as telling my family and friends of this incident.
There is a point that the large American retailer has reached and it is a regrettable one. Gone are the days when the customer had more rights, had to be kept happy and public opinion as well as the business image had to be maintained at the highest possible levels. No more…those days are gone. They sell in mass lower quality products made somewhere outside of the United States in sweat shops and they are of very poor quality. I remember just a couple of decades ago we actually manufactured stuff in America. The city where I lived – Hialeah had hundreds of small factories and shops that made some of the best garments and gadgets…all excellent quality and all made with pride by Americans. We owe it to our DEAR LEADER REAGAN who actually encouraged and subsidized companies to close their manufacturing and actually move them abroad all in the name of the fucking profits. Now you can’t find anything of excellent craftsmanship made in America…all comes from some forsaken third world country, it is not durable and it took us to the lengths of borrowing money from the Chinese to buy it. And the Republicans think this is good business.
Gone are also the days when not only was it a joy to buy at some of these large retail chains but also it was a great privilege and a source of pride to go to work for one of them. I remember when working for Sears was very desirable…employees there had full time jobs with excellent benefits and they received the respect of their communities. That went out the window when Sears began hiring part time employees following the trend of most American corporations to reduce the number of full timers so that they would have to pay less in benefits like health insurance and vacations.
All this has made Sears go down the tubes…they keep asking themselves why they are on the decline, why is it that they lost that prominent place in the shopper’s hearts. K-Mart is near bankruptcy and Wal-Mart may still be prospering but they also have their days numbered. Each day more and more Americans like me encounter some stupid action on the part of any of these retailers and one by one, consumers are being peeled off their customer base.
But what is yet to come is a time when people realize that some of these corporations are working against the very public they receive their incomes from…they donate large amounts of money to ultra-right wing organizations and politicians as is the case with Wal-Mart and on top of that they pay their employees lower salaries and offer no benefits…they are arguably one of the worst employers in America and K-Mart is not far behind. Three years ago, Wal-Mart ruled for convenience, selection and price. But today it is losing customers and revenue, and smarting from decisions that backfired. Wal-Mart is not in danger of ceding its place atop the retail world. But competitors have begun to chip away at its dominance. Over the last year, revenue at Wal-Mart stores open at least a year has fallen by an average 0.75 percent each quarter, according to the International Council of Shopping Centers. Revenue rose by an average of nearly 1.7 percent at Target, 8 percent at Costco and 5.9 percent at Family Dollar.
Can you say “BOYCOTT?”
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