I am already employed by another company but sometimes I visit this forum to see if there is any progress. Unfortunately, according to your posts, it doesn't look promising.
It seems to me that the management has no desire to fix things here at all. Otherwise, if they had the will, they would probably find a way to do it. Am I right?
I am very sorry for what happened to this company. I remember the good old days when I was proud to work here.
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The "good old days" do not exist any longer. Giving booksellers more autonomy is laughable. B&N was too late and deathly slow in developing their omnichannel presence. They also lacked leadership who couod drive these efforts.
The company's that will survive have integrated digital footprints effectively, and Amazon continues to capture marketshare. The "golden days" of B&N are gone.
"virtually worthless membership card".
That's an understatement. Over the years, they even took away benefits from customers. It used to be 20 percent off of adult hardcovers, then they reduced it to 10 percent. Then they took away the online discount (members got a slight discount on the site), and reduced it to free "express" shipping, which wasn't very quick at all.
One thing they didn't take away. The price of the membership, which is way too high at 25 dollars. Plus the underhanded way they have you sign up. If you use a debit/credit card, they automatically renew you unless you call them and opt out. You can't opt out at the store when you sign up for it. Once upon a time, you were able to mark on the form the "opt out" option. They took that away too.
To: Lifers (in stores & corporate) still think that they are going to get a golden parachute, they have learned nothing from COVID and what has transpired over the last year...
They're not that stupid anymore, everyone knows people aren't buying and they can barely make payroll when hours aren't cut to bare minimum. I've been using my time to look for work almost anywhere cause I know it's coming fast.
Lifers (in stores & corporate) still think that they are going to get a golden parachute, they have learned nothing from COVID and what has transpired over the last year...
Watch what the ides of March brings...
This place will never be fixed without a major change in the management culture. Those lifers still have a strangle hold on the staff in this place. They need to let go, not micro manage, gatekeep or bottleneck their stores and allow the booksellers more autonomy in how they do things.
What's to fix, it was too late to try to save the company with that piece of c-ap Nook which they wasted millions on and crammed in everyone's face! We all laughed when we saw freaking bird houses on the shelves, in a city store no less! And management threatening employees to harass customers to buy a virtually worthless membership card when they were buying a single greeting card.
So many very bad decisions to list. B&N is now as popular as going to Blockbuster.
Plus if you're still actually buying books, you're not paying B&N prices for them!
I'm truly amazed they made it these last few years. Tick tick.
The proud and prestigious days of BN are long gone.
An embarrassment now.
I remember the good old days when I was proud to work here.
Same here, cannot fix things now though