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'd grab a copy of a magazine I'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'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't the employee's or consumer demand'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.