The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble
I was out shopping 3-4 days before Christmas this year, and happened to be near a Barnes and Noble so figured I&#x27;d grab a copy of a magazine I&#x27;ve been wanting to read for a while.<p>Grabbed the magazine, wandered the aisles a bit and picked up another book then went to check out.  Basically I was their marketing department&#x27;s dream - walk-in traffic coming to buy something cheap and specific who made an impulse retail buy of a much higher margin item.<p>The checkout line was at least 50 people long and probably estimated at over an hour.  Two cashiers working out of 8 or so possible registers, and as far as I could tell a singular employee on the floor itself.<p>I put my selections back and walked out the door.  Granted it was near peak shopping season - but that was inexcusable.  There were quite a lot of really pissed off looking people in that line.<p>So that is to say my experience lines up with the article.  They entirely botched their Christmas season and it wasn&#x27;t the employee&#x27;s or consumer demand&#x27;s fault.  Just that one store bled hundreds of dollars in lost sales just from the 5 minutes I watched people walk in and immediately out after seeing the line.