From GOODEREADER.COM
Publishers are raising concerns about Barnes and Noble management
Major publishers have attended meetings with the founder of Barnes and Noble and have voiced their displeasure that the booksellers management team is in a constant state of disarray.
So here's what people from the company are saying:
“Barnes and Noble will start hunting around for a new CEO after labor day, since most of the executives took the summer off. It remains to be seen if the bookseller can turn things around with another face, but I think it will be more of the same. The trend with B&N is a CEO comes in, unveils a grand plan and then makes a hasty exit with a fat severance check.”
Most executives took the summer off! We are in crisis and they are on vacation!
Do we want to hire executives that take summers off!? LOL
Age old pattern of getting hired and then running off with severance and stock. Happened with Borders too.
There should be something built into their contracts. Some sort of sliding scale of severance maturity? Or pay them more but not include severance. Built in bonuses. Though I’m sure these have been thought of.
There should be something in the LAW that penalizes executives who tank a company for personal gain.
Nothing will save BN if they don’t invest in their employees. Treat employees well and they will in turn do their job in such a way customers will be happy to spend money in the store. Push your employees to the brink and they will do the bare minimum to get by so they can retain whatever sanity they have left from being stretched so thin.
[NOTE: B&N doesn't care about you, that's why they fired 1900 of its most loyal employees.]
“The main problem with Barnes and Noble is that it has no direction and is has a toxic work environment. Even managers who are responsible for dozens of different locations lament that they get no support from the head office in New York”
It's been my contention all along that it's the publishers that are keeping BN in business ... if we go under, then what? A cascade of business failures that I don't think anyone wants to consider right now.
Toxic work environment is an understatement....
Executives took the whole damn summer off and can't even pay their workers a living wage
he. Entire. Summer. Off. One wonders if they say things like, "Let them eat cake --- from the café at a reduced discount." And you know the others in the corporate offices are trying to work all this time, and if they are micromanaged as much as the stores' staffs are. This company needs to be led full time all year if there's any real chance to turn things around.
"The trend with B&N is a CEO comes in, unveils a grand plan and then makes a hasty exit with a fat severance check."
It really makes me think...if you can go months with a void in a position, really how important is that position? Especially one that is the salary of I don’t know, all the employees of one store or multiple stores. Imagine running a store with no managers for months. Or as it is now less than a skeleton of a crew. The results speak for themselves. Invest in the bottom up, not the other way around. 🙄
Same thing is happening to us that happened to Toys R Us. A bunch of people who don’t care about the product are cycling through some nominal bosses so that they can set up their big old paychecks when they run the store into the ground. Probably going to sell to a predatory investment company within a year or two, and then they’re going to start plundering.