10 Confessions Of A Kmart Manager
Most people consider Kmart's merger with Sears the marriage from hell. It should come as no surprise that this sinking chain is leaving thousands of upset customers and employees in its wake, which perhaps explains a letter we received marked "10 Confessions" from a person identifying his/her self as a Kmart manager. The confessions, inside...
"I've been reading the Consumerist for a long time and I absolutely love it. I'd like to provide some insight about my job, as a manager at Kmart, and what I've learned about the company since the merger."
1. The cashiers and service desk people are not properly trained.
The turnover in this area is astronomical, and we usually stick them out there with little to no training. So when they don't know about prices, sales, special offers, or even how to deactivate EAS tags, it's not their fault; they probably don't know any better.
2. We have a very small budget.
This is why you can never find anyone in a Kmart. The few employees you may encounter are running around, trying to put out product, marking things down, and resetting counters. Customer service should be the most important thing, but it rarely is.
3. The mystery shop is king.
Our bonuses, raises, and pretty much everything else are dependent on our mystery shop scores, not how many complaints we get or how hard we work.
4. No one gets their performance review anymore.
The store manager is, in so many words, instructed to not rate people too highly because they would get raises, and the company can't afford that. So the manager rates them a 2 out of 5, skips the review part of the process, and the employee gets nothing. It's not about their actual performance. It's all about saving money.
5. We still don't know what to do with your stimulus check.
We got an email around the time of the press release, and a few flyers, but we would probably give you a blank stare if you came in with your check and wanted your 10% extra. A black hole exists between corporate and the front line managers, through which little information passes.
6. When you call the 800 number, you're talking to an outsourced call center employee.
They email your complaint to the store manager, who probably already talked to you before you left the store. You will never talk to a district manager or someone in corporate. So you might as well take the 10% discount we give you in the store for complaining, because you won't get anywhere with the number.
7. We hate Sears just as much as you do.
When we have to call them, they are just as rude to us as they are to you. There is no corporate culture, no meeting of the minds...and we can't use our employee discount at 90% of their stores.
8. Sears credit cards are HORRIBLE.
Corporate pushes them on us and sends us nasty emails when we don't get so many applications per customer. We are forced to ask you to fill one out. Upper management and the cashier receive a (very) small commission on every approved application, but the only reason we ask is because we have to.
9. The stores are dirty because they don't give us money
...to replace fixtures, the leaking ceiling, the horrible bathrooms, or even decent cleaning supplies. We scrub shelfs with window cleaner because we aren't allowed to order new fixtures or take anything off the shelf that might actually clean anything. That costs money, you see.
10. Corporate just restructured the Loss Prevention position.
Most of our security personnel, who had been with the company for years, were terminated. This is a huge liability problem for our employees and our customers. Expect higher prices in the future as people steal us blind.
Hope this helps,
A Very Disgruntled Manager
(Photo: Getty)
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Comments:
It's 10 reasons why I don't shop at K-Mart.
Phew -- yet another chain to keep away from.
Again, this is what happens when you pay the guys at the top a gazillion dollars -- you have no budget to spend on another important constituency -- YOUR CUSTOMERS!
So since the cashiers and service desk workers aren't properly trained, what happens when the Mystery Shoppers attempt to check out or get service?
I don't think I'll shop there, but I definitely will be exploring future five-finger discounts!
K-marts have managers? I always assumed they just ran themselves, albeit poorly.
And from a from a "former Sears manager" I'd agee with every single thing on that list. Except for #7 where you would just replace Sears with K-Mart.
Holy crap! KMart is still in business? Who knew?
For some reason I read this as Wal-Mart at first, and thought "what the hell? I thought they were making tons of money."
K-Mart, yeah...that's a sinking ship. There's one nearby that I used to go to occasionally for oddball stuff I couldn't find anywhere else, but it's just so depressing I stopped going.
I have worked for companies in the past that think the best way to make money, is to save money. And they're wrong. You get out what you put into it. If Kmart had lots of happy faces walking around, clean floors, and knew what they were doing, it would increase revenue. It may take some time for people to catch on, but its an investment.
It shows when a company has a 2$ budget for upkeep.
Hey! It sounds just like it did when I worked there 11 years ago! Nothing's changed, except the addition of Sears.
Sadly, I still think it was a better first job than working at Wal Mart.
