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Comment by tivert | Hacker News Reader

> Seems like they just got so much bigger that we don't even recognize them as a department store. Walmart, Costco, Home Depot, et. al. are just variations on the theme.

I don't think so. Home Depot is clearly a big hardware store / lumber yard. Costco may carry many kinds of merchandise, shelved roughly according to type, I don't think it really qualifies as it has unspecialized staff (and very few of them), little selection within each type of item, and probably its only true "department" is the tire department.

The only thing you list that could arguably be a department store is Walmart, and I think the reason it's not recognized as one isn't because of its size, but because it's been drained of all glamor.

And none of them (at least in their non "super" sizes) are subjectively much bigger than the old mall department stores.

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Walmart and Target are discount department stores, which is a different niche. K-mart is closing their last store, incidentally. There used to be more of them, too, and more regional ones.

Kmart stores are still doing very well in Australia and New Zealand, with 325 locations serving a population less than 1/10th the size of the US.

However, Australian/New Zealand Kmart stores have had no connection to American Kmart stores since the 90s, when Kmart Corporation sold them off to an Australian company that has managed them much more effectively.

Home Depot and Lowes are absolutely department stores. You may be too young to remember what it was like before they existed (and yes there are long gone proto-bigboxes like Pergament that were popular in the the 1970s), but previously every trade had a specific store. Lumberyards carried lumber, and that's about it. Maybe some 10d common nails if you were lucky. In fact, you would go to one store for your dimensional lumber, a different store for your plywood and paneling, a different store for paint, a different store for hardware, a different store for appliances, electrical, plumbing, tools, draperies, flooring (tile or carpet? separate stores...) lighting fixtures, and then you had to go to a totally different garden center for all your outdoor needs. Now they are all departments within the same store.

Home Depot smells like a men's shelter/halfway house (it took me a couple trips to realize, why do I hate this familiar smell and not want to come back to this place).

It has the most bottom of the barrel staff and a lumber yard that sells... something... that barely qualifies as lumber. It is the epitome of modern American capitalism. It exists solely because it exists. No one would ever see a current Home Depot when visiting someone and say 'oh my god, please replace our current store(s) with this!'. But department stores used to offer experiences where people said that.

Where is the Home Depot you’re talking about?

Tbh Home Depot is to lumber what gas stations are to sandwiches. Actually this is unfair to gas station sandwiches, but you get the idea.

Mine is an enigma. The lumber is indoors, but is always soaking wet. It's infuriating.

One time while digging through a pile of 2x4s, an employee asked if I needed anything. I sarcastically asked what time they watered the lumber each day, so I could try to come get some before then. He just deadpan said "uh...I'm not sure."

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