Circuit City to cut more than 3,500 jobs

MacLeod

Yeah I heard this too. Seems hiring a bunch of 16 year olds at $5/hr didnt work too well for people looking to make $2000-5000 purchases. Not that the Best Buy salesmen are "specialists" by any means, but they do know the basics a lot better than the CC guys.

fatchowmein

PolkThug wrote: »

They recently sent letters to some of the people they fired saying they wanted them back. They must be running CC with a 'magic 8 ball'.

Didn't they fire their CEO and determined the loss of an experienced sales team was kicking their arse? Can't remember. I may be confusing this with Home Depot's firing of their CEO for letting go of older staff with real world experience in their field and replacing them with minimum wage, no experience kids resulting in Lowe's becoming #1.

Anyhow, I think the ship's taken on too much water and we'll see CC go the way of CompUSA. I hate CC's store layout. Makes me feel like a rat in a maze.

venomclan

fatchowmein wrote: »

Didn't they fire their CEO and determined the loss of an experienced sales team was kicking their arse? Can't remember. I may be confusing this with Home Depot's firing of their CEO for letting go of older staff with real world experience in their field and replacing them with minimum wage, no experience kids resulting in Lowe's becoming #1.

Anyhow, I think the ship's taken on too much water and we'll see CC go the way of CompUSA. I hate CC's store layout. Makes me feel like a rat in a maze.

The previous Home Depot CEO helped them on the books, but at the same time pulled the rug out from under them customer service wise. He was canned but walked away with over 200 Million $ in compensation. He is now the CEO of Chrysler...:)

MGPK

As a Canadian who has been in retail for 21 years and is about to become a retailer, I can surely say the landscape has definitely changed and not for the good. This announcement from CC sounds like a death cry to me.

I really don't know how any big box retailer can expect to survive and flourish without having skilled salespeople paid on commission. You pay someone $10/hr and you will get a $10/hr employee (if that). If you retail a good product, have a solid marketing/promotion machine and believe in true customer service you will be inviting skilled salespeople to come work for you and...if you maintain that paradigm and pay a good commission rate while being competitive your business will be successful. It starts with the salesfloor!

The company I have worked for the past 8 years is starting to slide to CC way of thinking. Colleagues of mine and myself have noticed this since day one of the companies IPO. Back when it was a family owned corporation, it was a great company to work for but, now it's operated by number crunching drones who rely on the company database to determine its future instead of its people. I have been paid by performance (commission) and I average $30/hr and I can see the day when they will pay by the hour and when that day comes they definitely won't pay me my average, but they will expect the same level of sales and that won't happen. But before that happens I will be out, I'm done making money for other companies without their appreciation. I figure that if I can average $1,000,000/yr for a company in sales in a small city of 60,000 I can make a good living opening my own store (which opens in July) for myself. These big box stores have no intention it seems to me to instill a "merchant mentality" principle to their staff. They just inundate a sales floor with people and let attrition help select their longer term employees.

venomclan

Good luck MP, it's scary out there.
Venom