When most of the long timers left I joined the exodus. I was 59 years old at the time, I just turned 65 this year. I went back to school got an associates degree and now I work remotely at home making $4.00 an hour more than what I made at BN because I was capped at BN on salary. The manager at the BN store I worked at made a concerted effort to hire people who were not there for the long haul. If you were young and good looking you were hired and reading was optional. There was a librarian who applied but because she was older and, as the manager put it, dumpy she was not hired. The only thing that made it a decent place to work were the co-workers but when the majority left I did too.
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“My manager double crossed me when she said she didn’t have the hours to bring me back after furlough. She brought back the less competent ones and loaded up their hours.”
That’s the kind of employee they want. They don’t want dedicated ones. Just, disposable ones.
Most don’t but they are figuring it out a lot faster now, the attrition at my store is bad, we can’t keep people more than few months and attendance is poor all around. Overwork, undertrained and unappreciated can’t say I blame them.
I loved it there and then COVID came. My manager double crossed me when she said she didn’t have the hours to bring me back after furlough. She brought back the less competent ones and loaded up their hours. Those of us who were truly part-timers got nothing. But she wanted me to come back during the holidays cause she knew I rang up more than half the sales and always showed up to work. We’ve all moved on to better things. That era is over.
The fools running this company haven't increased the value in a decade. Why they didn't fire all the highest-paid losers like the useless Regional Managers I'll never know.
It all began with The 2018 purge , which was to get the career minded employees out. The IQ of the stores dropped dramatically and customers realized there was no longer anything “special” about BN.
If they don’t want to pay a wage that will attract long time employees they will not transition to having professional booksellers as Daunt says he wants. Bottom line they are owned by private equity and all they care about is increasing the value of the company to sell it off eventually