I will just leave this here


 
Speaking of Sears I was in our local store yesterday. Hadn't been there in at least a couple of years. Sad. Not much inventory due to a lack of $$ I'm sure.

I agree about their tools. Overpriced for sure. I have some old craftsman power and hand tools that are great but i wouldn't buy their new stuff.

I looked at their grills. What a bunch of junk. The only grill that looked decent was a "Kenmore elite" 4 burner stainless. It had pretty nice high grade stainless grates. And the flavorizors were at least 18 gauge stainless maybe even 16 gauge. But the exterior stainless was all cheap magnetic stainless. And parts of the firebox were aluminum but parts were sheet metal. This grill was $1400. Nowhere near the quality of a Genesis II. The lower priced grills were just total junk. No thanks.

I used to love Sears and their products. It's just too bad they didn't keep up with the times and stay relevant.
 
Yep, I haven't bought any Craftsman tools new in a long time. My last purchase was a nice socket set but that was back 15 years ago. I have a few other of their hand tools to include a metric and SAE set of combo wrenches. I don't know when they stopped making them in the USA, but I did like their lifetime guarantee and I did utilize it a couple times. In fact, I bought a nice 1/2" Socket wrench at an auction for $2 because the ratchet mechanism was broken. I took it to a sears and walked out with a nice working one the next day. Still have it.
 
Jon Tofte said:
I have thought what I would do if I had the benefit of a time machine to go back 35 years and the power to run Sears as a dictator. I would position myself as the "Made in USA" all-American store. I would work hard to link up with the few companies that still make stuff here and promote that to the hilt. Try to keep as much tool manufacturing, etc. here, too. Concentrate on mid-level but solid tools and appliances and not try to compete with Aeropostale and other places frequented by young and fickle buyers. It would be really interesting to know if they could have made it with higher prices than bargain stores selling Chinese imported everything. I would love to think that enough Americans would appreciate a company that really cared about American workers and basic well made stuff.
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Do you remember when Walmart under old Sam himself said the same thing? You could go to a Walmart and know you were shopping at a store working to keep American workers employed. He died and so did the ideal he set.
I also recall one major thing about Henry Ford. He insisted on paying his workers a wage high enough so they could afford to buy their own products. That was unheard of
 
Yah, my brother in law works for Boeing. I aught to call him and see if he can't loan me his 757.
 
When I retired in 2002 and moved to AZ I got a part time job at Sears in the tool department. $12.00 an hour a nice employee discount and just a couple of days a week. Perfect! Within two weeks I hated the job. We would get beat up every morning about the number of protection plans and credit cards applications we didn't get.
There was never any thing but negativity never hey you did a nice job.

I got my butt chewed out for having no sales once when I didn't have one sale all night when I was the closer there wasn't one customer. The second in command came out and jump all over me in front my peers and customers the next morning. When I explained that no one even walked through the tool department all night. She looked at me and said that's no excuse.
Then they put us on commission instead of hourly. For awhile I was making the same if not more, then they started cutting back on the commissions and my hourly commission pay dropped to an average of about $6.00 an hour.
There was five of us in the tool department and when they lowered our commission again four us walked right out the door after we were told.

As far as Craftsman tools go they were getting pretty cheesy, but I was lucky I bought all of mine when I was about 16 years old and yes I still have them all in a big rollaway. They will last me a lifetime.
 
Yah, really crappy. Eventually, the bottom will totally rust out and then the sides and legs will give way. But, if you just want to get another 2-3 years out of it, what the hell if it still cooks well.
 
FredJones said:
D'oh that was a good one ! I actually paid money for my rotten Silver C with the doors lol. Shucks....
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It seems anything around here that is listed for free is gone in less than a half hour. I've seen a couple of things pop up that I actually tried for but I was too late less than an hour from them being posted.
 
Same here Jason. Most of my grills are about an hour away so unless they are willing to hold it for me (not often), I cannot afford to make the drive and hope it is still there. I almost prefer to see them listed for $25 bucks so I have a real chance at them if I want them.
 
If I see a "free" grill that is worth anything to me, I try to BUY it.
I'd say 80% of the time or more it works, and I end up with
the score.
If its an old kettle, I will offer $5 or $10 to pull it back up from the
curb and hold it for me. Something better, a little more. A front control
310 went up the other day for free. I saw the ad when it was only 15 minutes
old. I immediately hit them with a $50 offer. It is in my garage now. The
guy said he had about a dozen people wanting to come get it. I was the only
one that bothered to offer him $$ for it. I will end up selling that easily for
$250 or more.
 
Great strategy Dave. However when there is grill for free in our area the owners just post the address in the ad. They will not react to any conversation. So it is always a hit and miss.
 
Stefan H said:
Great strategy Dave. However when there is grill for free in our area the owners just post the address in the ad. They will not react to any conversation. So it is always a hit and miss.
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I have hit on those a few times, lost on a few as well. However, for whatever reason, I am seeing
less and less of this. Maybe folks simply not wanting to post their address.
 
In our area most developments have the layout with the back alley. So people just move the grill in the alley and post the address online.
 
Stefan H said:
In our area most developments have the layout with the back alley. So people just move the grill in the alley and post the address online.
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I love me some Plano TX. I used to work for EDS and would come to Plano for work. That is where I had me some Vanilla Blue Bell with Big Red in it ! I went to the TX State Fair in Dallas (you can actually see Dallas from Plano. TX is so dag-gum flat!) and had "Corny Dogs" and "Tornado Taters". I loved that corndogs were Corny Dogs lol. Anyhoo I asked this carny where the bathroom was at. He said (TX Accent fully in force) "Oh man it is over there by that big ole' tree". I looked around and was like um what ???? He said the same thing again with a tad more emphasis and sloowed it down for me. I was still like whaaaaat ? He got a bit miffed at the dumbass Cali clown and then asked me "Do you see that tree over there man?". As I looked I saw something like this:

jUI6qMZm.jpg


I literally laughed and said I am from NorCal brother and that aint no big tree! He said well how big do the trees get on the beach? We both laughed and I then showed him some pics on my phone of some old growth Sequoias from Sequoia National Park. Dude thought it was fake. Anyways Dallas was so clean. The streets, sidewalks, buildings, everything is CLEAN. The people are wonderful and women actually wear dresses. Now I not very slim but in TX I was down right skinny lol. Also in TX you can talk some smack and as long as you end it with "bless your heart" you are usually ok. Oh and I drove by Allen High School's Eagle Stadium and about fell over. No joke this high school has a $60 million dollar stadium!!! And this is not the most expensive one. Check out McKinney ISD ($70 mil) or Cy-Fair ISD's Berry Center ($84 mil).
 
Dallas is clean?????? There is so much trash besides the roads here. How does CA look like if you consider Dallas clean? Yes in Texas everything is bigger. People, cars, food portions. And here everyone drives. This is why so many folks here are so obese. But trees are not and neither are mountains. lol

Allen PISD is unique because they only have one huge high school. But the stadium is still crazy. But the sad part: They screwed up the built pretty bad. Soon after opening they had discovered cracks in the concrete. They had to shut it down for a year. Cost them $10M to fix it.
 
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