Since rumors seem to fuel this sight , here is what was rumored today. A mass closure of 140 Kmarts and no Sears , All assistant managers and all full time associates gone as of January 2 , 2018. Remaining Kmarts will have to February 2 when the whole chain will be liquidated. Sears will remain ..A potential buyer is interested in the Kmarts leaning towards a dollar chain or a ollies..Rumor or truth?? Popcorn where are you???
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In California they changed asm and Lp Mgr to salaried non exempt last year. That means they punch in and out like regular associates but still have to work the crazy hours. We have one asm and two sales floor supervisors.
Yes Kmart is doomed. The part time associates are useless and don't work as hard as full timers..Its what will save this company I guess...lol...NOT
Sadly, I can totally see K-Mart being resurrected as a chain of dollar stores.
@1ixb there are a lot of positions out there I just was offered a position with lowes and Best Buy I am choosing to go with lowes for better pay and other reasons., so maybe you should update your info. Maybe where you live they aren't hiring or maybe it's because you are not very hirable either way there are other jobs out there.
My store has already gone through the changes that are being forecasted for the rest of the stores out there. We are down to two zone supervisors (hardlines and softlines), a backroom lead and the store manager. The only fultime positions in our store that are non-management are two positions in appliances and one position in hardware.
Softlines no longer has designated MCA's and cashiers, they are all "one" group, so the 1 or 2 people covering all of softlines will be working the registers almost 100% of the time. Straightening and restocking never gets done because of this. Meanwhile, one backroom associate will quite often have to unload a truck and run MPU all by themselves without any help, and that's on top of answering the SNCs for the web to store orders. Home improvement associates are expected to put all of their freight away and set planograms because the hardlines MCA only gets seven hours a week.
There isn't much left to cut in our scenario. The next thing will be the entire store. We barely make do with the people we have now. Having only one person at the CAC, backroom and the tools/lawn department--all by themselves for several hours--is the norm, even during 4th quarter. This is why sales are going to s--- worse than in years past. There isn't enough help.
@QAZQI1O-1vxz Yeah that is very unfortunate, guess you get boned either way.
But we're talking about ASMs making $45k-$50k that had to post for positions paying $13 per hour. Unfortunately most didn't have a choice and the ones in the next round won't either.
@QAZQI1O-1ixb In some ways though, hourly positions are better than salary. At least its possible to get overtime. Course they probably won't get a lot of hours either
Update your info. It's already happened in the majority of Sears stores.
ASM positions were eliminated in stores with less than around $10m-11m yearly sales and they were offered the opportunity to post for Zone Supervisor positions with a large pay cut. The majority of them took the offer because there aren't many retail jobs out there.
I am not fully understanding this. Is this also going to happen to Sears or just Kmart? I am just wondering is Kmart the only one that is going to get crapped on in 2018? I cant believe they wont close a single Sears store in 2018. Lampert really must hate Kmart because it seems Sears is losing more $$$ than Kmart is yet they are getting the boot. Its just sad how bad its gotten I am already calling the cuts in my store. One ASM getting cut, maybe AP getting eliminated, another lead BR or Cashier lead eliminated. Seeing say 2 ASM getting cut and all the FT getting cut in my store would just make it unbearable to work. Nothing would get done at this point.
However if its overall that all the ASM will be demoted to hourly its just hard to believe because they either take that or take their severance pay. At that point you have to be stupid to even consider that type of demotion I would take the severance pay and call it a day.
Also the 4th quarter is going to look nasty our store sales are horrendous compared to other years so I would assume by looking at the overall health of the company very low metrics again I don't know how much longer this can continue .
Seems highly likely, if not total liquidation of BOTH chains.
@cca Now maybe it's you who's not too bright, but why would a salaried ASM Demote themselves to a lead with an hourly pay and take a cut? Every Home Depot, lowes and Best Buy are just waiting for Sears ASM's so why take a pay cut and demotion.
No FTs at my Kmart would mean there were literally no people who could do anything with KIN (e.g., end day, or do much of anything other than run a register and maybe put out a few hardlines departments' worth of freight. (They'd be utterly useless putting out any apparel.) Nobody could even start unloading a truck, much less finish it. We have probably less than a third of the PTs that we're supposed to have, and apart from a few older ones who stick around because they've got nothing better to do, all the newer ones would jump ship at the first sign of difficulty.
Obviously this doesn't matter as much if all the stores end up being liquidated, but even during a liquidation there still have to be at least a few people who know what the heck they're doing. The temps they would almost certainly have to hire aren't going to know the store or how to operate the various systems. It would be total chaos.
This seems likely. The whole rumor that they'll keep the rest of the Kmarts open longer is foolish. Why would they mass close 140 stores just to keep the others? How's it going to help Sears bottom line? It isn't. Just shut it all down, like this rumor shows, in one big wave, then another.
You aren't too bright, are ya?
The "managers" will become "supervisors" and "leads".
The store manager will still be salaried and all other members of the management team will be hourly and FT. These will be the only FT associates left in stores (except for consultative associates).
The store managers have already received explanations about all of the changes that are coming.
Where is this coming from and if there is no ft positions except for managers, what managers if they are getting rid of them all . This is a horrible rumor they could never get rid of all management. What happens on the store managers day off the store runs itself? That would never happen.
that will be funny in my store LOL
ASM and FT part is correct. No salaried managers besides the store manager will be left. No FT positions outside of the management team.