Don't believe me? Witness the store closings at JC Penney, Macy's, Wal-Mart, and now Sears and KMart. It's not just department stores, either. Barnes and Nobel and Walden Books and other hands-on book stores have fallen to the mighty online industry (which doesn't treat authors well, either through royalties or through the remainder perks). Fast food chains are closing their doors partially because of the health craze and GMO awareness, but also because people who don't deserve to earn $15 an hour are demanding $15 an hour and putting businesses right out of ... well ... business.
Let's face the music: People are tired of paying top shit to buy mediocre shit and to be treated by employees like lowest shit.
I remember working retail when we were not allowed to speak to other employees on the floor about anything non-customer or work related. When I worked for Market Basket, people were fired for such behavior. It was considered unprofessional -- we were there to work. Period.
Sears? Please, I'll shop there for jeans or tools or exercise equipment, but their customer services blows chunks. You can die of old age waiting for a salesperson to help you even though there are hundreds of them milling about on the sales floor. I have little sympathy for Sears' current sales plight.
Unfortunately, the Wal-Mart closings are affecting my retirement plan as I will either die at my desk or live out my golden years in a beat-up van, which I was hoping to park in Wal-Mart parking lots as I hobo-ed my way around the country.
What will I ever do if there's nothing left but empty, abandoned malls? I went to the Pheasant Lane Mall for the first time ever the other night, and I was shocked at how empty the place was. Dead. Deserted. I could've driven my car through the place and not hit a single shopper. Okay, maybe three or four, but it was a ghost town considering it is in such an urban area (and tax-free zone only seconds from the Taxachusetts border).
I'm guilty, I know, of abandoning retail physical stores for the virtual ones. It totally sucks when I go into a store looking for something, trying to find a sale item, or with a certain item in mind, only to find that it doesn't exist on their real shelves -- only their online shelves. One of the main reasons that I cannot move from my current location is because the FedEx and UPS drivers know where I live and know how to safely hide my package deliveries. (Except the super heavy kayak boxes... they left those out front by the street and I had to drag them to my door in the back.)I'm sorry for these stores, truly and deeply. But, the writing has been on the wall for a very long time. Maybe if they'd brought virtual shopping/virtual customer service into their stores, they'd still be in their glory. Remember Service Merchandise? Remember picking items out of a catalog, entering the catalog numbers into the computer, and then your order would come out to you on a roller-style conveyor belt? It's a damn shame they went out of business: They were pioneers ahead of their time when you could do virtual shopping in an actual store. No mess, no fuss, instant service, and instant products.
Well, in a virtual museum, of course.