#9 is especially true. I worled in the deli and ended up learning how to maintain and fix everything (popcorn machine, soda machine, ice cream freezer, cooling cases, warming cases, signage) myself, and even went as far as making new signage for the deli myself. Corporate and regional complained immediately after the fact, but didn;t utter a peep again because they didn't give a damn about the store's appearance. Sadly, we had the best looking deli out of all the locations in town because we spent our own time and money to make it look good. The rest of the store? Not so much. Summer's were fun because after an afternoon thunderstorm (those happen frequently in Colorado) they'd have to put out buckets for leaks, and usually about mid-June the tarps would go up, attached to the ceiling, to funnel the leaks to the buckets. Ah, the memories!
11. The Blue Lights actually emit dangerous radiation.
Once again, not confessions. A confession is "We routinely disembowel insubordinate janitors"
No more loss prevention personel? WOOHOOO! Time to go on a shopliftin' spree!
I havnt been to a kmart in probably 10 years. They keep closing down & cant compete with walmart. IMO they should have went out of business years ago.
oh yeah, and all the employees at our store called KMart 'Came-Apart'. There's a reason... >.>
A major issue with Kmart is that they didn't change with the times. I know this because my father has been a manager at Kmart for over 30 years and I also worked part time there when I was in high school.
Kmart failed to adapt and integrate new technologies. Instead, they rested on their reputation (which used to be good when they had no competition).
A big place where this can be seen is with how inventory is handled: if you ask someone at Target whether they have more of an item "in back" they can get a scan gun, scan the barcode on the shelf, and tell you right there. Not the case for Kmart. There is little or no automation. Stores that HAVE adapted can almost have additional products delivered before they run out (with the exception of the occasional "super deal that all stores run out of") because products are automatically re-ordered based on sales.
My only hope is that Kmart hangs on a little longer so my father can get out of there and into retirement, which thanks to this company is seriously in trouble due to the fact that the original Kmart stock just disappeared when they went bankrupt.
10 reasons why I dont shop there and that's been about 10 years now too. Sears was screwed up big time and K-Mart just made things worst.
I hope Crafstman Tools gets sold to someone who will continue the Craftsman idea and lets the rest of the company (Kmart/Sears) just die a quick death.
I used to shop at K-Mart all the time about 5 years ago when I lived in NJ. I really liked that store. Then, when I moved to FL, all the K-Marts in the area because Sears Crapentials. What dumps. The only near me used to be open till 11pm, then 10pm, now 9pm. Why? The store is always empty! They took out the stuff everyone used to buy and put in washers, freezers and a tool department. HELLO! BRING BACK THE PANTRY! BRING BACK THE MARTHA STEWART STUFF. Quit trying to sell me Dollar Tree stuff at Lord & Taylor prices!
I was going to make a lame "Kmart has managers?" joke, but then I remembered that I met one when I applied for a job at one of their stores. (Hey, I was desperate and I have retail experience.)
They had me take one of those personality tests designed to weed out people with personalities, then never called me back. (Same experience I had with Target, actually.) Those tests are another reason everyone at Kmart seems "off." Kmart selects for stupid.
Still, their employees at least pretend to try to help. Almost every time I shop at Meijers, I end up violently angry about the laziness of their employees.
Anyone remember when K-Mart was doing a big investment to upgrade stores in the early 90's? What it equated to was the building of their big stores and they never got around to all the others in the chain. I'd had some hopes for them back when. Sadly they were misplaced.
(Edited for grammar) ... I used to shop at K-Mart all the time about 5 years ago when I lived in NJ. I really liked that store. Then, when I moved to FL, all the K-Marts in the area BECAME Sears Crapentials. What dumps. The only ONE near me used to be open till 11pm, then 10pm, now 9pm. Why? The store is always empty! They took out the stuff everyone used to buy and put in washers, freezers and a tool department. HELLO! BRING BACK THE PANTRY! BRING BACK THE MARTHA STEWART STUFF. Quit trying to sell me Dollar Tree stuff at Lord & Taylor prices!
Interesting about the mystery shop - they pay a princely sum of $5. Industry standard for a similar shop is about $15. Good mystery shoppers never do them, only total novices or people desperate for cash.
Who shops at KMart?
The last time I was in there, it was incredibly depressing. The store was dirty, nearly devoid of customers, the lighting were those old fluorescent tubes that hum and flicker. The merchandise was jumbled - it was a tee-total mess.
