Thread regarding Sears layoffs

"I wish I had some idea where Sears management was going with our stores."

They have no interest in Sears remaining alive as a retailer. Get out ASAP.

You are right,all Sears cares about in the stores isSYW emails ,PAs too,but all we do is in warranty exchanges because everything comes back not economical to repair. I wish I had some idea where Sears management was going with our stores.

What aggravates me is the devil-may-care attitude. PAs, SYW, credit is king and things like sales and shrinkage control are an afterthought. Last time I checked, SYW is practically killing the company in overincentivising the customer. PAs? Given the horror stories of todays appliances and power equipment (I've witnessed this firsthand), we must be spending more on fixing and replacing stuff than we take in on selling contracts. Credit? It drives our customers crazy when a high interest card is shoved down their throat for every single purchase. They don't like that and may not come back, so we could lose a customer for life over the one-time $18 Citibank gives us for each application.

Anyways...before I get sidetracked about this fixation of metrics, upper management is downplaying my store's shrinkage problem. They dont seem as interested because it doesn't involve metrics that make them appear "good" in the eyes of regional/corporate.

I have a meeting with the DLPM next week per my request...I'm not expecting much. As an example, we had $20 DVD players spider wrapped as they flew off the shelves and not by means of a legitimate sale transaction. As they weren't "high value", he wanted them taken off of the spider wraps, knowing that we had a problem with them walking out of the door. Yes, it's small potatoes in the grand scheme of things but it adds up and Sears LP strategy has dropped the ball in their duties. I have never seen such blatant self sabotage in my life!

LP negligence is not new..I no longer watch for anything in department because I was told if LP did not see it with their own eyes it is not anything they will deal with.....was told that by the last and only LP person we have, the one that watches US who work hard everyday. Really? It is soooo.... Stupid! The real THEIF is at the top of the pile..name starts with an E.

They always claimed the associates (internal thief) were stealing more than shoplifters when it is clear now that Eddie and Corp are and have been stealing more from the associates.

Anytime a cashwrap needed relocated it had to be approved from corp. They stopped us from relocating cashwraps years ago. They refused to spend the money to pay a QMT for the time and supplies to move one. Eddie is not going to put a penny into updating or taking care of the buildings he does not own. They are being closed as the leases run out. He has all of the good company owned buildings he wants transferred to his other company Seritage Growth Properties. They are being leased back to Sears Holdings or leased to anybody he wants to. In fact the company has cut back on the maintenance on the buildings. I was a QMT and my job was cut in March along with a lot of other QMT's across the country. The maintenance has been reduced and contracted out to vendors. What is not being contracted out is left up to the store associates to do. The stores do not have enough associates to play horseshoes let alone do maintenance.

To be honest, I do not think Sears realy cares about shoplifting in the stores anymore. There is really no way with the staff allowances we have in our store to see if people are walking out the door without paying,or do anything if we do see something. I think corporate have never worked in a Sears store or have ever really been in one for more than a few hours,let them try and cover three department s by themselves for eight hours then tell us how to meet all the metrics. You have to get credit,SYW,take returns,get recaps,kyms,plus sell on commission,get PAs,stop shoplifting, put freight away on truck days when you are there by yourself. From reading posts on this site and on Pebble at SHC it is clear this is happening across the country in many Sears stores. How we tactics are going to save Sears us beyond me.

I should add that I had an idea as a stopgap measure to reduce our shrinkage: it involved relocating the cashwraps near the problem areas. The only caveat was minor deviations from NPS/planogram, which have happened before for other reasons with approval. It's not foolproof, but it would have opened up better visibility to sales floor associates.

It was shot down by DM. No second opinion, no consideration, just a firm "no, your associates should be able to curtail theft as-is". Mind you, there are many blind spots that associates aren't able to see: these spots are where the shoplifters have opportunity; they're also forgetting one small detail: we don't have the staffing allowances we once had. Our crew is much smaller.

The project would have involved moving a couple of shelves, the check stations themselves and having a QMT relocate the power, phone and Ethernet for the registers. The job would have been about three hours, doable before the store opened. Not as big a deal as it sounds, but nonetheless it was shot down.

Hey, I'm just trying to do the job I'm paid for: to help manage one of their stores as best as i can. One of my responsibilities is to ensure that losses at my location are minimized. I'm throwing them a buoy and they're not taking it.

