All the posts that I have seen about the layoffs that occurred on September 13th are a completely accurate. I was one of the unfortunate ones and to be honest I'm not that surprised about getting laid off myself, but I am more shocked at the valuable employees that have been there 10+ years that really earned their place there and deserve so much more than JoAnn to be honest.
I should have known when I first started at JoAnn, what was to come. My starting date got pushed back a week because the last person I interviewed with was fired the day I was supposed to start and they were restructuring that week. I arrived for work and was assigned to different management. I really liked my manager though. She took on the job of the person they let go on top of the roll she was hired for, and soon after that they fired another manager and she took on those responsibilities as well. So the role she was hired for soon turned into three people's jobs. She did everything she could to get training in place and to get all of her staff in a good place to do the best work. My manager was brilliant and she was overworked. She didn't have time to spend with her staff to get them properly trained. She always had our back and was very realistic about what was possible. She wasn't afraid to stand up to the executives and tell them how things worked and why things wouldn't work. She was amazing but she quit and I don't blame her. This seems to be the pattern at JoAnn.
At that same time My manager quit, a few more team members quit and we needed to rebuild the team. In the meantime we all took on more responsibilities and got paid the same with no bonuses or maybe a 1% raise. Slowly but surely we rebuild the team but again, people got fed up and quit and again we needed to rebuild the team.
I had condescending management that picked favorites and just wanted people to kiss her a-s. I'm not one of those people. If you ask what I think I will tell you honestly and politely. There was a time when I felt like everybody's ideas were heard loud and clear and appreciated. Last time there was a restructuring of my department, all of a sudden everything changed.
As always, when restructuring happens, the management acts like this is an amazing opportunity. If they actually believe that then they're really in bad shape. They pretend to be transparent about the status of the company, but really they skim over the harsh reality and focus on the one little part of the business that's doing well. I understand that they need to keep the staff motivated and the morale high, but I have seen this company take such a hard nosedive, essentially stunting all inspiration and motivation in their employees. It's crazy how much things have changed in a short time.
I went through waves of feeling like I have to get out of here, to I think things are going to be okay, and it continued like that the entire time I was there. It was exhausting to think, "Is today the day that they're going to have layoffs", because it happened multiple times when I was there and every meeting with my boss was uninspiring and unmotivating. Little by little responsibilities were taken away from me and then I was told I wasn't doing enough, until somebody else quit and they needed somebody else to take on the leftovers. Everyday I had anxiety walking through that door, knowing that my ideas were not going to be heard and my hard work was unappreciated.
Their little sayings of we are ONEJOANN and we are "friendly, clever Allies" is such a joke. I think anyone that's extremely happy to work there at this point, just drink the juice and joined the cult. I did appreciate some things about the company like the initiatives of the HR department. The head of HR resigned a few weeks ago and I'd like to believe that she just didn't like what was happening there. I don't really know the details about that but she did a lot of great things for the company. It just seems like all the good things that made me happy to work there in the beginning disappeared real quick.
The worst part about this, is how cold the layoffs were. They gave very little severance but maybe I should be happy I got any at all. They said the only reason I got severance was because they eliminated my position. There were other people there with the same title so I'm thinking they're going to merge a lot of positions into one and essentially overwork all of the remaining employees. It sounds about right.
The thing that just simply makes me angry is they cut off my health insurance at midnight the very same day I got laid off. I have doctor's appointments I had to schedule 6 months out that are at the end of this month. I'm grateful that my kids are not on my insurance plan because I have a chronically sick child that needs appointments every couple months. I have another child that has mental health issues that has an appointment every week. I can't imagine how I would handle this if I had my kids on my plan. That is the most cold thing a company can do.
Where did the compassion go in the workplace? Can the executives put themselves in other people's shoes? Can they even think that way? What if their child was chronically ill and they didn't have insurance for their child anymore and no time to get them on a plan? What if they had a child that was severely depressed and needed therapy every month but they didn't have the money to get them Any help?
I am more and more in debt every month as a single mom with two children. The only reason I stayed was for the convenience of the location because I needed to be available for my children in case of emergency. There were just enough perks of the job with the health benefits for me to stay there. I should have left sooner and I do feel bad for anybody else that is still there. I hope this is a sign for everybody that I care about that is still an employee. They let people go yesterday solely based on money and not job performance. Some of the hardest working people I know got let go and all of their years of work probably seem like they were not appreciated at all, considering their insurance was cut off in their severance was s***.
I grew up in a JoAnn and I am a very creative person. I was ecstatic to be working there when I got hired because I love being around creative people. I was excited to work at a corporate level to contribute to any improvements to the in-store experience. I loved the new initiatives presented in the stores and I liked being a part of something big.
Unfortunately, the in-store experience was just a facade for all of the b* that happens behind the scenes. Now when you walk into one of the stores you can see the disaster that Joann has become. The facade is falling apart. They are understaffed and shelves are empty and they are lacking for solutions. They're promoting back to basics because they can't afford to fund any other large initiatives when the executives are stuffing their pockets with their large bonuses.
I feel like JoAnn used to be something so great and now I know that it's solely based on men that are money hungry and have absolutely no idea what the customer wants and what is best for their employees. They are the men that do not have a family life or have no idea what a family life means. If they have children, I bet they don't know them very well. They probably treat their home like a business and pass along the responsibilities to their wives like they do their employees and just magically think things will be successful. How could they understand compassion and connection, if they can discard people so coldly?
I pray for all of the people that work there right now that have a good heart and are just trying to make money for their families. Investing too much personal emotion in that company is going to break people's hearts eventually.
Keep your eyes open for other positions, JoAnn employees. There are some great employees there and I really don't want them to get screwed like people did yesterday.