Thread regarding Sears layoffs

To the author of the article. It is not just this store it is most Sears and Kmarts. We have been doing hand written signs for at least 3 months. They look horrible because the hand writing is horrible.

"it's far cheaper to hand-write signs than get them printed"

But are they still the glossy themed ones? Like what I saw back in winter (before my store fell onto the chopping block). If so I don't see how that would be cheaper than the old traditional ones we used to print. Or are stores just now using the old sign paper and writing on it with marker?

@1gty. Wishful thinking. They have illusions of grandeur and think the doors are getting busted down by people who wish to apply for a Sears card. So they send that many in anticipation. In reality, we all know that it could take a full decade before we get through 1/2 of those boxes.

Maybe if they would quit printing those credit card applications that no one wants they could save millions. We have 54 boxes of those applications. My manager figured that everyone in our county could fill one out two times and we would still have three boxes left over. How many credit card applications do they think we need?

Sounds like someone didn’t/couldn’t renew the signriter licenses :o

@xfz What's funny is, handwritten signs are rare at the store closings I've been to for other companies. I was just at a closing Toys R Us, for example, and the only hand-written signs I saw were on fixtures for sale.

When myself and a few other dedicated associates were working the normal ad set, we were dropped the task to sign the first blowout type sale. It was a eight hour set the night prior, and we damn well made good use of it. Heavily signed each department with finely detailed signs, with accurate descriptors of product, the original price, the sale price, and the percent off. In doing so our store had quite literally had an drastic increase in sales quite literally overnight, and throughout the week, and continued up until the end. Sure, that was all generated under the guise of supposed liquidation, however what really did help was the use of signs. Executed properly the signs work. On the contrary however, increasingly these signs are going up with a depatment name or cetain area, and throwing up just a percent off, or just a price, with no verification what so ever and calling it a day. That drives nothing.

What is really frustrating is we still have to scan the RES signs up and down. Our DM makes us take a picture of the setup/takedown feature on the SNC and send him a picture of it showing zero. Then we have to hand write signs and place them over the RES signs. What an absolute waste of time and payroll. Oh, and by the way, they cut our hours again.

Maybe Eddie was looking at all the Farmers Markets or local grocery stores and places like that and said, oh wow, their signs look good and this place is busy...maybe that will translate to my dinosaur of a business!

@hxm What a wacky rule. Tape is such a basic and cheap necessity that it would be crazy to not have handy. What do they have against tape? I don't buy the BS about residue, they "ban" it because it's just one less thing to have to buy. It's the old penny wise pound foolish at work. Cut tape out of the budget then turn around and spend tens of thousands or even millions of dollars on something we absolutely don't need, like the Call Sears app on the SNCs or the decision to print and ship literal tons of credit app tearsheets to all the stores (and throw out the old ones, what a waste of trees and money) because a single word or phrase had to change in the terms and conditions for the eighth time in the same year.

And since when would they care about appearances? Most of the stores are rundown and filthy, a little tape residue are the least of their worries.

Did they put a ban on pens or magic markers, too? Because I never can seem to find one unless I bring in my own, lol.

My store just started liquidation and we can not have any handwritten signs, everything must be printed out.

What a clusterf@ck of retail badness. This is worse than a flea market.

Who and why did they think this was a good idea?

@epc - Our store was classified as a "no tape store" as well. Our brainless store management took that to the ultimate extreme. Need to seal an envelope or package, fix a torn paper, attach a note to paper/cardboard, reseal a torn or opened merchandise package...absolutely no tape! They removed all the tape and tape dispensers from the cash wraps, work areas and store office. They banned the purchase of tape for store use. A few brave associates defied the ban by hiding a roll of tape deep in a desk drawer or other secret spot. It defies logic that SHLD actually pays people to develop and implement these pointless initiatives.

Sears printed signage looked like something out of the 1980’s anyway so there wasn’t far to fall.

I remember when tape was forbidden! We were classified as a “no tape store”. We spent hours going through the store scraping any and all tape residue. Now they couldn’t care less. I had a manager tell me to tape up some handwritten sign for something and I reminded him that we are a tape free store. Manager said they don’t care about that anymore. It’s like being on a roller coaster, I never know what’s coming next.

I remember when hand written signs were forbidden.

Ha ha, it finally got noticed by the media.

Don't know how they figure it's cheaper. You have to pay for the labor for those handwritten signs to be written out according to what the list dictates. That's going to take more time than just logging in to RES and printing the signs.

Multiply having to do that process by hundreds of stores and it's cheaper just to send the signs through the wire to be printed thru RES, and a lot more neater/legible, too. I ended up having to do most of the writing because the only people willing to do it without complaining had unreadable penmanship.

I guess the one advantage is that there's less time spent monkeying around with a godawful SNC. Now that I think of it, maybe there is a cost savings to be had for the labor by not having employees scan as much for setup/takedown with the flakey SNCs.

how to make your store look like it's closing 101