Thread regarding Sears layoffs

OP here, just throwing it out there that it turned out to be a regular visit and we’re still kicking for now.

@UA4ZOYZ-2tqa This I can say its truth I remember when one time we were getting fixture from another store since they had a lot and the ASM wanted to get some. Than I overheard (being one of the few with a truck) to ask me if I would use my truck to get the fixtures. They never asked because they were embarrassed, but even if they did I wouldn't of used my own truck what for I don't get anything. They ended up renting a uhaul.

@3lkt I wonder if your manager got in trouble for that or worse, got fired, especially if the higher ups found out that the money they got from the sc-ap company was spent on rewarding the associates to a dinner and some extra cash for clearing the junk.

I get the impression that being proactive, taking some initiative and rewarding your employees in a meaningful way are frowned upon.

We called in a sc-ap company and got money for our fixtures. Around $1000 i think. The manager threw a party for the whole store and took us to dinner. We then split the rest with everyone who helped clean the stock rooms. I got around $75

Your store could get fixtures from a closing store or a store that has more than they need but your manager will need to rent a Uhaul unless they happen to have their own truck and trailer, and the district manager will have to approve the Uhaul rental. That's how it was done back then, don't know about now. With the way budgets are for the stores, renting a Uhaul for a day probably isn't going to be approved.

We're in the opposite boat. One of our old DMs demanded we throw out as many of our fixtures as we could over a year ago. Unfortunately, this meant people were throwing out completely usable fixtures willy-nilly. Four-ways, hang-folds, display tables, it didn't matter. Now we're stuck with probably 10-20% fewer apparel fixtures than we actually need with a ridiculous amount of fall/winter merchandise coming in all at once, and our SM is making utterly no effort to obtain anything from the many closing stores.

I only wish we could throw stuff away. The old BC manager's office, which is right off of the appliance department, is full of old binders, outdated catalogs, parts to vacuums we no longer carry, manuals we no longer need, old displays from an electronics department we no longer have and 50-lb boxes full of random junk. We keep our HA promotional materials and cleaning supplies in there but it's hard to keep organized with all of that junk and the store manager does not want us to throw the junk away because he says we might "need" it again. Keep in mind that some of that stuff in there is from the 1990's. There are all kinds of other rooms and little "hiding spots" throughout the store and those are just as bad. The signwriter room has become a dumping ground for a few fixtures.

One room has all kinds of metal fixturing stacked high on the shelves and no one is inclined to fix it and make it safer. We probably have about a couple tons of sc-ap metal from all the shelves and fixturing we will never use which we accumulated through the years of downsizing departments and eliminating product lines. The tools reset added about three 20-foot aisles worth of metal shelving to the fixture grave. I brought that up during one of our "safety meetings" and suggested that we should get rid of the junk since it has accumulated to the point that it is a safety hazard, but it was ignored.

Maybe things will change if some junk comes crashing down around the DM when he visits and starts to look in all our wonderful little hiding spots full of c-ap the store manager refuses to get rid of.

Dumpster got filled with broken fixtures....accumulated junk from offices and the signing room, product deemed not repairable taking space in stockrooms.....basically stuff that should have been tossed out long ago but was allowed to pile up until last minute panic mode set in before a visit announcement.

@2lla: It really doesn't make any sense to announce a visit (whether they intend to show up or not). If district managers and regional managers want to really get a good look on how the stores are normally running and how they normally look, they really should show up unannounced.

If they make the announcement of their arrival then of course everyone is going to run in a frenzy trying to get everything in tip-top shape. The entourage of DMs and RMs will keep going from store to store thinking that all the stores they are in control of are running fine when really, they're not.

What were they filling the dumpster with? Freight that wasn't put away?

@2okk: I hated being a lead. Leads only earn about $1/hr extra over the minimum wage, yet the expectations of the job are at the level of an ASM.

I didn't bother demoting. When I reached my breaking point, I decided to quit. The store manager was too toxic and it just made the environment of a dying workplace that much worse.

The amount of money they make to fly around, take a quick walk around the store and out the door they go. No comments, no interaction with associates is sad. It's sad how far this company has fallen. Sears and Kmart have hard working associates and no credit from regional is a disgrace. No wonder there are people jumping ship.

Years ago, when I was a lead, I was about 5 days away from starting a vacation when the SGM calls all ASM's and leads to his office.

He tells us that a regional VP and an entourage will be coming the following week and vacations are cancelled for that week.

I was the only one affected by the vacation cancellation as I was the only lead/manager scheduled on vacation that week but needless to say, I was not happy.

We spent the next few days on a cleaning frenzy....working until Midnight the night before the visit.

The visitors show up as scheduled....and spent a whopping 5 minutes in our dept during their walkthrough just giving a quick glance from the main aisle......All that work for that.

I ended up having to wait another month to take that postponed vacation because the following few weeks after the visit had other leads and managers already booked for vacation and they did not want too many managers/leads on vacation at the same time.

