I’m sure alot of you remember going to KMart as a kid. Back in the day it was the cool place to shop. I know I loved it when I went in there. I usually lost myself in the LEGO section for and hour or so while my parents went off and shopped. I still remember my first remote control car that I got there. I spent weeks saving up my allowance and was thrilled when I brought it home and got to play with it. Of course a couple weeks later I took it apart but that’s another story… Right now I’m going to talk about why KMart is going to fail.

I have a very good insight into the companies inner workings and let me tell you that it is not pretty in there. Lets take a look at the most basic part of any business, it’s workers. Not the management, the real workers, the people that actually get out there and do the stuff no one else wants to do. If you want to succeed in your business you treat your employees good right? Well think again. KMart believes that if you push down your employees, give them crappy hours, pay them the minimum you can legally get away with, and work them hard enough that they should be pulling in the wages for multiple people then you will have a bright happy store. Well let me tell you something. The employees treat the store just like KMart treats them. Imagine having to run around literally half the store helping customers BY YOURSELF! I’m talking multiple departments here and you are the only one there! You can see why after a while the employees cease to care what goes on in other places. They don’t perform to the best of their abilities because they are being pulled so many directions at once. And what happens if someone calls in sick? Oh well, just have the other people cover that person. Then what? Instead of covering 3 departments someone winds up covering 8 or more. And lets not even go into some of the things management does. Try this on for size. By Washington State law if an employee gets hurt on the job you have to file an incident report. Sometimes management says NO! And then if you do not show up for work because you are in pain and taking medication because of the injury they write you up, EVEN if you called them before your shift and told them why you could not make it! And then if you miss more than one day they will threaten to fire you. That’s not cool in my book. Talk about slamming your employees. I do not understand why anyone would want to work there, let alone try to make it a career which many people have done.

Now lets talk about their customer service. On a whole when you can find an employee to talk to they always seem to be somewhat cheerful and will help you to the best of their ability. The downside is that it can sometimes take up to a half and hour to find a person with only one person covering half the store, and then even when you find them you may have to wait if they are helping someone else or taking a phone call. Heck they may even have a couple of people waiting on them. See what I mean? It’s not that the employees have a lack of knowledge, rather many of them can tell you where to find anything in the store almost to the exact spot, it’s that there is only one maybe two if you are lucky that are even there to help. That’s strike two.

Then how about the stores themselves. Who wants to shop in a dinky run down place thats not taken care of when they can probably go across the street to another that is updated, newer, and cleaner. Maybe if they spent less time trying to screw their employees and customers they could spend a little more time and man power to clean up the stores and make them look nicer. Honestly I don’t understand how some even pass the fire saftey inspections, and don’t even get me started on some of those food courts.

So now that I’ve ripped KMart apart what do I think they could do that will improve it vastly, and *smirk smirk* maybe even help them make a comeback? Well for starters, treat your employees better. If you have happy satisfied employees then they will be more inclined to try to make you happy. They will take more pride and ownership in their stores and will therefore keep the appearances up. And for god’s sake STOP BEING SO SUSPICIOUS OF THEM, nothing kills the mood of a work environment more than knowing your boss doesn’t trust you, infact trusts you less than most customers that come in the door. Next at least double up on your staff. KMart has good service when you can find it. Make it your motto that no customer will ever have to ask where to find something. Because your employees will be out there making sure everything is done and the customers and being taken care of. Then why not invest a little money into fixing up your stores. I know it may seem like a lot now, but it will pay off by creating a better atmoshphere and lowering the costs next time you have to do a repair cause it will only be one thing that needs fixed, not a dozen just for one part. Oh yeah and don’t forget to have plenty of cashiers on hand. It doen’t matter if there are alot of customers or not, if they can’t get out quick when they are done shopping they won’t come back.

So there is my little rant on KMart. Stay tuned cause I’m sure more will come later on.