As a salaried manager I have to say that I am looking forward to going on furlough next week. We have spent the last three weeks doing manual labor working in close proximity with no PPE other than hand sanitizer. It looks like regular unemployment plus the Cares Act provisions means that we will be getting close to our salary while we are out for the next two months.
Our store manager allowed us to sit in on the three conference calls that they have almost every day and it is clear that many of our leaders (all of who took calls from their homes) seem to be missing the impact that this emergency is having on us at store level. We spent hours on calls where New York, region, and district leaders shared and cascaded the same information, with the only exception being that each leader lower in the hierarchy added lists of tasks that they wanted stores to complete before and after teams go on furlough.
While we will most likely come out of this crisis, it seems unlikely that it will be business as usual. The impact and experience of these past weeks is being felt as colleagues have already found jobs with other companies in just three weeks, it will probably be much worse in another eight weeks as grocery stores and other essential retailers are posting hundreds of jobs in the market. It was clear from the calls that there is concern about people on furlough looking for employment instead of waiting and hoping that we reopen. At this point, there are no guarantees that we will be back by the end of May or that the company will cover insurance beyond then. Even with unemployment and the Cares Act, full time people cannot afford to take the chance that this will go beyond May and we will have to cover the cost of insurance for our families.
Good luck to the store managers who will be the only people working for the next eight weeks. They are working alone, coming in to unload trucks, ship orders, call customers, and protect the buildings. With all of the people catching the virus and dying from it regardless of age, it’s hard to understand how these tasks are worth the risk of being out in public.