Thread regarding Macy's Inc. layoffs

Brace yourselves, because the worst is yet to come. NO EXTRA HOURS for the month of December. This is the time to get really good at Workload Planning. What is every single person doing every minute of every day to keep the store going. Store Managers better get all team members working at the same speed with the same intention. Literally, ALL hands on deck approach if you want to come out of this year in a good place without overspending. Everyone recovering, everyone placing truck, everyone filling in floors, everyone own their roles in Inventory Prep. And OOMs need to be responsible with their own budgets as well and STOP overspending or share your people to help the store out and DRIVE BUSINESS. The company is putting us in a very difficult position and we all have to hold hands to get everything done. If you’re lucky enough to have vendors in your market, get them involved as well. No resource left off the table.

It's unbelievable all this stories going on at different stores locations. Macy's have so many stores that they can't handle or manage a business. The company just added a Toys R Us inside there stores this year and all this problems is going on.

I’ve worked for 2 other retailers before this one, and I can say that I’ve never experienced anything like this in my career. I don’t know what this company is doing but I feel that there is a lack of transparency about how a lot of things are being handled and a whole lot of greed as well. I get it, the company is not making plan but stop doing shady things with budget and markdowns behind the scenes without giving the stores at minimum an explanation and some support.

I just don’t understand how this company doesn’t have bags or certain size bags. We sometimes are out of T-shirt bags and only have huge bags for like socks or a b-a. Just ridiculous. Also it’s crazy that we have almost run out of receipt tape. Like what is going on.

The store manager needs to take the lead. The filling in and recovery needs to be discussed at the WLP meeting. The WHO, WHAT, and WHEN needs to be discussed in detail. Today, the CXM and two hourly colleagues placed every piece of men's outerwear and every clubroom sweater onto the floor. Stockroom is empty. Monday, the store manager and two colleagues will purge the furnishings stockroom. Filling in the floor drives business in a FIFTY million dollar door. Several of the complainers should try it...the system works if planned correctly!

I am really struggling to see light at the end of the tunnel, and I’m just talking BOH. Stockrooms are still so full and unorganized and nobody takes the initiative to help fill in their floors when there is no team to do it. If I were a Store Manager, my expectation would be for all CXMs and Captains to help fill in or work on a project at least 2 hours out of their shifts. Regardless of credit and CX. You have to walk and chew gum at the same time. This is not a one or two man job at this point. It should be all hands on deck. And this week, another huge round of markdowns?! This company is in serious trouble. Stores are not making sales plan and morale is in the tank. No wonder they are banking on Omni. Question is, will it be enough? But yes, I’m growing increasingly sick of all of it.

Inventory is just around the corner and after Christmas inventory prep is going to be a nightmare. 🙄

The one poster who does not sip the kool-aid is on point...The stores, especially the big stores, have so many call-offs and colleagues failing to show up for their shift. Plan head, over schedule, plan for the no shows. You will reap your rewards by walking into a neat, clean, easy to shop store that makes sales plan. All this planning takes time but pays off. You need to control the schedule, the schedule cant control the results.

Wouldn’t it be great to throw budget out the window? And just do what we need to do to get it all done and overspend by hundreds of hours every week. We can’t. It’s irresponsible and at the end of the day, payroll management affects profit, which affects our potential to get a bonus. I wish it didn’t matter, but it does. What needs to happen is that everyone needs to be working equally hard and everyone chips in. Not just the SMM and OOM or Captains. CXMs should get held accountable and own their floors to a much higher extent. Be proactive when it comes to call outs, plan your fitting room, plan colleague assignments, plan how your spend your day, come in early and recover or fill in, give colleagues just standing around something to do. Start by just walking your floor daily and come up with a plan instead of waiting for someone else to come and fix it. Those days are over. And what happened to Omni this year? Again, all this planning leading up to Omnigeddon and they still can’t get it together? Things are so bad that they have to shift ALL store resources to pack and the then rest of the store falls apart. And they still can’t finish? If there was the same sense of urgency from everyone regarding merchandising and recovery like there has been about fulfillment, things would be better IMO. Let’s stop complaining about the lack of resources. It starts with the Store Manager. Buck stops with them. They get paid to figure it out. Store Teams need to work together.

You want to see how well ISM is going in big stores, our market has a regional visit next week and every store around is sending a bunch of people including store managers everyday between now and the middle of next week. They are even paying to put people in hotel rooms just to come into the store and stand around since they don't know where anything is or what to do. Our new store manager isn't even working this weekend but we are all expected to work through the weekend with all of the visitors from other stores, who are also complaining since their stores are a hot mess too.

People, I have not taken a sip of the kool-aid. But you and your store leadership need to make decisions. ISM does not work for big stores...PERIOD! We are running our building as if it was 2018. We need help to recover the floor so we come in early with additional colleagues...store is recovered by 10:00am. Floors need to be filled in, so the CXM and an additional team of selling colleagues fill in the floor. Markdowns need to be done and new goods need to be placed so add in more BOH colleagues to help the merchandising captains. As a side note, Big Store is making plan, making LY, making loyalty, and we are top 3 in service. Throw the budget out and do what is needed to achieve your metrics. We have and are successful!

