Like many of you I’m worried my store may close. What does this look like? Are there signs? Does the RM come in one day and escort you out (especially for small stores)? Do they give you notice?
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I know this firsthand. I was given two days notice that the store was closing. Everything had to go within that two days. It was absolutely insane. Severance I was offered was two weeks after over 15 years of service. They honestly couldn’t care less about the product or being shipped out or anything else. When it’s time to go they don’t care. They usually offer if somebody’s coming in to take over $.10 on the dollar for the product left in the store. Sad scenario. They don’t care about the employees you have either. I did relocate to another location without any assistance from them.
Yeah, that is exactly how it goes down. You get a call from your RM, they tell you what's what, and then the timeline associated. You are given a choice to find another posting internally (which they no longer financially assist with) or, in some situations they offer you a severance. For someone with time at the company that severance is maybe a couple month's pay at the most, so don't expect a happy parting of the ways. If you choose to quit of course they don't owe you anything, that's why they dangle the severance. In the meantime you are given a workbook where you account for physical assets, you are directed on where to transfer your merchandise to, sometimes another manager staying on will help and collect the keys, other times it's the RM. Then that's it, everything you did is gone. That's the current process in place.
Fun story - any of you remember Wallace's College Book Company? When I was a junior in high school I took a part time job at the local community college bookstore, which at the time was operated by Wallace's. Eventually when that company went under, all thanks to Wallace Wilkinson's Ponzi scheme, I remember the regional manager coming in to tell the SM what was happening. Maybe a day later the regional manager returned with a staff and they literally cleaned out the entire store of company owned hardware. They, including the regional, didn't say a single word to bookstore staff while all that was happening. They were in and then out within a few hours. The community college ended up taking on bookstore operations after that until they contracted with Follett (some years after I had left).
So they actually keep the outgoing manager on to close out the store? Yeah I might help with that for about 2 days.
From experience I can tell you that one particular RM told another SM about the closing of a store before that store's own manager.
And then, they'll expect you to be loyal & go through the closing procedures.
Yeah, right. Loyalty only works one way with Follett.