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Comment by Panino | Hacker News Reader

Sears is a macro-example of the phrase, "The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent." Seems like this company has been walking dead for years.

When the October news hit that Sears was going out of business, my wife and I used up all our Sears points (kind of like airline miles) to get tons of free food from Kmart. Then Sears kept just giving her points so we kept getting free stuff. How on earth did Sears stay in the game so long, and what game were they even playing? Sometimes I wonder if we inadvertently triggered some backdoor left by an employee to get as much free stuff as possible. Part of me assumes the bonanza will now intensify.

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I had a friend who worked at Kmart during the Sears transition and stayed until it closed a few years ago (or so). He worked there for maybe 12 years total, and maybe 7 of that as a manager.

The first week after he started there, he started to wonder how they could stay in business. He said most of his time (in the 12 years) was spent walking around, cleaning, organizing or just watching TV just because there wasn't anything else to do, and no one coming in.

For years, it was a ghosttown in there. I would go after work (5-6pm), and still not see a single other customer. I know it was a smaller Kmart, but they still had some new items show up, and always had some employees around. Must have made enough to cover most of it's expenses, or been too small for Sears to notice.

/just looked it up. That Kmart closed in Jan of 2017.

My local K-Mart was never packed, but it was never empty either. And there was always a line at the registers, mostly because they had the slowest checkout system on planet Earth. Some parts of the store looked like a Mad Max set like the tools area, but other parts managed to alright like the clothing section.

It was still my backup shopping choice if Target didn't have something I needed.

I did 5 years (16-21) at my Kmart and it was exactly the same. No customers most of the time and when we did we never had what they wanted.

I spent most of my time watching TV in electronics, sometimes even took naps in the back. That company was destined for doom.

Even the Kmarts in New York City (where lines at Target are routinely insane) were like this.

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