It is amazing that what is happening in my store is happening all over the country in other Sears stores. Trying to run the store with no one working in it.

Eddie is not going to put a penny into updating any Sears or Kmart stores. In fact the company has cut back on the maintenance on the buildings. I was a QMT and my job was cut in March along with a lot of other QMT's across the country. The maintenance has been reduced and contracted out to vendors. What is not being contracted out is left up to the store associates to do. The stores do not have enough associates to play horseshoes let alone do maintenance.

I worked for Sears shy of six years. I was a soft lines lead that was laid off at the end of Febuary and a lot of what people are seeing now, was happening in my store well over a year ago. LP was completely sacked, and the two guys that work in the new coined "asset protection" department actually shares 10 different store fronts. Needless to say, you may see them in your store once every two weeks at most. When they were there, they were not at all interested in stopping shoplifters, but making sure associates were not fudging SYWR enrollments.

Then you have maybe two associates in any department at most, even on busy weekend sales/shopping days. Compound that with a skeleton crew of associates, cacs never staffed, cashiers not given hours because of bad credit sign ups(customers don't want the card, and one open cac with 12 people in line with a whole mess of pissed off customers waiting for the mandatory sign ups). Management basically holding a gun to associates heads to perform in numbers that has become almost insanely impossible to meet. Pay that sucks so bad that even part time McDonald burger flippers make more per hour(which exacerbates the fact that people are not standing in droves at the local job fairs to work for Sears). People quite or don't show up to work forcing management to fire them, with no clear applicants to take their place. The store was close to being in a state if 2 people decided to not come back from lunch break, the store would be wholly inoperable. Then when I was given the axe, I heard the few ASMs/Leads left went onto a mandatory 6 day work week. ASMs being required to put a min of 50-60 hrs of work in. A Shoe department that is never staffed. The one MCA that worked in shoes for years gets a grand total of 4 hrs a week now (which costs her more to drive to work than what she is paid for, nothing like paying to go to work right?) Morale was so low by the time I left, no one acted like they wanted to come to work, when the store manager said you should be proud to work for Sears, everyone pretty much groaned and laughed. At this point, it's amazing these store clerks have not gone full mutiny yet. If they did, or tried to unionize, Sears would be doomed more than it is now.

Sears is not in business to do business. At least in the retail sense. They neither know at this time how to operate a retail establishment or epoxy the gash inflicted by the iceberg. If Lambert is consistent on wanting to use Sears Holdings as a rouse for his Real Estate firm moguling, then rerun Sears into a Real Estate Firm already. Either way, the American consumer populace is buying your products (be it Craftsman, Kenmore, or Covington), they neither care or are buyin into hedge fund stocks and interested in real estate redistribution.

I worked for Sears shy of six years. I was a soft lines lead that was laid off at the end of Febuary and a lot of what people are seeing now, was happening in my store well over a year ago. LP was completely sacked, and the two guys that work in the new coined "asset protection" department actually shares 10 different store fronts. Needless to say, you may see them in your store once every two weeks at most. When they were there, they were not at all interested in stopping shoplifters, but making sure associates were not fudging SYWR enrollments.

Then you have maybe two associates in any department at most, even on busy weekend sales/shopping days. Compound that with a skeleton crew of associates, cacs never staffed, cashiers not given hours because of bad credit sign ups(customers don't want the card, and one open cac with 12 people in line with a whole mess of pissed off customers waiting for the mandatory sign ups). Management basically holding a gun to associates heads to perform in numbers that has become almost insanely impossible to meet. Pay that sucks so bad that even part time McDonald burger flippers make more per hour(which exacerbates the fact that people are not standing in droves at the local job fairs to work for Sears). People quite or don't show up to work forcing management to fire them, with no clear applicants to take their place. The store was close to being in a state if 2 people decided to not come back from lunch break, the store would be wholly inoperable. Then when I was given the axe, I heard the few ASMs/Leads left went onto a mandatory 6 day work week. ASMs being required to put a min of 50-60 hrs of work in. A Shoe department that is never staffed. The one MCA that worked in shoes for years gets a grand total of 4 hrs a week now (which costs her more to drive to work than what she is paid for, nothing like paying to go to work right?)

