#morale

It seems that way too many folks, who were already laid off, can't deal with the fact that the company is finished with the layoffs.

Embarrassing display of envy.

It amazes me that another year has gone by in this place….Certainly took a lot out on me…

It’s the time of the year again

Whenever something goes wrong, there's a mad dash to point the finger at another team. No one in management ever just owns a mistake. It's exhausting. On top of that, we all know we're being paid well below market rate, and the chance of getting promoted is basically zero. They wonder why morale is so low, but it's not exactly a mystery.

It’s awesome that the company spent all this money on renovating the buildings and creating the open floor plan seating just to find out the day of your meeting. You can’t use the office that you booked weeks ago because it has now become somebody’s personal office.

What is the actual point of all of this if they’re just going to change all of the Zirbel offices to individual offices? They should’ve just kept all the conference rooms and let these mo--n stay hidden in their office. This has been such a headache, such a pain, and honestly has created the lowest morale that I’ve seen in a company in my 35 years of working in the corporate environment.

It’s so unreasonable and so disrespectful to treat associates this way when we need a space for an urgent call, we do what we’re supposed to do in reserve it weeks ahead just to have it snatched from us.

Bad enough after 30 years to get kicked to the curb as a high performer, but now they are starting to remove people from the Slack groups. Just another reminder of you are just a number. Couldn't wait until everyone is off the payroll, just keep ripping off the band aid again and again.

We can’t afford to pay engineers and techs but we can afford to pay someone to send out these stupid emails??? GTFO no one reads this sh-t.

It is clear that management is trying to nix any amount they can from annual compensation bonus payouts (which frankly I look at as deferred salary for doing your job) to cut costs if you add any value to this company or not.

Not exactly a well thought out way to motivate staff to go above and beyond or retain anyone worth retaining, perhaps I need to focus on getting my “paper right”…how can we in this environment!

Well, 2025 is almost over and Belk has survived another year ! It’s amazing how we can keep cutting, year after year, and everything seems to just function fine. well, ok not fine, but belk is still operating! Soon we will have no employees working at all, we are now thinking of using chimpanzees in place of human beings, what do to all think? I think it’s a winning idea !!!
2026 should be a year of dramatic cuts.. first I would like to have absolutely no visual merchandising standards in stores. I have the brilliant idea of throwing all merchandise inside of large bins and let all customers fight over it. Kind of like a scavenger hunt? What do you think? As far as benefits and pay increases are concerned, I want to cut cut cut cut cut…..let’s offer the standard 2% raise, but then cut paid time off even more! What a brilliant idea! Here I am babbling on and on.. as far as Belk’s top brass is concerned, it’s been a great year!, six and seven figure salaries, top tier benefits, bonuses and lots of perks, I hope everyone will enjoy their store meals on Black Friday! Don’t forget to keep the cost under $9.99 per person!!!! Deli meat, cr--kers, and Kool Aid should be in the menu! gobble gobble, kluck, kluck…

Hugs and Kisses,
Donnie

Morale is in the dumps. Will they do anything to improve it?

The outcome of this situation is truly shameful. In retail, we were pushed relentlessly to drive the leaderboard, only to find out that leaderboard performance had no bearing on job security. It is baffling that stores, SDs, Directors, store leaders, and sales reps consistently at the lower end of performance rankings throughout the year remain employed.

In the Atlantic South market, we were subjected to endless calls and passive-aggressive behavior from leadership. NONE of that pressure mattered. The market president was the worst of them all. Her and her cronies would talk out both sides of their mouth and leave it up to everyone to decipher what they meant all while screaming how important integrity is. The leaders would go on and on about performance but if performance mattered, we’d have a different market president.

The customers are DISCONNECTING because the leadership at the top is DISCONNECTED to what drives true customer loyalty and satisfaction. In the end, our individual contributions and struggles were irrelevant; we are merely casualties in the company's efforts to manipulate the stock price. Happy Holidays to everyone and I wish you all the very best. We deserved better.

Just in time for Christmas and Hannukah, this wonderful company is cutting hours for agents in one of It major lines of business. I have children who won't get much this year. And these je-ks won't let us use our accumulare sick leave or vacation to cover for it. But the billionaire founder/CEO probably will have a wonderful holiday season.

I survived, but I’m completely fizzled out, and I don’t care about the work or whatever comes next. Watching so many people get cut, many of them after years of hard, dedicated work, doesn’t motivate me at all. If anything, it just made painfully obvious what we all knew - being invested gets you absolutely nothing in return.

I’m sorry for the people who were let go, mainly because options are limited and life keeps getting harder by the day. Not because this job mattered, or should have mattered, in the first place. It all feels pointless.

