Seeing Red Again

So as Halloween arrives and everyone is buying their crappy and/or slutty costumes for the year, I'm reminded of where I was last year at this time. In Iraq? Noooo, much worse, Kmart.

Lemme tell you alittle bit about how holiday season goes. Behind the walls and doors of your local Kmart...oh, about September or so, stock piles of Christmas crap start cumulating to crazy amounts. By December, it will be pretty much 100% of their backstock, so don't even bother asking if they are still selling lawn mowers.

Even moreso, their employees by this point have been stripped of any morale they have because Christmas not only produces the most backward a$$ f#4ks to come out of the woodwork and shop (because apparently Internet shopping is too easy for them), but also because higher management is getting a proverbial stiffy about how much $$ they're going to make in a few weeks. I can remember being on a conference call with a bunch of other managers-in-training (a.k.a. Future-alcoholics) when one of the district managers and/or sales persons said "if you're not excited about the Christmas shopping season, then you should look for a new line of work". Ironically the day before that, I had applied to a crap ton of jobs online.

Employees were also held under the scrutiny of the "mystery shopper", essentially a customer hired by corporate to come in and rate employees on appearance, knowledge, and "the ten foot rule". The ten foot rule requires employees to acknowledge all customers that come within ten feet. Huh, that's funny. I thought when I left the Army, I didn't have to salute and acknowledge people any more. These mystery shoppers nailed employees a$$es to the wall time after time, by name, for employees failing to do this...even when they did, or when they were perhaps, stocking shelves?

Also...managers weren't called managers, they were called "coaches". Which is funny because I've never been on a sports team that if the coach cut me from the team, I stopped earning a living. And coaches should be working harder then the team....Kmart upper management on Christmas eve? At home with their families. All other Kmart employees? At work dealing with urban white trash and Lushy McReturnalot.

The biggest callous I have with Kmart, is their constant saying of "shopping experience". It's never a "beer run" or a "oil run", or even a "I'm going to bring my whiny, bratty a$$ child in to make a giant mess, buy nothing, and leave run". It's a f$#king "shopping experience". I can't remember the last store I went into, why? Most likely because it was a "transparent shopping experience", not positive, not negative. I don't want employees constantly asking me if I need help, nor snapping to attention and saluting me. I don't want to see them. If I have a problem, they should be stationed at various points in the store so I can go and ask (which I never do or will..because if a store is set up right, you shouldn't need to). From the time I walk in the door, to the time I hit the register, I don't want to be talked to, touched, or catered too. Apparently Kmart execs have some form of infantilism that they feel needs to be spread throughout the land.

F-YOU KMART

Just the management & corporation and any member that "believes" in it.