You must have insight on the future. And if B&N didn't pay you off to disappear like most of you!
I know a lot of the older people were paid off to disappear.
12 replies (most recent on top)
Agreed....no matter how long you have worked with your Co workers.....no matter how strong you thought your bonds were (or are) .they are NOT your friends . They will stab you in the back.
Your managers, district managers, will all LIE to keep you there until the end.They KNOW what’s going on but will NOT TELL YOU. They did it last year and they are doing it NOW. If you want to believe they are your friends. THEY ARE NOT. You have only YOU to BLAME if you stay just to find you’re FIRED with nothing to show for it.
Nobody is safe, you goofs. Even in a well-managed, profitable company these days, nobody is safe. And, with BN, which is certainly not a well-managed, profitable company, everybody is doubly unsafe. We can talk for hours how many CEOs can dance on the head of a pin, but unless you're a stockholder, forget about safe. Start thinking of yourselves, and get into the mindset of an exit strategy.
This was in another thread on here -is the manager lying. This answers it.
8 replies (most recent on top)
According to a corporate insider: many ASMs, Merch mgrs & cafe mgrs positions will be cut with NO severance.
If your SM tells you you’re “safe” , they’re LYING to you.
a day ago by Anonymous
Ok, Former Management Here...
let's have some more details.
The manager in our store told a full-time person our store was safe. We're a very big store in a mall location. Are you saying the manager is lying and that the full-time people who are not management will be gone soon?
Former management here....
Still in touch w/ DM, corporate workers, industry insiders.
Last February affected many more than was reported to the news. Booksellers and leads didn’t see it coming. Your DM and mgrs knew. Another wave is coming soon. No severance will be included this time.Talk of bankruptcy options being discussed.
I was with the company for 22 years before they closed my store. I chose the severance pay out instead of transferring to another store in an ASM position. Here is why...I knew then that Barnes and Noble had no game plan for the future. They had nothing. The Nook sales were declining, they were using valuable real estate in the store for c-appy gift knick-knacks instead of building a deep breadth of book inventory and they were systematically putting older employees in PMPs because of non-existent performance issues.I was tired of spending time helping customers for a half an hour talking about and recommending books only to have that customer order my recommends on their phone at Amazon. B&N doesn't even match their dot-com prices in the store for God's sake. Leaving B&N was the best decision I've ever made. I'm making the same salary, have better hours and have a much better work environment. Granted, I am no longer in retail and I am so much happier for it. I am absolutely perplexed as to why people have not left this god forsaken company by now. It is going to be out of business soon. There are no severance pay outs. There are so many other jobs out there, why hang on to Barnes and Noble? There is no saving this company. It has no leadership or over-riding vision for the future. I loved the company and the people I worked with but that time is long gone. Please don't wait for the final death blow of this once great company, get out now. Find that job of your dreams NOW and don't look back. I didn't.
@XrqZC0B-1smm, I see your point regarding the ageism, but there were an awful lot of . so-called younger people dismissed, too. In fact, at the store I was at there are still workers there that are older than I am (they are in their 60s) and working as cash leads and other departments. They kept them on and they are getting benefits. Everyone says people aren't getting benefits but they are in that store .
@XrqZC0B-1swm, I was there for Black Monday (although I had the day off, and found out about it from my news feeds.) I spent the day signing up for Glassdoor and Indeed, and working on my resume. I knew at least a dozen people I had worked with, in various stores over the years, who got the chop on that day, and it broke my heart, and made me realize that the company had changed into something I no longer wanted to be a part of.
Let's not be stupid about this, the older employees actually USE their insurance. They get rid of those people however they can. I know two older women at our store were let go at the exact same time.
Ageism is alive and well at B&N.
The Feb. Layoffs was a good way for them to get rid of paying for health insurance and so a few younger people got sacrificed in the process. This was to protect the company so no one would sue.
Well, @Bronko, you weren't there (almost one year ago on Feb. 12) that BLACK MONDAY when leads let go, one by one, first to the office and then actually escorted out the door separately. Age didn't matter. They made sure they covered themselves when the severance papers arrived in the post and there were several sheets showing how many store leads were let go, their position and department, and their age to prove that it wasn't ageism.,
I served in both positions with the company over the years. Back in the older days, I used to hear plenty of hair-curling tales, which is the benefit (and curse) of getting tenure over the years, keeping one's own counsel, and not getting fired.
Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, in my last days there I didn't hear a lot; in previous posts here I've provided many of my own views and predictions, which any of you can look back at and take at their face-value--working for many years with the company and in the book trade, my ideas are worth precisely the cost of a latte in any of the company's cafes, less employee discount, which isn't worth as much as it was when I was there.
Most of my dire predictions are based on what heard from my older brother, who went through many of the same travails in a different (and doomed) retailer, in his position, very high up in headquarters of said company. In my post "This Is How It Will Go," which can be seen below, is based almost exactly of what happened to him when his retailer went under. It will happen very quickly, it will be appalling, and it will be extremely painful to whomever is left at BN. This happened to him more than twenty years ago, and up until a couple of years ago, he still was getting phone calls from fired employees who were looking for what they thought was going to be their retirement accounts.
These were little people, like the common booksellers at BN, who had worked for the company for many years, and were up against the wall, and were looking for somebody who could help them, literally decades after the company imploded. My brother would direct them to the lawyers who had presided over the breakup, many of whom had already retired, and hung up the phone. It was all he could do.
Interestingly, in all my years with BN, I never saw somebody escorted to the door because they were too old, or "paid off." But then, I got out in time. I'm now working in another business, with far less stress, for close to the same money I made at BN (which was pretty good). How things are now I can't comment on, but I can't imagine it getting much better.