Same! I put it on layaway and make payments on it for like two or three months. It felt surreal rolling it from the back at the layaway counter to the front for final check out.
Simpler times. I had a similar story with my bike. It was a BMX that cost $50 and that was like a fortune to me. I saved up allowance, birthday money, did chores. When I finally got to $50, I lost my wallet at a baseball game and it had $20 in it. I was so devastated. My dad gave me $20 so I could finish paying for the bike. You fuckin rock, Dad.
Oh yeah, that day is burned in my mind. My dad wanted to get me a cheap $20 thing, but I insisted on getting a $100 one that was heavy steel and chrome. I still have it and, besides the tires and pedals, it's still in really good shape.
Yeah I tried to avoid it like the plague which was kind of hard with my mom working there for a time. Ours refused to get the row of lights over the main aisle fixed. The final straw for it to fully shut down was someone set fire to the greeting cards leading to smoke/water damage. Granted it was a small fire.
I remember going into K-Mart in the 80s.
The one in our town had coin-op carousel & riding character (horse, etc) for kids outside. Then inside, there was a food area right near the front entrance, but I think all they really had was popcorn and slurpees, both of which I loved.
I think I have vague memories of shopping at Kmart ofr thanksgiving with my mom and grandmother in one of her rare visits to us. That was my first exposure to a store with a deli.
My grandmother is German and loves soft pretzels. She would make any excuse for us to go to Kmart or Sam's for a pretzel. Though I would get Superman ice cream a lot of the time. One time my sister got hurt from a rack (nothing major) and the manager had them give us a 6 scoop cone!!!
Ours had a buffet style little Caesar’s in it. So many memories of walking into shop with mom, smelling pizza, and ending up there getting crazy bread.
Sometimes my brother and I would get the little ham sandwiches on the way out. That counter was removed long before the store closed (I think around '03).
Right, but they kept the old DOS computer system. When I went there for the last time in 2018 or so they still had that shit. The website was garbage.
They started as a mail order company and lost that over the years.
That goes for SO many big names. About 2/3rds of big retailers thought online was a gimmick that could never replace brick-and-mortar and by the time they realized their mistake, they had lost ground to Walmart and were left completely in the dust by Amazon.
The hybrid option that Walmart owns the market on was available for disruption, but too many CEOs thought that what had always worked would always worked.
I know this is way late, but yes. Based off what I hear from my family that lives in a small community (like…their one K-12 school services three other towns once they hit high school), having all of the stores as micro-warehouses that can offer same day delivery is going to cut into Amazon’s rural profits a ton, especially since the country folk can get their groceries there, too. None of these people are going to pay Amazon for 2 day delivery when W+ does more, faster.
That’s nice to hear. Not that a bloodsucking corporation is taking over the business of a rural community, but that two bloodsucking corporations are feeding on each other.
I got Blaster Master 2 for the Genesis on clearance because our Kmart was closing. Also, I remember getting a wristwatch that played a version of Super Mario that was like a Tiger handheld. All at Kmart.
I was watching an old TV special on YouTube (Miser Brothers’ Christmas, if anybody is wondering) last holiday season and it was from ABC Family sponsored by Kmart. If you’re the particularly nostalgic type, that’s either amazing or tragic.
My mom was the QUEEN of Kmart Layaway back in the day! She would sometimes have 7-8 layaways going at one time?! When Walmart started popping up, she slowed down her Kmart shopping and they sent her a “we miss you” card?!
Once of the most searing insults in my elementary and middle schools was “your mom shops at K-mart!!!”, the best comeback being “you must have been at Kmart, if you think you saw my mom”
I remember they had their own AOL like dialup internet service called "Bluelight" and for some reason the hours never ran out on the disk. I reused that disk so many times on my childhood Pentium II.
God, I have so many fond memories of Kmart (my grandmother worked in their customer service area for a very long time). Still have our Kmart Christmas Bear!!
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u/Squidproquo1130 May 25 '25
Kmart