re: #65 Pie-onist Overlord

I was in a Sears store a couple of weeks ago to buy some parts for my Sears-brand vacuum cleaner.

It smelled of silent despair.

That must be quite an aroma. Sad, really; I worked at Sears during what I guess now was it’s “last gasp” in the early to mid 1990s. I was lucky - I had a great boss, great co-workers, and I even won a couple of awards for customer service ‘above and beyond the call of duty’, such as it were. I owe that to my mentors there, one of whom was a real old-timer, a lifer. He taught me a lot about retail.