K-Mart: Too cheap for me

As I stood in line at my local K-Mart watching an inept clerk crash the store's credit card verification program, I realized that the store had crossed my line between good and bad bargains. I doubt I'll ever shop there again, because it's too cheap for me.

The signs were everywhere. The exterior is lined with soda machines and unused horsey rides, the parking lot full of dirty, damaged and free-range carts. The doors open onto a box farm of unappealing clearance goods.

Store signage is amateurish, often misspelled or ungrammatical. Aisles are jammed with displays of goods in disarray, often mismatched to the signs above. An amazing percentage of the floor space is devoted to items it can't possibly make money on, such as dry goods.