The best decision I ever made was to stop down from a lead position a couple years later.....The stress level went down significantly.

Our DM's usually made regular visits.....The real circus scene would happen when a Regional VP visit was announced...Everyone would go on a cleaning frenzy before the visit, filling up the dumpster with ASM's and leads staying until Midnight the night before.....

Then, the VP and entourage cancels the visit at the last minute which usually happened at least half of the time these visits were announced.

I honestly believe that the bigwigs did this on purpose...announce visits that they have no intention to show up for...just to get the stores cleaned up and presentable under the pretense of a big visit.

We once had a total imbecile of a DM who took a look at some boxes that had just come off a warehouse truck that had only arrived hours earlier, but which for some reason all had DC shipping labels with dates about a week and a half prior. Much of our freight for the past several months had been about one to two weeks behind if you went by the label dates compared to when the trucks arrived. However, this was not good enough for him, and he accused us of letting the freight fall behind by weeks. When we showed him that the truck was still half-full of similarly dated boxes, he had the gall to accuse us of lying and filling the truck back up with freight just to try and trick him. Thankfully, he's no longer with the company.

The last time we had a DM visit we had truck still to process a day after it showed up as we always are doing since we are never being granted the hours or people to finish it the same day.

The DM notified the managers at the last minute that she was coming down. The managers panicked and wanted us to hide four shrink wrapped pallets of unprocessed freight in our old electronics lock-up stockroom (the pallets are almost seven feet tall and the doorway was about six feet tall, so that was fun) and all of the z-racks, shoe carts and bakers racks of processed softlines freight in some random dark, dusty room in the far reaches of our stockroom.

Because of that, we fell behind since the freight we were supposed to work on the very next day was hidden and we couldn't touch it because of the DM visit.

I hate the fact that we are supposed to drop everything and make all of the day to day store operations go away to appease the DM. It's like they want the entire store to be picture perfect and never want to see the dirty work it takes to make the store run. If I was a DM I would think it would be a little suspicious that everything was mysteriously finished on time at every store. I wished she checked the hiding spots because then we could have said that our store manager and ASM made us do it.

I wish the managers were honest and let us work on the freight in front of the DM so that she could see that we have to take two or three days to get it finished because we aren't getting enough hours or people to finish it in one day.

Because the DM was under the false impression that we could get a 650 piece truck done in one day with just four people, it's going to be a lot harder to make the case of giving us more hours and hiring more people back here. Stupid, stupid, stupid decision.

That's not the first time our management has been dishonest with their bosses. Back when we had a district operations manager, we were told to remove all the located items over 30 days out of stock locator to bring it to 100% instead of giving us the hours to make sure stock locator was finished on time or just being straight up honest with the district operations guy about the stock locator score. The store manager printed off the report and wanted one of us to take a SNC and zero out all of the locations that were over 30 days. She didn't want us to try and finish stock locator as much as we could or give us just an extra hour or two to do it the right way.

@1tua Huh, funny that, because it seems like Sears is the one that has even lower sales numbers more often than Kmart does. Granted, I know that Kmart is a sh-- pile because I work at one, but Sears is the super ugly Mt. Everest sh-- pile that should have died a long time ago. So keep thinking that way because I'm fairly sure your Sears will be on the chopping block before too long.

Our DMs through the years made regular visits. They were a bit of a plague in that way, as everybody would be in a tizzy to get everything nice and pretty just for that visit, even when it meant putting literally every other important task on hold and trying to sweep anything that could wait under the rug. Every time they would come, we'd fall behind by several days just to stoke their egos. It was even more annoying when they just decided not to show up at the last minute.

Here we go again with the troll works. My Sears is doing awesome in sales and profits as are others. Kmarts aren't and they all need to be closed Asap to help Sears transistion back to being number one in the retail world.

SO. MUCH. WINNING!!!

@1gus - Best of luck with the visit. Hopefully it will just be another routine and favorable one. Please keep us posted on how it turns out.

You don't have to be a genius to pull your ip from here

@1opp our store gets dm visits at least once a month. Usually favorable. They call us a “top 200” store. Though, that held much more weight when there were more than 200 stores. The only reason I’m even thinking about it is because it’s a Thursday. All of the store closings that have been announced this year were on thursdays.

@zat Nice. Mind sending me that list? And when you send me that list, I’ll send you my store number. He’ll, I’ll even send you my employee id number.

Does your DM visit your store on a regular basis? Our DM would always schedule visits and then cancel them the day before. After about 18 months of that nonsense our DM finally did show up for a scheduled visit accompanied by several colleagues. The DM announced that our store would be closing. Our visit was on a Wednesday. If your DM shows up with an entourage then that is a bad sign.

Probably 80%. DM and regional guys who visit after an inventory are not a good sign. Also, the 2nd quarter just ended and that means more store closings within the next few weeks.