Thread regarding Lowe's Cos. layoffs

Marvin is a puppet and D.E. Shaw is the puppeteer. Lowe’s. Does. Not . Care. About. Us. Period.

Re post @2ffx+19zuw8nR

I would like to share a story from a long long time ago with one of my former employers. At the time I was engineer working for a large defence contractor and our positions carried a lot of responsibility and stress. If projects weren't delivered on time there could be large financial penalties and if not done to near perfection there could be loss of life. While working there I remember having an interaction with one of the Program Managers and he was asking us if we could work the weekend to try to get us to a major milestone. He said he couldn't do our jobs on his best day but would be right there alongside us and would make sure that the coffee pot was never empty and that we would have food available at all times. He absolutely made good on his word. This same manager also once shared his management philosophy that stuck with me throughout the years. It was this, there are two types of managers: ones that manage by intimidation; and those that manage by facts. That comment has stuck with me over the years. Also his professionalism and the fact he wouldn't ask us to do something that he wasn't willing to do himself and right beside us.

The contrast of that company and my experiences working there could not be farther from what I have seen working at Lowe's. I have been with Lowe's for well over a decade and while I have worked for a few good SMs/ASMs for the most part Lowe's management lacks anything even remotely close to competent management skills. Lowe's is all about manage by intimidation (starting at the top and flowing downward), and little if ANY manage by facts. Do it my way or else, and with little interest in knowing if there is a better, more intelligent or more efficient way of doing things. You have to have a thick skin to survive at Lowe's. One last philosophy I would like to share is as follows. Management by intimidation only works on those that allow themselves to be intimidated. My advice is don't let them intimidate you and you will suddenly see them through an entirely different lens and see them for the pathetic impotent creatures that they are. :)

What this means in my store is more heavy handed micromanaging and more fear and intimidation. Our SM quit in December, no one cared cause he was not well liked. The SM that replaced him is trying to “fix” the store to make us more like his old store. Never mind we did record numbers better than most stores in our district, he has fired 3 ASMs the new ones that have come in are doubling down on fear and intimidation, our new specialty ASM put in 5 write ups his first day in the store. With the record sales last year “the expectation is set” that we comp this year, sales goals, credit, epp, LTR, it’s all being used to threaten people with their jobs until they fall in line with the new ways of doing things or the person quits in frustration. We “are going to make these goals and people will be held accountable if we don’t” so basically if we can’t repeat last year we are all fired.

Welcome to HD 2.0. Lots of HD people flooding into the company at the store mgr and higher levels. It’s all about execution of the HD business model now and either you jump on board with it and support it or you go away. It’s that simple folks. It ain’t getting any easier to work at the store level—in fact, the pressure and effort to take cost out of the business are only going to intensify. You ain’t seen nothing yet.

BFD. Yea, Wall Street was so impressed with our Q4 results that our stock price dropped the day it was announced. So we had a decent year over year comp yet our profit margins are still substantially lower than those of HD. Even with the COVID fueled home improvement craze our comps have been steadily dropping with each passing quarter. Once the pandemic passes, and it eventually will, does anyone really think we will be achieving anything close to the comps of 2020? Wouldn't surprise me if we hit some quarters with negative comps by end of 2021 and into 2022. Enjoy the sugar rush as the real test for LOW will be coming in future quarters. We will see just how well LOW stacks up against HD then.

Aw shucks! Marvin is a "Gawd-Fearin' Good-ol-Boy" who values his employees, as much as he values used toilet paper. Now get back to work, you overpaid slackers. And don't forget to pimp the bonuses and credit apps.

Imagine if us 300000+ employees were valued and instead of a 9 billion dollar stock buyback they spread it equally to all employees, that would be what, like $25,000 each??? Time to unionize and get our fair share.

Man, that dude sold his soul to the devil and got a ltr with an extended warranty.

The first 2 replies are right on, nicely put.

Just remember this phrase WHAT HAVE YOU DONE FOR ME LATELY!

Irony at its finest.: Here we have Marvin bragging about the "greatest earnings in Lowes history" and our store just fired the entire delivery team, and cut all full time hours by about 8%. On top of this,they are starting to resort to management by intimidation and veiled threats in a desperate attempt to achieve ridiculously high sales goals. Add to this the announced 9 BILLION DOLLAR stock buyback and any id–t with half a brain cell can tell corporate cares even less about its employees than ever, no matter how many "god blesses" Marvin bestows on them.