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"I work retail and I can tell you something big is definitely coming"
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This Link is located in the Public Channel Housing Bubble and Bear Links.
Posted by ian 1 year 85 days ago (democraticunderground.com). Views: 1,242
Tags: consumer spending recession economy retail jobs credit crisis |
| Related Tags: economics stock market housing bubble banks gold wall street bailout |
A poster named TwixVoy writes:
"I have worked retail for several years. I am in mid-level store management right now. I don't want to say exactly what company I work for, but it is in the top 3 largest. I work at a store in a major city.
There have been some crazy things going on recently. The changes that we are being asked me make per corporates direction makes me think that the people at the top think something VERY big is going to be happening to the economy soon. I don't think the media or the government is giving us the full details of what is actually going on, but I think the CEO's and others at the top are fully aware and are making plans.
For one thing I check sales every day. At the store level we usually compare what sales are today compared to sales for the same day, week, month, and year last year. Sales at our store, our district, and company wide have taken a HUGE drop compared to the same time last year. When I looked at them today my store and every store in our district was down over 30% for the same time last year. The company as a whole is also in the negative for the same time last year. (but not as much, but it gets lower every day)
Honestly at my store I could say that we have done everything in our power at the store level to increase sales, but it just isn't happening. Departments like electronics are literally almost completely empty the entire day. The only departments that actually are getting sales are consumables, health, and chemicals. Just walking the store these are the only departments I ever even see people in ever since christmas ended.
Sometimes I will cover the service desk so a team member can take a lunch/break. When I do I sometimes process peoples credit card payments which lets me see how much they owe and how much they are paying. There are tons of people with THOUSANDS of dollars on their card only making minimum payments. These balances are usually at interest rates over 20%. Then there are people bringing in checks for the full amount, but they are BALANCE TRANSFER checks.... they are just moving it to other cards.
But that isn't what really worries me. What worries me is the changes corporate is making. I have worked here for years, and in the last 4 months I have seen more changes than all that time combined.
We are getting emails all the time from corporate telling us to reduce costs anyway we can. We recently got one telling us to start pulling fluorescent light bulbs, that we don't need all of them in order to provide illumination.... and those bulbs barely use any power.
Corporate has instructed all stores to lower the AC. It has been lowered enough to the point we get complaints from team members and customers.
Corporate has sent us emails telling us to make sure we fill bags to the absolute possibly maximum. They are not even sending us large bags anymore to some stores.
Corporate has recently eliminated (what I would estimate based on how many positions we lost vs the thousands of stores we have) several thousnad management positions at *all levels* of management at stores. This NEVER APPEARED ON THE NEWS! I suspect because it was not a traditional lay off. What corporate basically told us was "Your position is eliminated, but you are not laid off. Once you quit/get your self fired/whatever your position just won't be filled again" So we are basically slowly losing jobs as people company wide quit, get fired, etc.... but the jobs are never filled again. So basically we are cutting jobs, but the way it is being done is preventing it from getting reported in the media or tracked by the government as job losses.
No non-management positions have been eliminated, instead hours have been cut for them.
Raises this year have also been lowered in amount compared to in previous years. They have been lowered enough that corporate is keeping it a secret until we have to tell team members.
The company is also buying less. Our distribution centers are sending us, for example, 3 of a certain item when normally we would get 50.... and they don't send us more until those sell. I have not been able to keep departments full of product despite contacting corporate and asking for more because we are being sent such small amounts of product.
We have had trucks cancelled all the time now simply because we sold so little that they can't justify sending so few items to a store.
People are simply NOT buying things. They are not buying anything that isn't a consumable basically. I asked our pricing team to do a store mark down and lower the price on almost all of our TVs by 30-50%. We still have not sold a single one in over a week after! Our TVs were not priced very high to begin with.
Our pricing team is also being sent price increase changes from corporate in huge numbers. I am talking entire aisles of product for them to raise the prices on. The other day we got a STACK of pages of product to increase prices on. We thought it HAD to be a mistake because that has simply never happened before. We have emailed corporate asking if it was a mistake... we have not heard back yet, but I suspect it was not.
Many stores are now changing to non-overnight stores. They will be closed overnight and ALL power except in office areas will be cut overnight to save on costs.
There have even been changes to job descriptions recently. Corporate is basically giving job dutys to people at lower levels which used to be reserved for people at higher levels. Even some management tasks are being given to people in non-management positions. Basically they are paying people less to do what people used to get paid more to do.
Things are NOT looking pretty right now. I can tell you from a consumer spending point of view something is definantely going on.... All these changes tell me the people at the top are trying to brace for something big that is going to be happening to the economy."
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Kguy said |
| 1 year 78 days ago |
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something big already has happened
Most employees don't seem to realize that nearly all businesses from small "mom & pops" to the large corporate giants have been experiencing financial problems for well over a year, more like two. My husband & I have a small business with 14 employees, and while we are still going o.k., it has been a struggle for a while. It's not just sales that may be the problem, it is often the interest rates on various loans and investments that are the backdrop of a business. Many businesses may have over-extended during the huge real estate boom in investments and now can't unload when they need to, without taking a bath. Most businesses can deal with short-term dips and challenges for a year, even two, without taking drastic measures - at least we have been able to, but as the outlook remains a bit bleak, I think most of us are waking up to the fact that only the lean and well -managed are going to survive. I continue to be surprised by my employees and their comments at how little they are aware of the economic situation that most businesses have been in for a while. We certainly don't advertise our challenges - it doesn't help business or morale to have people worried about our viability - but I would say that the general public is just becoming aware of a situation that has been on our radar for some time. I don't think there is anything "big" coming that isn't already here - what Ian is experiencing is simply attrition - a prolonged economic down turn is finally forcing many businesses to face the fact that it's probably going to be later rather than sooner when we start to experience a "lifter" - to put it in nautical terms.
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dysk said |
| 1 year 84 days ago |
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Re: this sounds phony
@TheMCP
(1) He was talking about working the service desk, not the checkout aisles. Presumably this store has their own credit card, and he was handling payments for the store's branded card.
However, just because a chain of stores is dying doesn't mean the whole economy is in the straights. It could be some store like Sears where it has an image of being built for the World War II generation, or it could be focused on overpriced electronics when cheap electronics are the norm.
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TheMCP said |
| 1 year 85 days ago |
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This sounds phony.
1) People who work in stores, even "mid level store managers", don't get to see people's credit balances and payment history when the customer's credit card is processed. Not only does is it factually not the way the system works, but it'd also likely be illegal because that would constitute an unauthorized access of the customer's credit record information. When a card is processed it gets accepted or declined, that's all the store is told.
2) What part of the US already has such hot weather in 2008 that customers will complain if the air conditioning isn't turned up high enough? C'mon, it's early april! I was just in central Arizona and it was cool and breezy and I was regretting not having my jacket, and I'm from New England!
3) Positions that are eliminated do in fact show in the unemployment statistics and as a reduction of available positions in government statistics, so eliminating a position doesn't hide anything from the public. The tactic of not filling positions once the employee departs is a VERY common corporate tactic that big corporations have been doing almost constantly for decades now, not some weird new invention to mess with the unemployment statistics. Further, this is not really "eliminating positions", this is a "hiring freeze". If the positions were really eliminated, any employees filling them would be terminated, and the poster claims that none were.
I'm not saying that the economy doesn't have problems or that I think we're not necessarily headed for a recession, but this "article" doesn't ring true.
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