Is the party email a joke? $6B company. So sad...at a complete loss for words.........

I'm thankful that I survived another week at this place. I need these two days off coming up this week just to try to survive until I can get my EIP in March and leave. I set this as my main goal for myself and hope many of you will do the same. Get out of this soul ki-ling place. It seeps into every aspect of your life and the toxic environment corrupts everything it touches. Do not convince yourself this is the way things have to be, this is not living, it is just surviving until the next week. Waiting for the next calamity, next insane idea, next toxic leader or next reassignment inyo a horrible role. Sad place....this Snake Farm!

Mid level management cant get a pay raise to even cover cost of living.

If money is what you work for at Hertz then knowing that the CEO makes $35 MILLION DOLLARS a year and the Fadman makes nearly half a million per year if not more, don’t be upset!
Keep the management struggling and starving then wonder why your revenue is down while you all sit pretty in your big houses with your boasting of Verizon wireless plans on LinkedIn.
It’s sickening how out of touch these people are-know your audience and pay your people!

I have worked at a few places, but this one takes the prize for how drained it leaves me. You can put in steady effort and still walk away feeling invisible. Folks talk about support, yet no one shows it when it matters. Lately I feel like I am just pushing through the days to get by.

It’s frustrating to watch the same underperformers stay while anyone competent gets pushed out. If we actually kept our best people, constant cuts wouldn’t even be necessary.

Getting cut ended up being the best thing that’s happened to me in a long time. The real misery is with the folks who stayed behind in that sinking ship. I walked away with a clean break and a clear head. The market is rough, but even a slow search feels better than staying there.

It's Monday, and I'm still depressed and nonproductive. The weekend was no better. I hope other's are having a better day.

Charlie keeps trimming out the lower level folks who actually keep everything running. The people doing the real work are the first to go while the higher tiers stay untouched. Every restructure makes the front line weaker and more stressed. It is hard to watch the backbone of the place get chipped away like it is nothing.

JD absolutely burned Nike, pure failure no question. His strategy was cost reduction and DTC, no real tech chops as PK hoped, fitting of a consultant. Company value cut in half 2020-2024 during his time!

How does PK wipe the egg off his face after hand selecting JD, demoralizing employees, and scaring off shareholders? Go back to the safety of Nike DNA roots picking EH a former Dallas Cowboy trainer for his friend JJ.

Cronie nepotism at its best. EH is WAY over his head, he’s a salesman not a CEO. Nike has a very uncertain future ahead, it’s worrisome.

What’s next people? More excuses ahead of earnings coming certainly…

Isn't it just pathetic that anything they ever mention in these town hall meetings is AI? Who cares about AI and their silly agents. FIS dropped 24% in 12 months, they are doing massive RIFs, morale is very very low and all they can do is wear silly hats and talk about AI.

1. BNY used to be a good company to work for
2. BNY cares about their employees
3. BNY is on a path to its own demise

The way the company is being run is unsustainable and frankly, deeply disappointing. Chris Cartwright has 100% bought into this ba----dized form of capitalism in America where shareholder value is the benchmark of success and nothing more.

There is no concern or respect for the employees, the single concern is profit and profit margin, but only for shareholders.

We continue layoffs despite being highly profitable and overachieving in regard to our forecast. We continue to have our resources and tools stripped away in attempts to save cost. The expectation then falls to the remaining employees to do more with less. The real economy (food prices, healthcare costs, childcare) is in recession due to rapid inflation and heading toward depression, yet employee pay has not even remotely kept up with rising real life costs.

Additionally, we are currently launching a platform for fraud prevention that is embarrassingly underdeveloped due to a lack of resources in software, developers, and engineers. This project is being spearheaded by an Advisor who is so blinded by career ambition that their lazer focus is on getting the product launched, so that they can receive the accolades and career advancement that comes with such success, but this Advisor seems unable to see that they are driving the launch of a product that is simply not ready to face customers. This lack of foresight is common here and I believe it’s because those affected are the boots on the ground employees who’s workloads and expectations continue to rise, but those in managerial or advisor positions do not have to feel the day-to-day impact of this approach.

To continue, every idea comes from the top down. The voices of the frontline employees are often ignored. Live training is avoided at all costs, even when it is explicitly requested or the need expressed. In fact, employees are often condescended to with responses like, “we encourage you to be more proactive in your training” and explore other resources such as a wiki page; suggesting that as if it weren’t a grossly false equivalency. In addition, the responsibility is placed on frontline level employees to document and log every single action that that is taken. There seems to have been very minimal effort on the part of management to figure out and implement a way to track employee productivity that is more comprehensive than insisting that their employees take the time and effort to not only do the work, but then log their work so that management doesn’t have to take the time and energy to do so. All of this despite a strong push for increased efficiency. Does no one in leadership or management see how this looks to the average employee? It is so ridiculous that it’s laughable—and believe me, employees are laughing amongst one another because it’s either that or cry.

