"Apocalypse Now" ... or "I went to Kmart today"

In all our rants ... all our bitching about Wal-Mart's ugly customers, ugly help and ugly experience overall nobody's brought up Kmart. As a result, Kmart has been given a free pass.

No longer.

Had to pop in there today (looking for Mother's Day presents, it was on the way) and ... dayyum. I was going to the worst place in the world and I didn't even know it yet.

I wish I had words, man. I wish I had words.

Imagine Wal-Mart, ratcheted downscale a few notches. No ... make that a few dozen notches.

How bad is Kmart? You don't even have the same merchandise as Wal-Mart. The stuff at Wal-Mart is higher-quality, unless it's a name brand. Route 66: who makes that shit? And what in the nine blue hells is Basic Editions? Wasn't Joe Boxer pseudocool once?

You have the exact same help ... no, that's not true. The people who are too mutant, too demotivated or too stupid to work at Wally World — those are the people working at Kmart. Hell, they don't even issue 'em smocks like Wal-Marties get; maybe they're just too embarrassed to admit who they've hired.

The shopping experience ... imagine a supercenter Wal-Mart, only without the groceries. And without the skylights. And without the high ceilings. Close-in off-white ceilings, exposed flourescent light bulbs, crowded shadowy aisles filled with substandard merchandise ... my God.

Getting out is a nightmare. They have 8 registers, all on one side of the main entrance. Only 2 are ever put to use, and the people running those registers are idiots. Lines to the back of the store. Actually, that's not true.

See, here's the thing. There's one aspect of Kmart where they have Wally World beat. You don't have to share the aisles with the freaky customers. There are no customers. It's like they instinctively know that the Kmart shopping experience is second to everything, even Wal-Mart. And every so often, you go around a corner and come face-to-face with the plastic smile and perfection of Martha Stewart. Absolutely eerie.

You wanna shop at Kmart? Then you must make a friend of horror. Horror and moral terror are your friends.

The horror ... the horror ...

 

K-Mart sucks, but it is in no way worse than Wal-Mart.

K-Mart is somewhat useful if want you want to buy something that doesn't need to be worn or eaten. Especially if its a cheapo toy (like a Whiffle bat or something) or rudimentary yard stuff (like a sprinkler).

It's the volume at Wal-Mart. The volume of customers. The volume of slack-jawed stupidity by at least 50 percent of the patrons there. The volume of shitty product. The volume of the store. The volume of space, making you walk from one side of an acre lot to another just to run an errand.

Going to Wal-Mart is just an oppressive experience.

 

I always fall asleep at the end of Apocolypse Now. I have never snoozed in a K-Mart so I fail to see the similarity.

 

And if anyone knows about slack-jawed stupidity, it's Bubs...

 

What sort of son buys his mom a Mother's Day gift from K-mart?

 

She wants bedroom slippers. She's getting more than that, but she wants bedroom slippers.

Kmart even fucks that up.

 

I gotta agree here...K-Mart IS worse than Wal-Mart, solely for the lower-quality feel of everything. It literally does feel like K-Mart is for those locations not high-quality enough to attract a Wal-Mart. Although Wal-Mart certainly does have a more oppressive feel with the ceilings, lights, size, randomness of availability from one location to the next, even in the same town.

 

The only Kmart I've been in recently was about a million times cleaner than Wal-Mart. I didn't buy anything but I didn't walk out feeling like I needed a shower.

 

K-Mart . . .

Shit.

I'm still only in K-Mart. Every time I think I'm gonna wake up back in Wal-Mart. When I was home after my first attempt to buy three months worth of toilet paper, it was worse. I'd wake up and there'd be nothing. I hardly said a word to my wife, until I said "yes" to a divorce.

When I was here, I wanted to be there; when I was there, all I could think of was getting back into the Wal-Mart. I'm here a week now... waiting for a mission...

 

This summarizes perfectly why I hate K-Mart, and why I never go there.

How have we ignored/forgotten K-Mart all these years? Probably because K-Mart is barely a zit on the ass of department store society and has struggled to remain open for years. Most of us don't go there b/c it a.) sucks and b.) is nowhere near convenient. That bit about the ever-morphing lines...perfect.

Wal-Mart has a library full of issues, but at least the stores look presentable. K-Mart is the land time forgot. Back home, the Wal-Mart (and Target) are in a more countrified area of town and were built on undeveloped land. K-Mart is the anchor store in a 25-year-old strip mall in a so-so part of town that has seen far, far better days. Nobody's knocking down trees to build new K-Marts.

I worked at K-Mart in the summer of 1990. The most miserable three months of my life. I hated every second, and my bosses all had that glazed-over, life has beaten us down to a nub look to them. Yet if you weren't willing to buy into the K-Mart mantra, you were useless to them.

I hate K-Mart. Right there with you, 2mCM.

 

When I was a kid, Kmart had a cafeteria where they had cold coconut-cream pie. And the sporting good section, with all the cool fishing lures, was close to it. And I got my favorite tennis shoes ever there; green, with, like, four white stripes on the sides, kind like early Nike running shoes before Nike got big.

I liked Kmart a lot. I haven't been in one since the one in Loma Linda, Calif., more than two years ago.