I worked in Women shoes.. the runner who worked there for years barley ran any shoes all day long.. He even clicked off shoes that was in stock and i almost lost a 450 dollar 3 MK boot sales cause of his pure laziness. I brought this to the attention of my also useless Manager and her side kick who was more busy looking up co=wokers ( pun intended) FB pages rather than lookin at this b-m being a complete wrecking ball to sales. When covid hit they got rid of all the better runners and this b-m kept his job.. ya know why? cause his former stock manager got to be a elevated associate/manager in mens clothing and told his other useless and have no clue managers and store managers to keep him and get rid of the rest.. So you can see the problems here.. No Managers including stores managers have a clue whats going on in the store.. The even more useless managers under the store manager will not do anything to anyone so they all get away with it.. but who looses out? the customers' and the Numbers..

The fact that bags are RFID is crazy. Our store scans bags we dont have and are forced to place emergency orders for which there's some ridiculously expensive charge. Someone in your store should've realized bags were low and got some ordered.

Deerbrook

I do blame Store Management if he/she drank the ISM kool-aid and doesn’t stand up for their store and their team. I am in a Pilot door from last year and it’s still not working! This is pure craziness. This company is clearly run by “yes men” and Retail Dinosaurs who need to step aside. Our assortments are awful, stores are a mess, processes left and right are broken, and customers are angry, rightfully so. And this company claims to care about Customer Experience and Employee Wellbeing? Yeah right! I just can’t believe at this point in the year, there are no hours to complete anything. And all available resources are expected to bail out Omni that is struggling, yet again! Stockroom and floor standards are horrific, everything is deemed a “priority” yet nothing is getting done because it is physically impossible to do everything that they are asking of us. It’s no wonder everyone feels like they are drowning. If we don’t have people to get goods to the floor, how are we expected to drive business results? And let’s not forget that Inventory is 5 weeks away. That should be fun!

At the end of the day, the company is only looking out for Shareholders. Increased profits and cutting costs are the name of the game. The stores can fall apart. And I don’t know about anyone else, but it really bothers me that our Chief Stores Officer has never worked in a Store before. Executives like those might think you can wiggle your nose and make everything great and that’s part of the problem. That’s why they get behind absurd ideas like ISM and Centralized check-out.

We still do not have enough workers to cover the unnecessary extended hours. We continue to presell, make customers into clients, and to use old and slow technology on old registers. Some registers never get turned on because they are in departments where nobody ever works.

They know we are short staffed, but they continue to have all of those prompts at the register.

Do you want to donate money to charity?
Do you want to use dollars of your home currency?
Do you want an email receipt? (that's reasonable)
Do you want to give us your email anyway for a coupon that won't work on anything?
Give us your phone number?
Give us your phone number again, even if you just signed up for bronze?
Give your phone number even though you used a card from another country?
What's your zip code?

Customers just hit the green button without thinking, some aren't wearing glasses, some don't read English that well. Then change their minds and we have to change their selection. It creates unneeded friction. "I don't want to donate a twenty cents to charity! Why that charity and not the one I like?"

They put the wrong email in for the stupid 25% coupon which won't work on anything and have to go back and change it, all while the CRU slowly grinds on its own snail's pace.

An extra thirty seconds per shopper when ringing up sixty or seventy sales a day adds up!

For the rest of the year we should put the customer store experience ahead of whatever marginal marketing advantage playing twenty questions gets us, and remove all of those d-mb questions.

Shrug shoulders, mouth shut, head down, collect paycheck. That's the job.

The sad part is that it is the store teams that are suffering. Nobody wants to speak up and tell the truth as to what the REAL problems are in fear of upsetting your DVP and Regional partners and being put on the short list and written off.

Any leader in a store, who is in the business to drive results and lead people to success has left to greener pastures. I can the same by the turnover I have saw happen from higher up executive positions that have turned over the last 2 years.

Macys was hanging on by strings, ISM just cut the strings and now everyone is in a free fall.

These decisions of course affect the colleague level but it is the middle management running the stores who are being squeezed the most. You have no answers for colleagues and none for yourself either. You see no light at the end of the tunnel and instead of decisions being made to make it better, the decisions being made make it worse.

Get your resume together and take a look at what else is out there for you! You maybe surprised!! Macy's somehow brainwashes you to believe there is nothing else out there and no other company is going to take care of you and be as good to you as them. They make you feel safe until they decide they are done with you and you ended up blind sided.
Take your power back and your skill set to another company that will appreciate you!

Don't blame store management, it goes higher than management at store level. This holiday season is not going well and the biggest failures are in our largest volume stores. The huge cuts in staffing coming out of Covid followed by the implementation of ISM (Integrated Selling Model) is devastating our largest stores this holiday season.

How many trucks are still sitting at the DC waiting on a store manager or DVP to approve it's release to stores that already have truckloads of goods waiting to be processed on the dock and in the stockroom. The biggest challenge is that we have built a culture where every cost cutting idea is embraced by our CFO and CEO and implemented by senior leaders that will only accept positive feedback, field leaders who give real feedback see their careers end and the remaining executives are sharp enough to understand what they need to do and say to keep their positions and careers on track.

When we tested ISM last year during the holiday, the test districts had the same massive failures that big stores throughout the country are now facing and it is only going to get worse as we are already cutting hours and taking markdowns to help clear inventory and minimize the margin impact that our failure to get goods into our stores and onto our sales floors are having on our business.

This has been going on for almost a decade.

Remember, Store Management gets a bigger bonus if they cut expenses.

So what else is new.....same ole same ole....Ground Hogs Day!!!!!