Moreover, the current climate in this country has not adequately been addressed by TransUnion leadership or HR. There are ICE body snatchers out in this country, the epicenter of which is Chicago at the moment, and the silence from this organization is deafening. Violence is occurring in this company’s front yard, but not one individual in leadership has had the courage to acknowledge it; no emails with resources for what employees should do should they be illegally detained, No support for our colleagues who may be targeted simply for how they look, nothing.

Cartwright and Venkat are displaying for every employee how ethically and morally bankrupt this organization is with the two of them at the helm.

It’s embarrassing and it is despicable.

It’s happened so many times already that I’m not even sure there are enough people left on some teams to carry the load. Every time they cut, the rest of us get buried.

It’s not like this is the best company to work for, and most of us don’t even like our jobs. I’d love to switch myself. But honestly, I’m terrified of what’s out there right now. Jobs feel scarce, the cost of living keeps climbing, and so many of us are drowning in debt. I hate feeling shackled to a job I don’t even enjoy, and I hate even more having to stress about losing a job I don’t like to begin with.

The toxicity from upper leadership is insane. Being a top performer means nothing—“OneTru” is their magic fix that will apparently run itself, so they’d rather replace real talent with cheap contractors from Softility. They’ve openly said we’re only useful until the migration is done, and after that we’re disposable.

Post-layoffs, the people running the meetings were arrogant, condescending, and dismissive. They spoke in circles, offered zero real plans, and clearly have no clue how to handle the mess these mindless cuts created. We’re left overworked, unsupported, and exhausted.

Dear verizon,
I'm not taking my severance. I'm going to take a different job. I'm about to coast. I'm going to use you, I'm going to get my degree in engineering using your tuition assistance. I'm going to no longer be a top performer. I'm going to do just enough to keep using you. I don't trust you anymore. I'm going to tell people not to get verizon, I'm going to go out of my way to not have people switch. You sc--wed over so many people and you are taking advantage of people's emotions during the holidays. You're about to pay for me to leave and I'm no longer going to be your top performer. Fu-k you.

I started at Verizon when I was 21. I’m 36 now 15 years in and I’ve never felt more afraid of losing my job than I do right now. I’m a top performer, but none of it seems to matter anymore. This new CEO is coming for everyone, and morale is trash. At this point I don’t even know if I should keep grinding or just stop trying, because this company clearly has zero loyalty. If my hard work means nothing, why should I put in any effort at all? Anyone else feeling the same?

I’ve been getting mixed advice with many folks leaning towards not working at all from now until their last day worked. Curious what it looks like for you? I have the option to do either, I believe, and ethically, I feel that I should help with the transition since I’m still technically employed until Dec 19. I’ve never been laid off before so I’m not sure. What are you going to do?

Sitting here remembering when each holiday season, BOAs could choose a turkey or ham to take home. I was so proud to provide that for my family. That "founder of the feast" feeling.

When that program was axed a year after PP got here, I thought it was really sad b/c each year I counted on that "bonus."

Guess it was a sign of things to come....the beginning of the dismembering of Edward Jones.

It slowly became more and more of a drag on morale as we cycled through one after another managers, directors and VPs.

The last of which were only focused on themselves and the choir of supplicants that sang the same tune. Alas I got tired of hearing it all. I was rather surprised when my director and an HR person scheduled a meeting to let me know my services were no longer needed.

No warning whatsoever just a thank you and a well wishes to not let the door hit me on the way out.

I guess that’s why they don’t have as people with more than 3 years tenure.

They are trying to run off all tenured employees. Don't want people to stay. 70% of employees in most areas have been with SF 2 years or less, per plan. We are the Dollar General, Waffle House, $8 Wine Box, Carnival Cruise, Disney Movie Remake, Quiky Mart or excuse sir can you spare some change of the insurance industry. Bottom of the barrel! Look around, look at the people we hire, feels like you are standing in line down at the DMV ..... The people running this place are total trash, and I pray they will rot in #$%@ when they die! F-ck off SF!

I made it through this awful week, and I am so sorry for those who were impacted. They did not deserve this. The process seemed utterly random. I would gladly switch positions with any of those laid off since I was planning to retire in the next year on my own. I cannot be the only one in this situation, but there was no way to self nominate. I call out the pathetically poor execution of this layoff process. Shame on any of you in leadership who let this happen. May you never enjoy another sound night of sleep!

