The stores are not meant to be profitable

With all the "news" about Oakbrook closing. You have to understand, the stores are not meant to be profitable, its all about moving around funny money, and extracting real money out.

I saw this first hand, from multiple angles. Seemingly arbitrary charges to stores to inflate store support, charges withheld for more strategic times. For example if a dept was already beating "plan" they would wait until the next month/quarter to hit the stores with more charges, because beating plan is good, going way over plan = a new plan at a higher mark than you can reach.

Store Support/Corporate plays the same games that the store managers and such do, they just have more power. At one point a dept I was in was coming up short, so they charged each store $35 for "support" while $35 does nothing to the P&L of the store, at the time from the somewhere close to 800 stores, that meant a lift of $28,000. for the dept that month.

The way the game was laid out, it was easier to do internal charges then to try to get outside money, so you have infighting and c-ap overpriced work, because they would also throw you under the bus for using any outside services. So if IT says this roll out costs $50k and you find it elsewhere for $10k, you have to go with IT who will charge you the $50k and then deliver a subpar product (not to pick on IT, seemingly every dept did it)

At the end of the day, everyone passes the buck until they find someone with actual real money coming in.... the stores. All in all its quite like the middle class with paying taxes!

Most people know it in Corporate, I've heard enough things being explicitly stated "Do not put that in email" because no one wants the paper trail either.

Also this allows Eddie to sell any stores he wants, because it makes good business sense to sell underperforming stores, but you can charge them anything you want or squeeze them 8 different ways from Sunday to get them to not turn a profit.

Luckily I'm on to bigger and better things, but I still have friends in the pit of despair that is Sears HQ

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I am a former sgm also. I left the company two years ago. Always questioned these random p&l charges without receiving a explanation. We were set up to lose. Especially in the reit stores.

Leave, anyone who stays at Sears/Kmart is just aiding and abetting these criminals

Eddie would not have spend $5 billion on this c-ap and be buying empty Sears stores, trying to buy hometown and take it private if he wasn’t making money somehow. Common sense folks. I wouldn’t expect a ton of closings, he will intentionally lose money on the stores so he can use the losses to offset profits at ESL.

This makes a lot of sense. There have been high traffic, very busy stores that have closed under the guise of not being profitable. It all depends on whether they want to keep the building or someone else is offering more.

Sears offshore just announced that a store That was devastated after hurricane Maria and has taken over a year to remodel will also not be opening. So the rest of us that see are stores getting any major repairs and think it is a go forward store better think again. In Eddies game nothing is safe.

To the former SGM, there were always games played to keep people from getting bonuses as well.

Don't feel singled out though, departments would get forced to move from building to building, or from floor to floor, typically at a cost of $500 per person per move. Its not like you can lock in a lease have a contract against office of the building, which you absolutely would have if you were renting from a 3rd party.

I believe at one point Automotive looked at leaving HE and renting space privately. I don't know what ever became of that though, although I do know they were successful at getting other service's outside the walled garden. (At which point any internal teams became even more unhelpful to them)

Perfectly written post. Wishing you well my friend. We are all better off to just move on to bigger better things..

Former FLS SGM here. This actually makes a lot of sense, particularly the part about random charges to the P&L. I always wondered why it was never consistent. I always assumed it was part of Eddie’s obsession with EBITDA over sales and profit.

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The stores are not meant to be profitable

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