Did any of the senior leaders consider the impact of announcing the company would be closing 150 stores and then only telling the stores that are on the list? WTF. Our store isn't on the list, but since nobody outside of the closing stores know, we have spent last week with every customer asking the question of the week "When is your store closing?".
Do you know how depressing it is to have to answer this question every time you help a customer. If that wasn't bad enough, half the retailers in the mall are in our store recruiting employees and telling them how sorry they were to hear that the store is closing and how concerning it must be to not have a secure future in today's economy. We have already lost two people and several more have interviews setup, so we expect to lose even more.
Morale in our store is in the toilet and the store manager and district team are all acting like last weeks announcement was no big deal. We just met to discuss our Pulse survey response strategy, but the biggest concern colleagues have today isn't the scheduling issues they commented on in the survey, it's about the direction the company is headed and the security of their future.
The Arkhouse proxy fight is clearly distracting senior leaders and it appears that the decision has been made that the best way to address the very real impact of the closing announcements and buy out offer is to ignore them and pretend that they don't exist.