ALDI, TJs, Lidl, Kroger, Costco, Sam's, BJ's, and Walmart are hardly what you would call empty. Neither are Kohl's, Ulta, and several others. The stores that are pretty empty are JC Penney, Office Depot, Sears, Macy's to a certain extent and other dinosaurs, including us in many poorly planned locations or where there is serious competition. Yes the retail apocalypse has just started but there's no general widespread effort to cover it up. It is what it is. The economy is NOT in recession. It ended officially in June 2009 and has been growing ever since (thanks Obama). However, if WFM is having hiring events that does seem like a total front a bunch of BS to cover up its intentions. It's one of the key things WFM is able to do effectively -- con people into thinking that everything is fine and dandy while internally it's a total dumpster fire of bad technology, incompetent regional and global nincompoops, conflicting and nonsensical initiatives and imcompatible operating procedures. Soon enough, Amazon will repair what it can, jettison the rest, downsize its retail square footage tremendously and turn 365 and WFM into store brands it can sell online. I look for a few flagship stores in the top metros. The rest will go the way of Augusta, GA, which should have never been opened in the first place. The grocery business is the graveyard of retail dreamers who think it's easy to do and mistake vast sales for easy profits. Our competitors are getting stronger and they are not going away. I now work in education and recently three science teachers (our smart, knowledgeable customers, right) all were remarking how fresh and inexpensive ALDI is for organic and natural foods. This was also a topic in a business media article (can't recall the specific publication right now). The bottom line is that those German firms know logistics and efficiency, they know that quality and price come first and they'll use just enough track lighting to give you a warm feeling while totally undercutting WFM and other grocers. Traditional grocers like Publix are also not going away, in fact they're growing like crazy and their main thing is service, service, service, consistency and cleanliness along with product quality. They're eating our lunch on the high end. So is Costco. Amazon will soon enough realize what a horrible mistake it made. I'm betting there will be a $10 billion write-off coming soon when they wake up from the greatest merger of all time. We've heard that kind of puffery before and it's always resulted in disaster when reality bites back.