Thread regarding Sears layoffs

@1cxk - Excellent observation; the exact same thing happened in our store as well. Things really went downhill for the paint department on days when there weren't any associates scheduled that could mix paint. It is hard to fathom that it was considered acceptable to tell customers that they had to return on another day when there was someone scheduled that could mix paint. Paint mixing by appointment only; another unsuccessful strategy by Sears!

@1cxk This is exactly the type of b---s--- with Sears when they cut hours so bad. You did all the work for someone else to take from your hands. I hate how the company invest in stupid stuff, but one of the biggest problems is the company isnt well staffed at times. In my department we are positive in numbers yet hours are cut to the bone. We need extra coverage to keep those hours pumping. We got tons of crap in the stock room that we can take out, but cant with hour limitation.

Yet I see once again our SM doing absolutely nothing and I don't know why the DM doesn't get on him. If he sees hes not using his associate ID ringing or helping than he is doing nothing to help out the actual store.

Paint was a really good department in our store until they decided not to have the department staffed. The decision to have other departments cover it killed it. I remember getting into a heated argument when during fitness season I was showing treadmills to three different groups of customers and was told to leave my department to mix a gallon of paint. By the time I got back to my department the other associate I was working with had rang 2500 in sales under his number. He was smart and never learned how to mix paint. That was another problem. Some people refused to learn how to mix it and the rest of us got stuck doing it.

I started out with Sears many years ago in paint at a B store and during the summer we were selling a truckload of it a week. Paint and housewares had 4 full time employees. But they gradually let the paint business die from lack of investment in equipment, inventory, and staff. Paint is too complicated for the later day Sears to deal with. And keeping it in certain stores is also too complicated. They want simple, uniform, easy.

The decline of the company resulted from a million stupid decisions over many years. The assortments they have at Sears these days are just plain dumb. People expect to see paint in a hardware store. It's no surprise the Sears store nearest me is always dead, while the Lowes 200 yards away does a booming business.

By 2000 Sears paint was sh--. Lowes/Home Depot's discount stuff covered better. Sherwin Williams was similar in price for an actual top quality paint.

Its what I find out stupid isnt the point of the corporate high paid salary goonies of the company to invest on what sells? I mean if paint is selling you don't get rid of it as it seems it sold pretty damn well back in the days.

Same with today's technology why not invest in actual innovation like when the smartphone industry kicked in they could of transformed electronics with smartphones, never happened big $$$ was their to be made.

This is why I don't think the CEO cared if he did he would of invested in the proper things to try to make actual money. Who best knows? The damn workers that are in the floor. We see what customers want and what they buy and beg us to have. We could of actually had that happen we could of been selling more and maybe elevated in the long run.

Paint used to sell a half million dollars a year in our store in the 80's and 90's

When they took it out several years ago, it was under $20,000 a year....and most of the paint on the shelves and in stockroom was old.....over 1 or 2 years old because it was not selling......Customers would bring back paint complaining that it was hard to stir....because the ingredients had settled out and congealed due to sitting on shelves for 2 or 3 years.

The generation of Sears shopper that bought nothing but Sears paint has died off or moved on to buying at Lowe's or Home Depot.

Paint was very profitable in some kmart and sears stores. They should have kept it at the stores where it actually sold instead of abandoning the concept and bringing it back in some stores. In our rural kmart store we made a killing on it as the nearest competition was 40 miles away. Eddie didn't see it that way and instead put craftsman cheaply made toolboxes to replace the space. We still have customers to this day ask where the paint is. They don't want to travel 30 miles for a gallon of paint. Just like gaming and electronics section. We sold a bunch off stuff until it was replaced with cheap appliances and matresses. Like as lot of his plans too little too late. I'm just getting ready for the final blowout liquidation sale after the first of the year.

At my Kmart store, it's not that our replenishment crew has been eliminated, it's that given the crap pay and hours, we can't even hire one to begin with. Instead, we've got all the same precious few people who are supposed to organize receiving, receive vendor deliveries, receive and unload the trucks, bring all the freight out to the floor and get it onto the shelves, keep every department straightened, and so on. Oh, and while we're doing this we're supposed to get all the various calls around the store (layaway, jewelry, panicky register operators hitting their call buttons, service desk associates who don't know what they're doing, carry-outs, etc.), do online orders, do layouts, do returns, and whatever else I'm forgetting. Almost every person left is a lead of some sort, and has no time to do the actual job their job description would have them doing.

SEARS sadly has lost a generation of customers.

Our Sears store in Michigan got paint back, all kinds and it doesn’t seem to sell let alone have prices on it where it’s in a circular bulk stack. ( in isle it has a bin ticket)

Even with the Holiday Blowout it didn’t get signs and it’s 10% off