I agree with the chant that Tom Cruise taught Dustin Hoffman in Rainman: "K-mart Sucks."
They not only abuse their customers, they are one of the most anti-labor stores around.
K-Mart opened a new megastore in Oakland with city financial support on the understanding that they'd hire local people. But they tried to pay minimum wage. In this area a full time minimum wage income won't even cover the rent on the cheapest rat trap studio, and besides, there are plenty of better paying jobs around, so surprise-surprise, they got the bottom of the barrel employees. The workers simply don't care and who can blame them at those live-in-your-car and still starve wages. So check out was an ordeal, even if there was only one person in front of you. In the meantime, the local unionized supermarkets have fast, efficient well-paid checkers who crank through much longer lines in a fraction of that time. And K-Mart can't understand why they are experiencing so much employee-related inventory loss!
I stopped going to K-Mart entirely, since the prices were no lower than the other chains and the service was terrible. Finally, I went there at 2 AM a couple of months ago thinking I could get in and out quickly at that hour. I filled my cart and got to check out and found that there was a long line of folks waiting for 5 U-Scan machines and one harried employee ringing up sales and trying to supervise the befuddled shoppers. It would probably have taken a half hour of my time to get out of there in order to save the company 30 cents of employee time checking me out promptly. I just abandoned my cart and went to another store. K-Mart deserves to go tits up. Maybe Fry's will move into all the old locales and we won't have to see all the "Why isn't there a Fry's next to me?" posts.