http://www.businessinsider.com/sears-stores-are-in-decline-2016-6#comments
7 replies (most recent on top)
got called to hr today, go home if you're at hours or warned if you are close to total hours. we are so short staffed how can any one be 'over' hours? 'hours' are not being paid to two thirds of the staff we had not long ago and now we are told we are over hours...how?..how? just don't get it ... it's the classic corporate wreck by design because that's where the profit take really lies. the workers are the fools (pawns)
Just wait until the next quarterly report comes in. Sears has no more money left. The loan money has been spent, the REIT stores money is gone. The vendors are a little scared to ship merchandise because they are afraid they won't get paid. And on top of that if the stock price goes below a certain level the Pension Insurance agency (Federal Government) will step in and shut everything down so that the retirees will still get their pensions.
Really this company can go under at anytime the vendors decide to pull the plug. Cutting employees and making your customers angry is not the way to build a company for the long run. Our store has so much merchandise that people do not buy we keep it in the garden shop yard under tarps. People are quitting in huge numbers, each of our departments except two are run by kids who started within the last few weeks.
My store (kmart) also getting sent a ton of stuff. We get 3 trucks as week full of stuff that they want out on the floor but there is no room. Our store is old but not as big as others. Management is getting angry because freight is not getting out but we don't have enough people. Softlines has been packed but hardly anything is getting out. Just last week there were a few hardlines pallets that were supposed to be out in Feb. They had half the truck crew working 3 hours a day the other half 4 hours and it was taking 1-2 hours to unload the truck.
Now they want receiving cleared out for inventory. i guess we will all see. Ill post if i hear anything else
I have seen many Sears/Kmart stores in similar condition. It all boils down to a severe lack of staff to do all what is required, let alone leave enough time for keeping the store presentable.
Take my store today, as an example. The market leader suddenly decided that the "flow" (order of placement of merchandise on the floor) needed to be changed for laundry by Wednesday, even though the floor was already set to company standards. I had to borrow two MPU associates (and one draw commission associate) to move around 30 laundry pairs. This was such an "urgent" project (per the ML) that it just had to be done and everything else could be put on the back burner. Maybe this is the ML's way of retaliating since I am leaving Sears by the end of the month.
Meanwhile, freight for hardlines and softlines is piling up in the stockroom yet the one MCA I had scheduled for today for the entire store had to set up and take down a pile of "Freaky Fast" (1-day-only) sale signs for footwear. The one footwear MCA that would have been responsible for this only receives 10 hours a week and wasn't scheduled today. Then, PCNs (markdowns) had to be done since softlines had a ton of them. The softlines lead had enough of the stress and quit last week, so my hardlines MCA took up the task.
I spent almost 3.5 hours of my 10-hour day on conference calls I "needed" to be on, when I needed to prep for Father's Day. Then, I spent another hour and a half conducting a price audit throughout the store. My only MCA (hardlines, by the way) was over in softlines to work on tasks that would otherwise remain incomplete. Otherwise, this is something I normally delegate to my hardlines MCA every Monday.
There is so much disconnect between corporate/regional/district and the store that dysfunction is the end result. In a way, I look forward to articles that expose the dirty side of Sears, hoping that the higher-ups take notice once and for all. Unfortunately, what will end up happening is that this store will just get yelled at by their district and regional management.
How many vendors have pulled out? Our store is still packed with stuff. The simply styled is selling really well, as is Bongo
This is what you get when you cut hours and employees to next to nothing, pay $1-2 less than your competitors and your vendors all pull out and take their merchandise with them. More to come, or is it less to come?
Look just like every store in our district.