Thread regarding Sam's Club layoffs

Rumor is all associates will be bumped to at least 15 an hour. One of the reasons there will be less managers in each club and most likely more positions will be cut.

I am well aware of this company's practices regarding how they thin out the herd in any number of different nefarious ways. As you were keen to observe, I intentionally refrained from going into all that, or, as you put it, conveniently left that out. By now, most of us who have been with Sam's for over a decade, don't need to go running down that road for the umpteenth time here. We know it's going to happen. That sort of practice was in full play with Block Scheduling. It's always going to happen like that in some way with these people and they're going to continue to get away with it because there's no law preventing them from doing so. I could type till my fingers are worn down to little nubs, on how I personally feel about what this company does to people when it doesn't want to pay them anymore. I think one of the things that doesn't get discussed enough is who they would prefer to hire versus what they get, which are more closely matched now, than ever before, thanks to the reputation this company has. Bright, productive, conscientious, and self-sufficient people steer clear of this company, and for good reason. Part of being that type of person means they have self-worth and high personal standards. They're going to go where they stand a better chance of being treated fairly and rewarded more appropriately for their work. This company doesn't want those people. They cost too much and expect too much. People with poor self-esteem and low self-worth will tolerate being mistreated and poorly compensated. They're just happy to be wanted by someone. That's why we get who we do these days. They've been past over and rejected everywhere else and this company is their last option. This is also why the quality of our in-store leadership has been dropping the last few years. The store I'm at right now has only one manager who could hold his/her own at any of the three stores I was with in my first four years. The rest would be team leads. And let's not even bother with the team leads themselves. One is capable of being a manager - and a good one. The rest wouldn't even warrant consideration to be team leads. I think the company knows this is the case and is fine with it, I really do. How could they not know? They have endless metrics and conduct broad studies on every aspect of the operation of every store in every market in the country. You think they don't do the same when it comes to matters concerning personnel? Anyway, I just didn't see the need to go into all that stuff but here is some of it anyway....

@youknowwho

You make some valid points; however, you too conveniently overlook the way this company has gone about terminating some of their employees. If they want to act like adults and do above-board on-the-record layoffs, then we might come closer to agreement on the company's behavior. They did a few of those and paid some severance to some of the affected people. But when you look at Sam's and Wal-Mart and their collective business practices, you would be blind to not see that they would prefer to lose most of us through forced attrition. They want to either terminate us or, even better, make things so unpleasant that we quit because it is so much less expensive and avoids all of the messy public relations problems that a layoff would entail. If you fall into groups such as people with a long tenure with the company or people over 50 years old, you are ground zero for the Big Boot via termination for "cause".

Not cool.

Here's the thing...it's hard to imagine they would pull another stunt anywhere near the magnitude of Block Scheduling, which is what everyone is expecting them to do. However, when you least expect it, here comes the next crazy idea that pulls the rug out from under all of us once again. In all honesty, how radical can they possibly be after doing what they did in 2019? The answer? Don't be shocked when it happens and be prepared to roll with it, if it does. Right now, most of the speculation surrounds a reduction in salaried management on the floor, which is hardly any sort of shock. Team Leads are required to handle more responsibilities as time passes, as are the managers themselves. The contention that there is an increasing number of managers and team leads that sit around and do nothing is hardly any sort of revelation and unrelated to this conversation. The end result of ANY move this company makes has everything to do with making the cost of operating their clubs and stores, lower. That is all they are trying to achieve. With their primary focus on migrating the business to the electronic side so they may meet the increase in shoppers not using the clubs and stores the traditional way, it is obvious that there is conversely a reduction in foot-traffic. Less foot-traffic means fewer associates needed on the floor. This is a pattern that will continue to develop and expand and we all intrinsically know this about ourselves, too. How much shopping is each of us doing online now versus last year or each of the years before? If you can buy it online and have it shipped to your doorstep and save a few bucks, or have someone else pull it all for you and all you have to do is drive up and load it into your car and save an hour or two, how do you think that affects the way things are going to be done when you consider how many other people are doing the same thing? Do you think Walmart doesn't know this? This company doesn't go through these alterations lightly. As much as we'd all like to believe that this company is being run by a bunch of heartless, greedy, old men, and all they care about is how many little people they can send to the unemployment line, the sad truth is that this is all about business. Don't get me wrong, I hate it just as much as anyone here. But that's really what it boils down to. We can bring up Costco and how they employ more people and pay them more and all that, BUT...who are they catering to? What's their target demographic and average income level? They're out there for middle-income people, on up; the kinds of shoppers who have the money and the time to shop and carry the expectations of being waited on, hand and foot, at least to some degree. How much of the average population to these people account for? Not nearly as much as those who don't fit into that particular niche. Walmart is out to take the rest, which they will get their share of.
The way I figure it, this company does all the customary market research stuff you'd expect them to. But a big part of that is breaking down the economics and the psychology and all this other minutely detailed stuff, about who their shoppers are and where their shopping habits are going to be in the future. When they approached the idea of removing the night crew, which - from what I've been told by numerous people - is something they've talked about for years, their concern was, "How do we do that without crippling the operation itself?" Block Scheduling, if done properly, allows the operation to continue to function, at the very least. Do the stores - on average - run any better? No, they don't. Are they able to function well enough to meet the demands of who the target demographic is? Yes, they do. "OK, let's go for it." Everything has to have an outcome that will at least reach a minimal level of expectation. The stores don't function at nearly as high a level as they did in the past but they do function at a level that meets minimal expectations. Apply this to anything they have done or will do and you can see why it's acceptable for them to pursue it as long as it isn't a massive failure. As much as we would all like Block Scheduling to be exactly that, it hasn't. If we're losing business to Costco, that's fine. Those aren't the people we're trying to attract because that costs us money. We want the kinds of shoppers who don't and there are far more of them out there than the ones who do. When you look at the economic picture and break it down to all the different subsets of people and factor in all these other boring forecasts, this company knows exactly what it wants to do and why. Again, it's all about business. Welcome to the 21st century. None of us are guaranteed a job for life. When a company reaches a stage where it doesn't need us anymore, they let us go. The way technology and innovation are moving, nearly every redundant job is kind of like an endangered species. Everything has a shelf-life. It's only a matter of time before the freight enters the building and finds its way into the steel and eventually onto the shelves with hardly anyone touching it. If they can skip this step altogether and cut the number of hands that touch the product before it reaches the customer, they're going to do it. If they can operate the stores with fewer and fewer people to rely on and pay in order to, "at least function well enough to meet minimal expectations", they're going for it. That's the world we live in now, and if you think you're not, I don't know what to tell you.

"Obsessed on an obsessive level"

That means they're pretty obsessed, if I'm interpreting this correctly.

Probably true but you should have read that one back before you sent it.

Just saying....

Just more of the same, which tranlates into increased emphasis on moving the business deeper into club pickup and other means of electronic transactions, and away from interpersonal, live customer service. To repeat once again, the further they travel into this direction, the fewer people they will be required to employ. As someone else said, this company is obsessed with reducing personnel on an obsessive level. At the rate they are moving, in five years Sam's Club will bear little resemblance to what we see even today, if it's even around at all.

Don't know how that raise can be good news. (Although, any raise is better than nothing.) The "standard" 2% associate pay raise barely covers yearly inflationary costs. Yearly inflation is usually in the 3-5% range so that raise is just an insult to the hard working associates doing the jobs of 2-3 people.

As for 2020 being bad, it'll be bad for the associates (as usual) and great for the company because, you know........ profits over people.

Raise announcement in 3 weeks, so that's something.