Seeing all the LinkedIn updates from everyone impacted is breaking my heart. I hope Vz leaders who made all this possible are also seeing these. And why right before Thanksgiving? Truely sickening. Lost faith in this company and the people up top.

The anticipation was the worst part. I made it through, but I don’t feel relieved, just completely drained. I really feel for everyone who lost their jobs and wish them the best of luck. I hope better times come for all of us.

We lost more than 20 in West Michigan on Monday. Some with over 30 years experience in their positions. And, these weren’t positions with surplus people. We are all overwhelmed with normal day to day work loads, and it just got worse because of these layoffs! I say no bonuses for leadership as long as there are job eliminations or layoffs!

BNY Mellon recently declared that “culture isn’t built in conference rooms—it’s built in moments like this,” referring to a stationary bike marathon.

One bike, eight hours, and a simple question: How far can we go when everyone contributes their energy to a shared goal?

Apparently, the answer is: not very far, especially if the goal is building a healthy organizational culture.

THE THEATER OF PEDAL-POWERED CULTURE

Let’s pause to admire the sheer audacity of this metaphor.

Culture, we are told, is not about trust, transparency, or leadership—it’s about sweating together in a room while hashtags flutter overhead like corporate confetti. (#BNYLife, #BNYBetterthanSlicedBread, #FreeCoffee, #EmpathyLivesHere, #WellnessinLayoffs…)

Employees were encouraged to cheer, laugh, and pedal as if their collective energy could erase the memory of strategic missteps, toxic work environments, and the erosion of morale.

It was less “culture in motion” and more “culture in denial.”
The strongest cultures, we’re assured, are defined by shared experiences. True—but those experiences usually involve competent leadership, clear communication, and respect. Not a spin class disguised as a corporate epiphany.

FAILED LEADERSHIP: THE REAL RESISTANCE SETTING

BNY’s leadership seems convinced that culture is a cardio exercise. Yet the risks of failed leadership are far more serious than a skipped workout:

• EROSION OF TRUST & MORALE: Employees don’t lose faith because they missed a turn on the bike. They lose faith when leaders fail to demonstrate character, competence, and connection.
• POOR STRATEGIC EXECUTION: Pedaling in circles is a perfect metaphor for what happens when vision and goals are disjointed. The bike goes nowhere, much like projects derailed by ineffective communication.
• TOXIC WORK ENVIRONMENT: Micromanagement and favoritism can’t be fixed with cheering. Burnout isn’t solved by hashtags.
• DECLINE IN PRODUCTIVITY & INNOVATION: Employees aren’t reluctant to share ideas because they lack cardio endurance. They’re reluctant because poor leadership discourages collaboration and risk-taking.
• RESISTANCE TO CHANGE: Leaders who cling to outdated processes create stagnation. A stationary bike is, after all, the ultimate symbol of motion without progress.
• FINANCIAL & REPUTATIONAL DAMAGE: No amount of sweaty selfies can offset declining market and client confidence or reputational hits.

Culture isn’t built on hashtags—it collapses under them.

WHAT A HEALTHY CULTURE ACTUALLY REQUIRES

A healthy culture is not defined by how many miles a stationary bike records. It is defined by:

• TRUST & TRANSPARENCY: Leaders who communicate openly, even when the news is hard.
• STRATEGIC CLARITY: Goals that align with reality, not spin cycles.
• RECOGNITION & FAIRNESS: Environments where employees are valued for real contributions beyond their ability to pedal.
• ADAPTABILITY & GROWTH: Investment in skills, technology, careers and people—not just in stationary bikes.

Culture is built when employees feel safe, supported, and respected—not when they are asked to cheer through layoffs disguised as “shared energy.”

CLOSING SPIN

BNY’s leadership insists that “the strongest cultures are defined by what people experience together.” True enough. But what employees are experiencing together is distrust, burnout, and the gnawing suspicion that hashtags are being used as wallpaper over cracks in the foundation.

Culture is not built on hashtags or stationary bikes. It is built on character, competence, and connection. These traits are somehow not found in our current senior leadership.

Until BNY trades its spin bikes for self-awareness, accountability, and genuine investment in people, the only thing truly “in motion” will be the revolving door of talent being intentionally shoved out the door or willingly heading for healthier organizations.

I’m wondering…

How does he feel about his nickname? Dan the Hatchet Man? I wouldn’t be surprised if he actually likes it.

How does it feel to cause such intense pain and misery to 13,000 individuals, multipled by 3 or 5 when you take into account, the family members of those who have been laid off?