rumor is severe hourly / shift cuts in stores in feb.
everyone affected. you can't survive in a weakened retail world and just depend on holidays to prop you up. get ready to see the weekly checks go on a diet. maybe no layoffs, but you might lose a shift or work less in the day.
Heard this, too, in a manager's meeting. Corporate wants more cuts to survive these dead months. There are still some full timers at some larger stores that make a certain amount. They may go down to 30 hours or so.
Back in the old days, when Steve Riggio was running things, BN invested in long-term booksellers, making them leads in different departments. They would get full time, benefits, vacation, etc., and were expected to take care of their various departments. Even lower-volume stores would have at least two, and maybe three, fiction leads.
Around the time that the ACA went in effect, this mostly changed. The company's policy went away from full-time booksellers to part-time, so the company didn't have to pay for health care costs. The ideal bookseller was one who would work for four and a half hours a day, thus negating the need for a lunch break. Managers were expected to schedule these 4.5 hour blocks throughout the day, and slot booksellers names in to fill them. For quite a while, most of the leads were grandfathered into their jobs, but their positions would be filled with a couple of part-time (usually 20 hour-a-week) booksellers.
Naturally, one can figure out how caustic this was; as the old-time, passionate booksellers retired, died, or went on to some other career, the gathered history of the store passed away as well. Now, before some j--koff troll chimes in with some smartassed statement about people lacking the drive to make themselves a real career, I knew plenty of booksellers who had, indeed, made working for BN a career. They knew books and the book trade inside and out, they knew how to maintain their sections, how to shelve quickly, policies, and, most importantly, they knew how to sell books.
Instead, the company started hiring on part-timers, usually younger people with no experience in the trade, and sales dropped. This is to say nothing against younger people who wanted to become booksellers; many of them were fine workers, but they lacked the history and experience. The company obviously has no real interest in the gathered history of experienced booksellers, as seen on Black Monday.
Barnes & Noble never wanted long term employees, you either move UP or they push you out!
The only long term people work very few hours. Look for more layoffs this month as B&N throws more people who make too much money off of the sinking ship!