My brother works at a Git-N-Go (convenience store). Across the street from his work is an Albertsons (grocery store) and in their gigantic parking lot is another convenience store named Albertsons Express.

Git-N-Go is by far the king of convenience stores in this city. My brother works there part time and is trying to get another job full time because GNG can't give him full time at the store he is at. Well, he called me last night from his work and wanted me to come up to his work to chat with him. I pretty much knew something unusual was up because he was at work later than usual and he never asks me to come up to his work just to chat. My brother is the only one in my family that is GI at all.

When I got there he said he had been called into work early because business was booming. When he got there his boss offered to increase his schedule to full time if he wanted it because the Albertsons Express across the street had gone out of business. My brother said to him maybe you better find out why they went out of business to see if it is permanent or temporary before you offer me full time.

So, as his story goes, his boss went over to the Albertsons and asked the store manager there why the Albertsons Express was shut down and apparently the manager told him it was due to Y2K problems. He said they weren't compliant and couldn't be fixed so they had to shut it down. He also said the Albertsons wasn't compliant and was going to shut down.

Now, all of this is unsubstantiated. I really don't know how to find out if it is true at all. Anyone have any suggestions.

-- pizzaman (cjwarner@yahoo.com), December 11, 1999

Answers

Pizzaman- Check out this link for info on Albertson's: http://www.hoovers.com/capsules/10049.html

-- Brian Bretzke (bretzke@tir.com), December 11, 1999.

Pizzaman,

Please email me.

-- Scat (sgcatique@webtv.net), December 11, 1999.

Pizzaman..Here in Tulsa I live close to a brand new Albertsons and they have an express store also... both doing a booming business as near as I can tell.

-- citizen (lost@sea.com), December 11, 1999.

Pizzaman-

This is huge news if true. I shop regularly at Albertson's, and I will keep an eye on them. We shall see, we shall certainly see......

-- (cavscout@fix.net), December 11, 1999.

This is total horseshit. Albertson's will shut down because of Y2K *BEFORE* the fact. Horseshit!

-- Bob (bob@bob.com), December 11, 1999.

Bob, have 2 stores in our new mall shutting that I already posted. HQ has declared chapter 11, which is a large east coast hardware chain (I mention this cause I don't know how big they are, but I have seen there stores all over the east coast at least). They are being liquidated. I asked the staff why and they said it was there understanding that the main prob was with their inventory computer. Understand this store always gets good business; great location.

-- Hokie (nn@va.com), December 11, 1999.

Is Albertsons Mormon related? Isn't the Mormon philosophy to be Prepared For Anything? Too ironic if Albertsons shut down because of Y2K. Don't believe it.

-- religion empire (food@ward.stake), December 11, 1999.

Bob, I wouldn't be too hard on pizzaman, as we're going to have to put up with rumors such as this for some time to come. And it was posted with the disclaimer, that it was unverified. What more do you want? However, you'll have to admitt that every time there is a computer glitch, it's never a computer y2k glitch, it's always something else.

We're being lied to right and left, so there's not much any of us can do but conjecture.

No,I don't think it's true that Albertson's is closing an outlet because of y2k, but then I don't know for sure that they aren't either.

-- Richard (Astral-Acres@webtv.net), December 11, 1999.

It's awfully late in the game if Albertson's was going to do this before year's end. So I tend to think that this is a miscommunication. Maybe the Albertson's manager was looking to yank somebody's chain.

It's more likely that it's a merger consolidation. Didn't Albertson's merge with somebody in the last year or so? Lucky Stores comes to mind. Seems that they would be closing excess properties from both stores to concentrate on the very best locations to do business from.

But as was pointed out in the case of the home improvement stores chain (Hechingers, I believe), there have been businesses which have been closed rather than go through the expense of becoming Y2K ready. There was also a discount grocery chain in the upper midwest which was closed by its parent company (a larger grocery chain) rather than spend the money to make the smaller operation Y2K ready.

But there might be a lot of such announcements after the middle of January.

WW

-- Wildweasel (vtmldm@epix.net), December 11, 1999.

WW,

This particular Albertson's has only been there about 6 months. Before that it was a Smitty's and the convenience store out front was 'Lil Smittys. And yes, it is entirely possible someone was just yanking somebodys' chain.

-- pizzaman (cjwarner@yahoo.com), December 12, 1999.