I Bought a K-Mart

Chapter One

It was another typical day at work at Marine Company Freight's headquarters in Bridgehampton. I was sitting in front of the computer reviewing September's profit report. Profits were up fifteen percent. We made $2.6 billion dollars in September, and spent $1.9 billion of that on employees, maintenance, paying our distributors, and all that crap, leaving me with a $700 million profit. I decided to give my wage employees a one dollar an hour bonus for all their hard work, which got me down to $600 million. Still quite the paycheck. It really made no difference to me. I would be dining on the finest caviar for dinner that night regardless of that little gift to my employees.

Then, a little notification popped up on the bottom left of my Mac computer. It said, "Kmart Down to One Store; Miami Location Bankrupt".

My kids were four and two at the time, and just like my mother did for me, I took them to Bridgehampton, New York's Kmart every year around Christmas. I wanted them to have the Kmart experience, just like I did growing up. Besides, our local Kmart was more like a dollar store than an actual grocery store like MCF, and with two whiny little kids, both as ADD as a ferret, a loud and crowded grocery store like mine DOES NOT WORK. 

Bridgehampton's Kmart didn't sell Micro Machines anymore, but they did have something called Mini Racers. Not quite the same thing, but if it kept my little goblins' attention for a few mini-seconds, I was willing to spend $99.99 a set.

My nostalgia got the best of me, and I looked up the website for Kmart's holding company, TransformCo. TransformCo, as it turns out, was little more than a shell company that transforms failing businesses into liquidated assets. I knew my little neighborhood Kmart wasn't long for this world. So I decided to give them a call.

"Hello, TransformCo speaking. How can I help you?" said the woman on the other end. I was surprised to get an actual person on the line, so I took full advantage of it.

"Hi, my name is Alexander Hugo, CEO of Marine Company Freight. Can I speak to whoever's in charge?" I asked.

"Sure, let me get you Boss Turner," said the receptionist.

I waited a moment, and a man named Ryan Turner answered. He asked, "Hello?"

I said, "Hi, my name is Alexander Hugo.  I saw that TransformCo was about to liquidate the last two surviving Kmarts. I smell an opportunity to cash in on turn-of-the-millennium nostalgia. Care to bite?"

"Kmart?!" said Turner, "You want to buy Kmart?! That dead horse that I have to liquidate?"

"Yes," I said, "That Kmart".

Turner replied, "You know what, I'm tired of dealing with it. You can have it for fifteen hundred grand. Just know that money is gonna be flushed down the decaying toilets of the last Kmart in New York faster than you can say, 'Ship My Pants'."

"My kids deserve a Kmart Christmas, and by goodness I'm going to give them a lifetime of them," I said.

"Okay," said Turner, "It's too late to save the Miami location, but you can have the last surviving Kmart in New York, as well as the still-thriving online store. Just send me the check, and it's yours. Can I interest you in Sears as well?"

"No, just Kmart will do." I answered. "Okay, I've got a check in my office mailbox. It should be there within the next few days."

"Great," said Turner, "One less dead corpse for my company to liquidate. I wish you all the best."

"Thank you," I said, before I hung up.

Later that day, I received an email containing all of the relevant info I needed to run Kmart. Access to the web store, financial info, et cetera. Kmart was mine, and by goodness I was gonna get my money's worth.