I just had a paradoxically pleasant trip to Sears today--picking up an online order and replacing a Craftsman lopping shear...the salesperson in Lawn and Garden handled the replacement (at least 12 years old) of the old lopping shear with a slightly sheepish "you know you need the receipt"...it long predated the Craftsman Club/shopping club/... so she was satisfied when I gave her my shopping club number--rang it out and sent me on my way with a smile. It was "good old Sears" and they seemed to have reasonable staffing at 4 pm on a Friday. Was in and out of the online area in 4 minutes (met their service levels) and left with a smile while the manager and a trainee worked together on giving me the merchandise....wandered through the appliance department and there were a few shoppers and the excess sales people were apparently working on some online training or something. Apparel was pretty dire with huge numbers of clearance signs, but the entire store was nicely stocked, just not as busy as they would like. This was at Oakland Mall---a large mid-grade mall in metro Detroit which would likely be a premier location for them. I can only say "yikes" at what more marginal locations would be like. Metro Detroit has got to be one of their stronger markets--they're only just now closing some of the duplicate K-Marts, and the ones remaining are reasonably busy.