@DeafLEGO: Home Depot's Husky tools carry the lifetime warranty, the same as Craftsman. Lowe's Kobalt tools might do the same as well. Really, Craftsman is just overpriced. Buy it for the nostalgia more than anything else.
@amyschiff: If you were Austin Powers and staggered into a K-Mart after waking up from your 30-year nap (Mustafa told you Dr. Evil was a manager there), you'd immediately recognize the place (although he'd wonder who that Martha Stewart bird was) because it hasn't changed much since the 60s. You literally step into a time-warp when you go to K-Mart.
I thought K-Mart went out of business years ago, so this is a surprise for me.
K-marts are worst to shop at than walmart, and that is saying a whole lot.
I must live in the wrong place. I do most of my non-grocery shopping at both K-Mart and Sears (They were here long before Walmart decided we were worthy of their presence).
The K-mart employees are friendly and knowledgable, the building is a little run down, but not dirty.
The people at Sears are friendly and helpful. I bought an electric range there last month and the salesperson actually steered me to a less expensive model than the shiney one that caught my eye. (and delivered and installed perfectly and right on time)
Most of the people at the K-mart have worked here for years and its not like they don't have a choice since they are within 2 miles of Walmart, Kohls, Target, Best Buy, etc.
And no... I do not work for them.
K-mart went in the sh1tter when Rosie O'Donnell went on her anti-gun tirade a few years ago. She struck a blow against K-Mart's key demographic and the store has never recovered.
Queston: Do they still light up that blue light to create stampedes to buy junk?
Yeah - I've only been to one "nice-ish" Kmart before... most of them are dingy, dark, and falling apart like the one near Herald Square. It's Target for me!
And yes, the Sears Credit cards are completely crap-tastic. I used to work for the marketing dept. at Sears and would cringe whenever I heard an employee ask a customer if they wanted to open an account.
This story makes me sad, because Kmart is one of the stores that enables me to avoid Walmart. The Kmart employees are always friendly and accessible, and the prices are competitive. The parking lot is never too full, so I don't have to park way down in the "South 40" and hike back up to the store. The Kmart aisles aren't clogged with customers with oversized shopping carts full of kids and all the crappy crap people buy at Walmart just because they see it on display. In other words, when I'm in Kmart, I can buy the things I need and get out without wishing I'd never gone there. I'm really pulling for Kmart, but sadly, I do think I've noticed the stores getting more run down since the Sears deal.
Probably because you call it "Meijers" [sic] and not "Meijer." Do you go to Target's, Costco's, or Blockbuster's?
/pet peeve
As a kid I spent a lot of time in a Kmart and the arcade next to it. It is sad what has become of Kmart.
Interesting note about the clueless workers and theft. About 5 years ago my wife and I went to Kmart to buy sheets for a new bed. When we went there it was clear that some customers were stealing sheets right in front of us by stuffing extra and larger ones into the lesser priced twin packages. We took the one we wanted to the cashier and explained what was going on. Also we asked if it was okay to open ours to see if everything was in it. She said we would need to buy it, check it out, and then return it if something was wrong. So we did and sure enough the cover was for a twin.
So we went to the customer service and again explained what was going on. The lady there said she would give us a refund. Instead she credited to our account the difference plus the price for the queen set. So we explained that that is not right. And she got really confused and misunderstood saying that she thought we wanted to keep the set now and have the difference and that this is what she did. We tried to explain again and this time she got very angry with us. Suddenly she became convinced we were trying to trick her somehow when we were simply trying to explain to her that she was giving us back too much money. There was a definite language barrier issue here as well.
Finally we just left but while at customer service we saw the stealing customers go to the same cashier we had earlier and have no trouble at all with their purchase of somewhere around five 'twin' sets.
Sounds like both companies are headed for their doom.
The last time I stepped foot in a Sears store was at a Sears Hardware. I was looking for a pouch for a Leatherman tool; a well known multitool maker. I asked one of the clerks about it, and they said, "Try a hardware store."
?????
Nah nah nah nah.
Nah nah nah nah.
HEY HEY HEY!
Goooood-bye!
@razremytuxbuddy: amen. I can't even set foot in a Walmart without this overwhelming urge to vomit.
I have friends who love Walmart "because it has everything." That's exactly why I dislike it. I hate having like 42 options for every purchase I need to make, stacked up on shelves that are ridiculously high and claustrophobic feeling.
