Quit reading at point 2.
Only about 2% of a retail sale is profit. The rest has to cover costs, such as the facilities, employees, utilities, merchandise, insurance, maintenance, security, advertising, and (a huge part of the cost) shoplifting.
I swear these people have to have somebody walk them through the process of velcro tying their shoes every morning.
Was skimming the posts to see if I was the only one who noticed that. I think this guy may have to tweak his conclusions just a wee bit.
Do the math. He said $36,000,000 in sales every hour. That's $600,000 in sales every minute. He then said that works out to $20,928 in profit every minute, or 3.5% profit. While higher than your estimate of 2%, he didn't just divide sales per hour by 60 and print that.