Sears is not in business to do business. At least in the retail sense. They neither know at this time how to operate a retail establishment or epoxy the gash inflicted by the iceberg. If Lambert is consistent on wanting to use Sears Holdings as a rouse for his Real Estate firm moguling, then rerun Sears into a Real Estate Firm already. Either way, the American consumer populace is buying your products (be it Craftsman, Kenmore, or Covington), they neither care or are buyin into hedge fund stocks and interested in real estate redistribution.

Just about everyone I talk to shares the same issues that mirror the kind of issues I have at my store. Turnover has increased due to cutting hours and the immense pressure associates are put through to meet credit, PAs, SYW, recaps, KYM, BOT, WFS and so on just for meager pay often eqauling that of someone in a less stressful and metric-driven retail job. No one has time to comprehensively mind the store, not when things come up like 2.5 hours of online training that dropped in on my HA associates to-do list that must be done by next week. Signing is a drag, it's never gone smoothly and the process to print them, sort them, scan for set up and takedown and then having to request missing signs that should have been there is grossly inefficient. Half the signs that print every Sunday haven't changed in price...what a waste of time, trees and money.

Anyways, we haven't done inventory yet and I already know that we are in big trouble just by the many empty packages and the on-hand counts that contradict what is actually there of a given item. I wanted to order spider wraps for HI/CE as we are just about out...I never have received them. Answer is that there isn't money in the budget, ask another store. They have the same issue! I don't even think they care if stuff walks out.

I worked for Sears shy of six years. I was a soft lines lead that was laid off at the end of Febuary and a lot of what people are seeing now, was happening in my store well over a year ago. LP was completely sacked, and the two guys that work in the new coined "asset protection" department actually shares 10 different store fronts. Needless to say, you may see them in your store once every two weeks at most. When they were there, they were not at all interested in stopping shoplifters, but ,asking sure associates were not fudging SYWR enrollments.

Then you have maybe two associates in any department at most, even on busy weekend sales/shopping days. Compound that with a skeleton crew of associates, cacs never staffed, cashiers not given hours because of bad credit sign ups(customers don't want the card, and one can with 12 people in line with a whole mess of pissed off customers waiting for the mandatory sign ups). Management basically holding a gun to associates heads to perform in numbers that has become insanely impossible to meet. Pay that sucks so bad, part time McDonald burger flippers make more per hour(which exacerbates the fact that people are not standing in droves at the local job fairs to work for Sears). People quite or don't show up to work forcing management to fire them, with no clear applicants totals their place. The store was close to being in a state of 2 people decided to not come back from lunch break, the store would be wholly inoperable.

Sears is not in business to do business. At least in the retail sense. They neither know at this time how to operate a retail establishment or epoxy the gash inflicted by the iceberg. If Lambert is consistent on wanting to use Sears Holdings as a rouse for his Real Estate firm moguling, then rerun Sears into a Real Estate Firm already. Either way, the American consumer populace is buying your products (be it Craftsman, Kenmore, or Covington), they neither care or are buyin into hedge fund stocks and interested in real estate redistribution.

I don't know where you store is located, but it could be my store too. We lost our LP also,so even if we see someone shoplifting the only thing we can do is call 911. We were told corporate is remotely watching the cameras, what good that does,I believe they ate watching the associates more. We also have such a skeleton crew that there are times that only one person is also covering HI all alone with no cashier. Softlines may have one MCA and one cashier,sometimes there are no more than 7 people working in the whole store. We are getting ready for inventory, it will be an eye opener to see how much we are off from shrinkage this year. It's like they are trying to run the stores with no one working in them,and then we are told how lucky we are that we are not one of the stores closing. We also have no hardliners MCAs,so signing never is right,no one does price changes anyone,it is a mess. All we hear about is Shop Your Way is going to save Sears. I really think the people who are running Sears have never worked in a store. I would like to see some of these district managers cover hardware,lawn and garden,sporting goods and the hardware cash wrap all by themselves,plus sell on commission,take credit card payments,take on line returns,ring up soft lines because the men's cash wrap is closed,plus get PAs credit and SYW sign ups when you are the only one there. That is what I will be doing tonight after the one day associate goes home. Some times we are lucky and have two or three people working if they show up.