Department Stores

I went to K Mart today with my cousin and his wife, and it was rather interesting to say the least. This isn't just about K Mart, rather it is about things I have gleaned from department stores all over. First off, let me reveal what I've noticed about such places. There's different levels of department stores.

First off, there's what I call high end stores. These are places like Macy's Sears, and JC Penny's, places that specialize in higher quality goods, mainly clothes and appliances, appliances moreso in Sears' case. Then you have your mid level, more broad stores like Target and Fred Meyer. These have a wider range of products, less focused on clothes and more focus on various other things like consumer electronics, various housewears, and in Fred Meyer's case, groceries. These places are generally pretty cool, but not terribly interesting. I enjoy going to such places to restock my Nerf arsenal, but I don't have any profound experiences there. However, I do find such things at what I call low end department stores.

These are places like Wal-Mart and K Mart and the like. Now they aren't low end because of the products necessarily, though these places don't have the best quality all the time. And it's not because of the selection, as Wal-Mart has done everything it can to sell absolutely everything. It's the feeling you get when you walk in. Wal-Mart isn't just cheap as far as prices go, it just feels cheap in there. There's a lack of energy that makes you want to explore, and I experienced the same thing in K Mart also. In Wal-Mart you get the feeling that you're in a looming, unpleasant place that just doesn't feel right. I don't dislike Wal-Mart solely because they are a potentially harmful corporate giant, that's for a different blog that isn't mine. I dislike it because it feels like a depressing place. Its denizens are numerous, from average folks to the elderly, along with large families and horrendously large people. I may have a followup post to this once I fully explore Wal-Mart.

The K Mart that I went to had a similar feel to it, but it felt barren to me. Not many people were inside, and it felt like it had been abandoned, though it was clearly well stocked. The prices were fair, standard, I did browse through the toy section, but I didn't find any robots to collect aside from an expensive (and awesome) Lego Exo-Force set. Think of it as Lego cashing in on anime, I'll explain some other time. Anyway, the cream of the crop in this K Mart was the snack stand. It's not too terribly unusual to see a concessions area in a store. Target has one, after all. But the snack stand in this particular K Mart felt just as wrong as the rest of the store. It was closed, as it was somewhat late, but it looked dark and empty. The prepackaged nachos and uninviting cases gave the impression that it had been closed for a long time and nobody thought to clean it out, like an old ghost town of an amusement park. Needless to say, even if it was open I probably wouldn't ever want to eat anything that came out of it. I only wish I got a picture of it.

Overall it was an enjoyable experience, and I do believe I need to hit Wal-Mart next. That should yield similar results, but not identical.