Hacker News Reader

Comment by burkaman | Hacker News Reader

Are they actually bankrupt or just trying to get out of paying for all those lawsuits?

They are going kaput, and have been for a long time. I was in one last year, and the store had many empty and partially full shelves. The last time I had seen something similar was when K-Mart hit the skids. Aisles of nothing, and then an aisle or two of things stacked so as to appear there was more on the shelves than there actually were.

It very much had a semi-abandoned, depressing feel to it.

CVS and Walgreens are headed down that path, too.

No I doubt CVS is. Their profits have gone up almost every quarter for almost 6 years, unlike Walgreens and Rite-Aid. Plus none of their stores that I’ve been inside has looked dead, and they always have locations in the right places like in downtown areas. You almost wonder what Walgreens and Rite-Aid have been up to all this time.

At the end of the day, if I’m in a major metro area and I’m not near a supermarket, I’m going to CVS.

Ive seen a supermarket hitting the skids. One with heavy foot traffic (they failed to renegotiate the lease).

It is one of the saddest, most depressing things i've ever seen. Just seeing staff, most of whom had been working in that market for years, was heartbreaking. You didn't even have to talk to them to see how the slow moving death sentencew was affecting them

It gave me a taste of how living in a communist country must be like.

That was my question, I think this is just a good old fashion all-american "corporate do-over".

They have been closing stores for a while, and will close a lot more in C11. Corporate is very much trying to devise some way of keeping the doors open, but they are going to hit the same wall that a lot of other retail operations hit.

The world simply no longer has a need for every street corner having the same types of stores selling the same types of things at the same prices.

Texas Two-Step: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_two-step_bankruptcy

They have been in the process of a slow collapse for about ~20 years.

"How did you go bankrupt? Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly." - E. Hemingway

Even without the lawsuits they would probably be over. The whole retail drug store industry is in dire straights these days.

FWIW it’s “dire straits” — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strait — as in “a narrow and dangerous passage.”

So, if they go bankrupt, is that...

( •_•)>⌐■-■

Money for nothing?

(⌐■_■)

They'll probably need some help moving those refrigerators and color TVs.

Sometimes you're the Louisville Sluger, sometimes you're the ball

Easy easy checks.

They can hardly pay their current creditors, much less the lawsuits.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com