Circuit City fires 3400 employee's.

[Injury]

Originally posted by: Amused

Originally posted by: iversonyin

Originally posted by: Amused

Originally posted by: iversonyin
Seriously, you expect to work a career in RETAIL? Come on.

Many people make a career out of retail. Only they go on to store manager, then regional manager positions and so on.

You cannot expect to make a career out of an ENTRY LEVEL job, no matter what field it is.

If I'm not mistaken, you need college degree to move OUT of those salemen position. Either way, RETAILERS' profit is so thin and they are so prone to economic downturn, why would anyone look for job security in retail?

I know a few people who have moved into management without a degree. One was a regional manager for Victoria's Secret in the south. (my ex-wife, to be exact)

Yup, with enough experience everyone is qualified for the job.

 

[5to1baby1in5]

Only 10% of the workers...

So much for my plans of going in and shoplifting everything in sight. :frown:

Now if it was ~50%...

 

[cubby1223]

Originally posted by: Ronstang

Originally posted by: cubby1223

That's not what you said. Illegal immigrants take jobs for less pay than what welfare provides. Like the ones who do lawncare work for seriously $1, maybe $2 per hour if they're lucky enough.

Why should anyone anywhere be content to work full time and still be in terrible poverty?

If you honestly think that illegal immigrants work for $1 or $2 an hour in the USA you are severely deluded.

If you think they don't, then you are the one severely deluded.

Around here we've got a lot of illegal immigrants, even though we're nowhere's near the Mexico border. You can have a group of 5 Mexicans working a big lawn for an entire afternoon for $50 total. And that covers the labor, equipment, and fuel.

A friend of mine wanted to try starting up his own local lawncare business for some extra income, without realizing exactly how low the immigrants are willing to go to get the work. Suffice to say the venture didn't work out.

 

[db]

"Cutting costs" is the latest fad in corporate America today, b/c of the political environment. It usually means that employees get laid off or 20% or more reduced wages and benefits. More money for the CEO.

It got to where I would never go into a CC unless they had a loss leader. Their business model sucked.

 

[Dulanic]

Originally posted by: benchiu
The stupid thing that CC did was simply eliminate people based on salary grades, with no thought to whether those people were worth the salary. Basically they took all the jobs and put a fixed salary grade for that position, if you were making more than the top level of that grade, you were fired. On the surface that might make fiscal sense, but it's quite possible that those people were also the top sales people. My guess is they felt it was unskilled labor and it was easier to just hire or rehire people instead of actually evaluating them.

Yup.... I spent nearly 7 years at CC off and on. We made great money on commision, they fired all the top people and it went down hill. However for a while after the "switch" CC was a good company to work for retail wise. The past 2 years have gone down hill, once they got the exec VP of Best Buy is really when it went down hill.

Most of the people let go made good money for retail. The 7 people from my old store all made $15+, some nearly $25. However they earned every penny of that money, they were all top sales people. Most of us sold well over a million a year, compared to the people who are still there who probably averaged $25-50k a month in sales.

CC really screwed up here. They will save money in payroll but they WILL lose sales, I guarantee it. If I had to guess Id say they will see same store sales loss of 5-10% over the next year, and probably more after that due to long term customers they will lose when they realize the service is that much worse. Not to mention the 3400 ex employees who will likely never shop there again.

I am very very grateful that I left CC 6 months ago, or I would have lost my job also. And that would have been devistating to me since I need health insurance due to a medical condition.

 

[rh71]

Originally posted by: rh71
how much did they make outside of commission ?

still curious

 

[Corbett]

If $11.75 per hour is considered "too much money" then I wouldnt want to work there anyways.

 

[Dulanic]

Originally posted by: Corbett
If $11.75 per hour is considered "too much money" then I wouldnt want to work there anyways.

No one I know that was let go made near that amount, was atleast $14 at the lowest I knew, most were near or above $20.

 

[Injury]

Originally posted by: Corbett
If $11.75 per hour is considered "too much money" then I wouldnt want to work there anyways.

If they were making $11.75 for an unskilled retail position, yeah, they were making too much and Circuit City made an obvious financial decision.

As Dulanic said... they were paying some people upwards of $20/hour... which is more than the average recent college graduate makes. That's absurd.

If the lowest they were paying the people that were let go was $14/hr... and someone else is willing to do the work for $8/hr... that's $20,400/hr difference in 3400 employees... $816,000 for a standard 40 hour work week... and greater than 42 MILLION dollars a year. If they notice a $42million loss in PROFIT after this ordeal, then I guess they'll realize the error of their ways. But I don't see that happening.

 

[imported_Mike]

Needed to be done for the the most part. The only terrible thing was that some of the employees were done in Office Space style. Deleted from the system a week before learning they lost their job. The "glitch" was fixed you could say...

 

[Robor]

As usual the 'pee-ons' pay the price for poor executive management.

I went to CC to pickup the XBox360 HD-DVD drive last year the week before Christmas because CC had a $40 off coupon. It wasn't on the shelf but there was someone nearby who went in the back and got one for me - no problems so far. Then I went to pay... The store was packed and there were 2 of 5 registers open with at least 6 people in each. Register 1 the cashier was gone checking something so I got in line on register 2. Of course the next person also had some sort of problem that stopped the line. I waited 10 minutes (not kidding) and cashier 1 hadn't returned and my line didn't move. The lines were now 10-15 people. I had friends waiting for me so I stepped out of line and set the XBox drive on the counter. When the cashier looked at me I said, 'Your manager needs to be fired'. I didn't see it but my friends told me there were 4-5 other people who got out of line, put their stuff back, and left. I went down the street and paid full price for the same drive. I haven't been back to CC since.

I feel bad for people who lose their job through no fault of their own. It happened to me when my previous employer went belly up and got swallowed by a much larger corporation. If there's any consolation in this a lower paid retail employee will have an easier time finding a similar job than an under-performing executive.

Edit: Saw this was in 'Hot Topics' but just realized this was 4 days old. Sorry for the bump.

 

[RossMAN]

Originally posted by: rh71

Originally posted by: rh71
how much did they make outside of commission ?

still curious