Thread regarding Staples Inc. layoffs

Customer brings laptop to Staples because of no Windows load. Staples suggests something wrong with the harddrive and they can send it away for repair for $300 but that it would be more sensible to buy a new $750 laptop. Customer doesn't know better and goes for it. New Laptop missing windows security center and no extra setup done. Customer calls me to setup antivirus and look at old laptop. After some quick diagnosis I find the hard drive bad (old 2014 laptop) and replace with 250gb ssd for $60. Old laptop is now faster than new laptop and is better quality model. Ticks me off Staples did this, so I suggest to costumer to return new laptop and use old one.

HR is there only to protect the managers and the company. I was forced out by a ops sup that decided to wait until my gm went on vacation to basically lose his sh-- and kick me out of the store.

Knapik, until he was promoted to corp.

Who were the four managers in CT? I'm guessing Vanacore, Kiley, the guy in Branford (Chris?), and drawing a blank on number 4....Joe Woodend? I actually liked Uthoff, he wasn't a bad guy just a bit slow.

Time to put up or shut up

"say it's out of stock and send them packing to another store"

This was common practice, even after a NYT expose and Demos sending a company wide email saying it was not a mandate from corporate and all stores must stop or managers would be terminated. If anything, cheating just increased as Staples increased sales pressure on stores over useless metrics.

As store closures increased and DM and RVP jobs became threated their was even more pressure from them to cheat, as it was not just ratings, but DM and VP jobs on the line.

I work for Staples back in 2002 - 2005 and it was the same story then Cheat and Lie to get customer's money. If we had a "dead computer sale" meaning no extras to go with it (virus removal, plan etc.) we would say it's out of stock and send them packing to another store. Usually we called the other store made sure they had it and had it waiting for the customer when.

Cross post this here https://www.reddit.com/r/Staples/

@NOrMhyd, were you actually contacted by the Herald or are you just hopeful that they will be interested by some of the feedback and run a story? I know some Globe business writers actually post here to ask for info.

My experience as a manager in Southern Connecticut:

• My DM when I started was Bob Uthoff, based out of Branford, Ct. He had about 18-20 stores at one point, from Greenwich to Wallingford. Out of these stores there were about 4 general managers that were allowed to get away with anything. Other stores were constantly barraged with customers sent from those 4 managers for electronics sales with no attachments (they may have moved to different stores, but it was almost always the same four general managers causing the problems). These guys became known as the Four Horsemen.

• These four guys always had good sales and warranty numbers, because they simply turned away customers that were not buying attachments like warranties, antivirus, tech services, etc. Other managers would be scolded at told "you'd have to improve just to s---", because their numbers would be down due to absorbing their own stripped sales as well as the customers the 4 horse men sent them.

• In the mid 2000s stores were not rated on the $ amount of a sale, but on the number of "attachments" sold with laptops, digital cameras etc. One "genius" in Norwalk decided to game the system and sold several 50 cent digidot CD holders with each sale, for which coupons were used to offset the $5 additional price. So this store was averaging 10 add ons per sale and was rated #1 in the company. Everyone else was shamed for not emulating them. Soon after they switched to $ per transaction and that store went from #1 to #1500.

• I had a friend, Nate, that was a sales manager in central Connecticut, just neighboring Uthoff's district. He was constantly harassed by his DM for sub par warranty sales. Another store in Uthoff's district was sending laptop customers that did not want to buy a warranty to his store. After one such incident he called the cheating store, asking for the exact same laptop model that store had just sent a customer to him for. He drove to that store and asked for the laptop, and they had it in stock. Nate inquired why they had just sent a customer to his store if they had the laptop in stock. The manager became enraged that he had bee caught out and called Uthoff. Nate was fired, the manager of the cheating store was promoted.

Basically, if you were not cheating, you were not trying,

Maybe that awesome HR Dept at Staples can get to the bottom of this mess. On second thought, it's the HR Dept that also needs to be looked at and is in need of a colonoscopy. The results would be this. The doctor has the results of the colonoscopy. Tbey found your head.