Thread regarding Lowe's Cos. layoffs

"e-commerce is a huge part of this"

Every time I hear something like this, I want to scream. E-commerce has next to nothing to do with this.

Amazon.com sells about $250 billion worth of stuff each year. That's compared to Walmart selling over $500 billion. And that's just Walmart, there's also Target, Macy's, etc.

But wait... Only 40% of those Amazon sales are actually from Amazon. About 60% are from third party sellers. And, a lot of those third party sellers are mom-and-pop operations, who buy stuff to resell by the trunkload from Walmart, Target, etc. when there are good sales on the items.

E-commerce is just an excuse. I am really hard-pressed to think of ANYTHING I would buy from Amazon instead of buying it from Lowes, Home Depot, or Tractor Supply Company.

What's really driving all this is sociopathic executives in the service of sociopathic Wall Street investors who insist that anything but non-stop bottom-line profit growth is unacceptable and grounds for termination. In search of this endless growth, brick-and-mortar retail over-expanded and saturated the markets. When the "expand by building new stores and buying your competitors" strategy ran out of gas, they had to come up with a new strategy, and that is relentless reduction of costs in order to boost profit.

This is not going to stop until corporate American stops weeping about the E-commerce excuse, and tells Wall Street to flip off and enjoy their dividends while management looks after the long-term health of the enterprise instead of non-stop growth (which is mathematically impossible after a certain point).

Wal-Mart associates are unapproachable zombies, they are dead inside when they punch in. Does that scum-bag Ellison wish this on every Lowe's associate? And lets not forget the poor customer who has to deal with this freakin nightmare.

that's exactly the point...we are not better and have zero intentions on being better. Being better costs precious money, Being better requires thinking differently at times than the other guy. Being better is the ONLY way that a #2 or #3 or # 15 can take away market share from the top dog. The only thing that keeps us semi-relevant is that HD s—s almost as much as we do. If they had innovative thinkers running the show there they would crush us to the point that we would become a regional company. But it does not matter much anymore. The pieces are being placed to insure either long term failure or a take-over. In one of Marvin's town halls he answered a question about being too much like HD and his reply was along the lines of seeing what the gold standard companies in retail do and learning from that. All that is fine but when he listed some of these bastions of retail he mentions Costco, Walmart and Home Depot among a few others. Now Costco was a good pick but the others are all terrible companies , successful yes but not great in any other meteric. So seeing as these are our gold standards how can we be the least surprised at what is happening.

This was my day today -a typical day.

6 AM. No lumber cashier scheduled. AT ALL! This is common place, and not a single manager even has the decency to come tell me, or ask for coverage. Its expected! Getting money in the drawers by 6 am is rare. Its most times past 6 when a disgruntled head cashier stumbles down. Funny thing too is, the pro loader leaves the doors open because hes back pack blowing the canopy and customers are walking in and out, many times before 6 am, and many times with no cash in drawers.

So now we have cash, and only one pro specialist is scheduled so he now is cashier, and by himself. Lumber associates are all PT, there is not a single FT lumber employee in our store, and we are a 50 million dollar store. Lumber associates NEVER are scheduled before 8 am. The last 3 8 am employees on the schedule called out, or were blatant "no calls - no shows". They have been doing this for months. So a typical day in my store has maybe 1 lumber associate if we are lucky.

My 1st customer today was sold a pallet of concrete with pallet charge and it took a manager 20 minutes to come unlock the lumber roll door to allow the forklift out. Then another 15 minutes for the pro loader to find another associate to spot him. Imagine being this Pro customer? If I were him, it would have been my last day ever shopping here! Thats embarrassing!!!
And while this is typical, and been going on for 6 months every day, Turtle-man Marvin keeps spewing "serve pro customers" & give "exceptional customer service".

At 8 am they sent a cashier to lumber with no lumber experience. We all know how that goes. Using the book, looking up items, etc. She was backed up instantly and all day so the Pro guy had to stay on the other reg to assist.

Meanwhile, the paint and Millwork buttons were going off for a long time. Timed out even because there is NO ONE on the floor!

Everyone in corporate has been notified countless times about not having a lumber dept, staff, and customer CCIC's have been flooding in for a year. No one cares. All our customers openly say when we say, "havent seen you in a while", that they have been going to Home Depot and only stop here when utterly have to.

I could go on and on, but whats the point. We all know the store level situation and so does Marvin and his clown posse. There is no staff, customers arent being serviced, and its impossible given the resources to even hep them. Its fruitless to even try any longer, for all these reasons.

If I have to rocket a piss, it takes me 1 hr because walking from register to bathroom, then back, Im stopped by every customer in the store who are yelling for help. One after another, constantly, daily.

This business model is broken, and doesnt work, and cannot work. The business culture is one of racism, lies, and unethical actions. BRG? Really? Talk about racists!

The best thing anyone can do is, let it all fail. Do as little as possible, and let it all crash. Why anyone would bust themselves for corporate empty suits who have proven dont care for customers or its employees is absurd. I keep busy all day. I have to because theres no staff. So I simply help one at a time. But I take my breaks now (never did before), full lunch no matter how busy or who needs help (I would work thru lunch before when I had big sales to do), never go over 39 hours (management enforces this), and thats it.

We have NO support at all from corporate, or management. Until I get reinforcements, they can kiss my arse.

Lowe’s never takes corrective action against employees that are lazy and won’t do work. We have a guy at my store that just walks around talking to customers, petting dogs, calling babies cute, and telling stories. He won’t touch freight at all, won’t put it up, out, or down stock. Somehow he is maxed in position.

We have customers calling the store on their cell phones for help in the aisles, other customers just stand in the aisle and yell for help and still other go to the other end of the store to find someone all the while managers hide out in offices.

Our department supervisors missed the memo where they are also department coverage. I came in today to find trash in the can and returns all over the department desk and in several shopping carts. I was off yesterday and it looks like no one worked. Checked the schedule and my dept supervisor closed last night.

Welcome to Lowe’s, this is our new normal now.

lowes and depot continue to spout customers just want stocked shelves......ace hardware, the hardware store they ignore, did their own market research and found that the vast majority of customers want help from knowable employees. ceo's like marvin are trying to force the self-fullfilling prophecy. as they gut their stores and lay off knowable employees making a decent living and replace those with part time id–ts.....the customer reject them and tries to figure it out for themselves. the customer doesnt just want stock shelves...but when thats all thats being provided...you kind of get use to having to be completely self sufficient when you go into the store.

afterall isnt this what self checkout is all about....decreasing cost for the corporation of entry level cashier positions and forcing the customer to actually be the employee while their items are paid for. the next step is being carried out now every time i pull out my phone in the aisle, find the items, watch a youtube video on how to install them and then go to the self checkout and pay for it. you become nothing more than an unpaid employee and the corporation pockets more money.

and to the guy who replied before me — this is why corporations fail. lack of trust in the store manager. eliminating positions and not under-performing people will never equate to success.

I (Tan vested FSA of 12 years, out-sourced, summarily dismissed with no notice) would routinely be on the floor doing tasks and selling doors at the same time. Millwork Associates would be scheduled so haphazardly that many days Millwork would have zero coverage from 6:00am-1:00pm. I'm confident in my skills as a carpenter so walking a customer through choosing a door and installing it is easy for me. Now getting the door down from top-stock was a snap because I was trained and certified to use the big blue power-stocker. Customer thanks me and job well done. I answered Code-50s every morning while gloved-up and scrubbing toilets because I didn't want the poor cashiers looking foolish every single morning. Marvelous Marvin Ellison is a liar, thief and unethical empty suit. Good associates would do well to start updating their resumes.