I was informed this evening that due to the fear that sales will decline over the next year Management has decided to eliminate the highest payed positions on or before January 15th 2009 in order to assist in building a cash reserve over the winter.
This includes MY job as commissioned sales-clerk. Oh I can stay on after January 15th but I get cut to 15 hours a week at minimum wage.
AAAAAAAAAAARGH.
Well I haven't been here long enough to get attached to the position at least.
I am seriously considering taking a shit in one of the wood-stove displays, one of the glass-door-fronted models, right before I leave.
...naah
Cutting commission sales people is stupid - you pay your own salary. Cutting comissioned sales people was the death knoll for circuit city. Then, they fired their most experienced sales people. That was the shotgun blast to the zombie.
This was my argument, but apparently the 5% I make on epach and every sale is a "serious drain" on "cash reserves" that they "anticiate needing for the coming year."
The store I'm working at is more corporate than the last one, they were a family-operated store, this is a regional chain with five stores.
Frankly I don't care either way, I'm a tradesman so losing a retail job really doesn't phase me. I took the job as a respite from non-stop tradework and to rest, I am dealing with the aftermath of a mental-illness... one that doesn't really affect my job performance... one the company doesn't know about and frankly even if they DID know it wouldn't matter because as I said it doesn't affect my job one whit.
My beef come from the whole "hired so we can fire" vibe I'm getting.
I represent the stove and power equipment section, my counterpart represents appliances and home goods, a third represents general hardware and the last guy is a sort of floater who takes over when one of us is busy making a sale.
Me and my counterpart were hired from the other store that closed. Both of our positions are being eliminated to build cash reserves while the other two positions are being retained because they are hourly and they make minimum wage. They are also the Manager's son and the owner's nephew respectively.
My counterpart speculates we were hired 1) to give the customers from the other store (the one that shut down) a "friendly face" so this store/chain would absorb the customer base and 2) we were hired so local management has someone to "cut" so the family-members/chosen ones aren't.
As I said before this isn't the first time I've gone through this. Factories have hired me in the past just to work through a production backlog then fired me the day after. Its the nature of the economy up here. There really isn't any real "permanent" employment left in New York.
*shrug* I've got plans beyond January 15th so I'm going to continue to show up every day and milk this for every penny I can get.