If this tale is true, then it goes a long way toward explaining why K-Mart's going under.
#4 looks to be a disturbing new standard. The same goes on at Macy's; they've been giving everyone an "unsatisfactory" review so no one gets a raise (assuming you actually ever see your review, which I have not even though it was due in February). Then instead of writing you up, which they should do if you really suck so royally, they want to hear one area you're committed to improving. I pledge to choke back my reaction to being told I'm a bad employee.
We are also required to ask everyone to open a credit card, but store management doesn't call it "credit" anymore, it's "loyalty." Soooo, we don't want to perpetuate the credit crisis and encourage people to spend money they don't have on things they don't need (and didn't even know they wanted until we told them so), we just want them to be loyal. Uh huh, sure.
@mzs: That reminds me of the time I bought USED sheets from Kmart, "pills" and all. They let me return them, but not before all but accusing me of being the scammer. I guess it's because I took them home and didn't discover the problem until the next day, but who thinks to look at sheets before leaving a store?
Ugh. Maybe it's just me, but there's just something really gross about other people's used sheets.
@MBPharmD: It's a hallmark of idiomatic English to add a possessive to companies that are named after a person, you pedant.
If Blockbuster had been founded by Dick Blockbuster (xbox hero), then people would call it "Blockbuster's." Your inability to understand how that works doesn't make other people wrong.
My first job ever was in a Kmart. The very first day I was there, I noticed a funky smell coming from under my register. I asked about it and was told there was a dead rat underneath it. The manager handed me a can of Lysol and told me to spray if any customers complained. It was a full week before someone came over and got the rat out from under the register area.
My job in the mornings when I came in was to go through the candy that sits on the aisles and empty out the rat doo-doo. I would also remove any candy that the rats had partially eaten overnight and leave the rest out for customers to consume.
It was the nastiest, filthiest place I have ever worked and I will never shop there again.
@cybercjh: Martha S. has moved on to Macy's. Here's a story: [www.marketwatch.com] Martha's contract with KM is kaput in 2009. Do you think she'll renew? How long will Macy's last? Stay tuned.
@MBPharmD: You know, I can't think of anyone I know, including Meijers employees, that calls it "Meijer". You just get used to it, I think.
@marsneedsrabbits: Echo echo - the KMart here is so depressing. From the customers to the employees to the Little Caesar's, the whole place has this air of total beat-down. And that's AFTER the remodel.
On another note, I'm vaguely acquainted with one Sears manager and one KMart manager, and when I see them at school/family events Mr Sears always looks stressed out and Mr KMart looks tired. They're both quite friendly though, and when I ask "How are you?" both will answer with "Oh, you know, pretty burnt from work."
@PinUp: Any chance for a Macy's confessions post? Are you still required to ask "Was your shopping experience OUTSTANDING today?" Because I'm always tempted to snap back, "You're the first employee who's said anything to me, and I've been here an hour and tried on ten outfits, so no, not so much OUTSTANDING."
I like the clothes and Macy's carries my high-end bras so I would totally shop there more if they deigned to encourage my presence.
I use to work for Sears myself, Can't say much for Kmart but its true about customer service. Sears doesnt give a rat in their employess I applied for a cashiers posistion for womens apparrel and they stuck me at the time 16 in the Sears home and garden, parts department. And beings that it was in TN, there was a numerous array of southern's asking about lawn mowers, tools, etc, Craftman tool warranity. What the hell would a 16 year old girl know about that? They didnt even train they said its not that hard heres how to scan,total,cash checks and so on. Aside from that my friends mother was a floor manager who was terminated by Sears because she couldnt get her employess to sell enough extended warranties with the purchase of such home appliances as refridgerators,washers,driers, so on. Being a small town in a poorer southern area face it, if people dont want to buy shit, they're not going too. And dont even get me started with those bull crap Sears credit cards, We where practically taken out back and shot if we didnt get so many people to sign up for them, some employess even fired because of it. ( I myself told a customer to go to hell over a coupon so that ended that nightmare ) We had so many complains with that card, our services, how we did or more or less didn't do things, but all thanks to corporate, and the article is right your better off with the discount, or just plain going elsewhere as you will not get customer service from them.
Is the Mystery Shop where they sell Scooby Snacks?
It's a party, get you foil-lined bags ready and head to KMart this morning...