Store managers are now dropping like flies, this is BAD!!!
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Willie Nelson once lamented, "Turn out the lights, the party's over." That time has arrived for the formerly family-owned Belk chain, due to a series of misguided and inept attempts at revitalizing a shopping experience that went out with hoop skirts, letter jackets and plastic covers on the setting room sofa.
The new owners originally spent money to make the stores look, well, not better but different. Staffing was more than halved and, as such, associates were less likely to be available to assist shoppers. An eclectic selection of goods were overstocked in an attempt to pander to all possible tastes, yet appealed to few. Things piled up. Aisles emptied. The atmosphere? Less personal, more sterile and austere. Dirty, white, cracked and over-painted walls plastered with misleading signs and nauseating slogans. Oh, the signs. Plenty of signs for everything!
It does look like the past year saw a marked increase in sign printing, much more so than, possibly, the last 30 years of the family-owned era. Signs for sales, walls, prices, bargain toppers, weekend sales, the ever-changing and ever more puzzling clearance schemes.. full color signs for doors, vinyl stickers, display cubes, fabric banners. All those signs now point to one direction– Belk's exit from the market. It is unavoidable.
Closing the stores due to Covid-19 didn't create the situation but, rather, exacerbated an existing problem: the fact that Belk was failing (as many retail businesses are for a myriad of reasons) and is still failing while the owners, the Sycamore Partners, are letting it devolve into chaos and ruin from the bottom up.
An interesting note from the inside, as well, not one of the "higher ups" is making any effort to retain help, good or bad. It is just happening. Store managers are indifferent to very good workers who are leaving due to very bad treatment (not just pay/benefits/hour cuts) but just miserable treatment from the heads of the company on down.
Pay cuts. Benefit cuts. Daily beratings. Reminders to do more with less. Less supplies. Less help. Less air conditioning. And, yes, the lights (Turn out the lights, he sang!) would often be at the lowest setting for as long as possible with no customers in. Try writing prices in red ink on 5,000 microscopic upc tags in near darkness.
Long gone are the days when folks might step into a department store and be greeted with a smile, courtesy and grace. Never again could one expect a well-dressed and product knowledgeable greeter to ask, "Are you being served, Ma'am?" Not at Belk, anyway. You might see the occasional tumbleweed.
The party is, indeed, over. Soon it will be the night we called it a day:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOxy_hy22CA