I could write a book on this topic but here's a few comments. It's this sort of misguided thinking that got Sears where it is today. I was a commission salesperson when the PA/MA obsession first appeared in the early 1980's. All of a sudden getting the MA was more important than anything else. A $100 lawnmower sale with an MA was praised, while a $5000 tractor sale without the MA brought nothing but criticism. They turned commission selling into a miserable job focused on the "hard sell".
For a lot of years the enormous profit margin on maintenance agreements kept the company afloat. Contrary to what management might claim, MA/PA's are in fact nearly "pure profit" for the company. Sears would have gone out of business long ago without the profit dollars from these contracts. But the world changed while Sears focused on selling PA's. Most of Sears competitors had the good sense to skip the hard sell and focus on giving customers what they actually wanted in a store. Sears slowly fell apart.
Today it's just a desperation tactic. There is no way they are going to save the stores with PA's, credit, and SYWR. But store level and regional management can't change anything of consequence, so they focus on the trivial.
The threat is serious. They'll make your job life miserable if you don't "make the numbers". You mIght as well be working on getting out, since the of Sears retail is in sight anyway.
Originally posted on 5-3-2-1/PAs thread, @LQgXlmN-yrj