They host week long store manager conferences in Texas last year and Florida the year before where they had Sarah Mclachlen play for them and Megyn Kelly speak just to name a few. Never mind sending store managers on full paid vacations and free tablets for holiday contests but God forbid they pay hard working, dependable people to keep their positions. It's a disgrace. They should be embarrassed. Glad all the higher ups are all taken care of!
5 replies (most recent on top)
Do you think the Store Managers enjoyed doing what we had to do? We did not. I threw up after I found out Friday and have been bursting into tears since Monday. This was NOT something we enjoyed doing, nor do I think we should have been the ones to do it.
F-you Len-do us all a favor and SELL---Your time is OVER!!!
Hmmm....if you’re so smart tell me who holds the only SALARIED positions with the company....and WHO do you think has to work all the shifts which have just been created in VERY short notice?!?? AND...just in time for inventory...you act like managers are ina glass castle....this is the SECOND time in my career that I’ve had to lay booksellers off...it’s NOT easy....they have become our family too....and if your manager is not like this...I’m sorry...yours was sh--ty...but believe me...we are “no commenting” but we are all walking through hell.......
You wouldn’t be so derisive of the Store Manager Sales Conference if you’d been. This year was horrible. Inedible food. We enviously watched one district order pizza in more than once. Morale? In the toilet. Beating SMs down telling us it was up to us to motivate teams to increase sales. SMs signed contracts, detailed contracts, about what we were going to do so our stores would be at positive comps by end of holiday... we basically signed our own IPs. Having DMs telling us we would turn the company around at the store level, or we wouldn’t like what happened. I went back and told my entire team to get out ASAP. Which they did. Other SMs drank the proverbial koolaid instead of making a rational evaluation of the information we were given and what we were being asked to achieve coupled with Demos and Alan’s language on the calls. I’ve been with BN since the glory days of the early 1990’s and this has been tough to watch. But the SM conference and tablet give aways are not what put the company under. Bad decisions, reactionary policies, dinosaur thinking from Len, 10 years too late to the internet, and massive payouts to the departing CEOs over the last several years. That’s what sunk us. And you’re right, the hardest working, most caring, talented, devoted booksellers are getting a knife in the back for their, in many cases, decade(s) of effort. Screw Len for letting this happen.
Their priorities are completely out of line