@Aminojaku: Well considering that the S.S. Circuit City has been slowly sinking over the last few weeks this cannot come as a surprise to any CC employee...

Jrsy is the dude, playin' the dude, disguised as another dude

@Aminojaku: Not in Colorado, its no warning state, you can come into work and they can fire you on the spot.

midwestkel

@MichelleDatsun: Many did. They now work for the Bush administration.

whootowl

Any one that works at corporate should have been looking for a new job somewhere else a long time ago.

MichelleDatsun

"No memo, no severance (not even the crappy one)" .. Uh.. o_O... Fed Labor Law requires 2 weeks notice or severance equal to 2 weeks pay. So I call "liar" on your so called tipsters.

Aminojaku

i'd like to make jokes, but that really does suck that people are losing their jobs. hopefully the ones that deserve it are the ones getting axed. i'm sure they have a lot of good employees who were unable to perform to their best abilities due to archaic practices, bureaucracy and poor management.

Anonymoose

Time to run up that Circuit City credit card!

jdbaile3

I don't know if I feel better or worse for purchasing my GOW2 @ Circuit City this morning for those 1600 FREE Microsoft Points they were offering. Unfortunate for so many people to lose their jobs like this, but when you get rid of all your quality people for lower paid new hires in an effort to cut costs, your business will suffer.

Nitecrawlah2

"At will" states do not mandate severance. I believe Virgina (CC is headquartered in Richmond) is an at will state.

webwbr

You know guys, most of the people who work at corporate are probably not responsible for the problems that the company is having. So saying they work for the Bush administration or whatever is really just lame.

These people have been handed a great big "fuck you" (if this severance bit is true) from a company that they worked hard to keep afloat during the absolute worst time to be looking for a new job.

Having been laid off, and having seen thousands of hard working people laid off due to corporate accounting fraud (all so a few members of upper management could keep their bonuses) I can tell you it isn't fun at all. At least my employer had the decency to offer severance, and an additional bonus based on years of service.

Lite

Being surprised by this is like being surprised when the mimosa brunch on the Titanic is cancelled after it had a little iceberg problem the day before.

frigg

@newgalactic: You mean you work at Amazon, or started buying your electronics from it.

Kounji

@Lite: Don't forget about all those nice people who actually knew everything about the product that got fired... and possibly rehired a year or two ago.

Kounji

Two of the most crooked, criminal people I've ever known were management at CC. One was a store manager, the other a divisional manager. What that has to do with the company as a whole, I have know idea. But now I always associate CC with these two jokers. I'm sure there a lot of really great people at CC, and I feel really bad for anyone being let-go in this way. But these two individuals (and some others in upper management at CC corporate) really impacted the way I view CC to this very day. I don't feel bad for the company itself. From what I experienced, they were "shady" to the point of almost becoming unethical.

Moved to Amazon and never looked back

newgalactic

While they may have poured all of their energy into the last several months, they certainly didn't do it over the past 10 years which is why they have to resort to doing this. I've lost 2 jobs in the past and they offered me nothing. However I also wasn't surprised they went under because I knew things were wrong in the first place. No one had to tell me, I just knew and was able to start looking months before it happened.

MichelleDatsun

Let me put it this way, if this is true, if this is how CC treats its employees while the upper management that ran the fucking company into the ground still get their paychecks...

Then I simply won't ever set foot in their stores again. It's that simple. This is now 600 people in their corporate offices, plus a few thousand from the 155 stores they're closing, all losing their jobs in November/December. The two worst months to be job hunting.

Lite

@Anonymoose: Sadly, in a layoff, there's zero guarantee that only the poor performers are let go. These are always wildly political affairs. I've had to fire excellent people because other departments demanded that we take a hit as well - even though every one of my folks was higher rated than many others who were retained. The worst day I've ever had as a professional.

dc-united

@jdbaile3:

Not a good idea - Chase runs and owns the CC Card co-brand program. You owe Chase, not CC. And Chase is one of the lone strong banks these days.

tulanejosh

@tulanejosh:

I wasn't serious.

jdbaile3

@Aminojaku: Vermont (where I live) is an "At Will" state. Meaning that you are employed "at the will" of your employer. No warnings, no severance, no unemployment unless you can prove you were wrongly terminated. I think that many states are the same. I have never heard of a federal statute that would prohibit this behavior.

tim d

@midwestkel: Being fired and laid off are two different things..

Jrsy is the dude, playin' the dude, disguised as another dude

@Aminojaku: There's ways around that. Most employers in the last ten years have gone to having new employees sign a statement saying that either party can terminate employment with no prior notice.

EBone

@tim d: It's called the WARN Act. I was wrong about 2 weeks.. it's actually 60 days. There are exceptions that allow for less than 60 days, but it still requires swome notice. As for the person that said there is a difference between being fired and layed off, correct. And this mass firing fits the definition under WARN if they are as described, 600+ from the corporate location.

Aminojaku

@Aminojaku: @tim d: most states give you unemployment if you're terminated

analyticalmind84

Brutal.

andthepickles

[www.inrich.com]

Just updated...

I live in Richmond and in a prior life contracted on business systems dev for CC. Know a good number of folks there who've been effected by this... it's pretty rough.

One of my biggest criticisms of them when I worked there and now is that their business management never seemed to listen to their sales management or IS management groups (they were even located in separate buildings on the campus)... Everyone internally knew that the seasoned store personnel cuts last year were a bad idea and were very vocal about it, yet corporate management just pushed it through.

The same for their legacy POS systems that they'd always maintained in-house even after years of off-the-shelf systems being significantly better with a lower COO.

Maybe Frye's will buy them at liquidation and put 'em back on track under a rebrand/rearchitecture.

Levendis47

@rolfo87: They're selling the crap at the closing stores for even higher prices now.

Lite

so are they having crazy close out sales or are they moving their merch to other stores?

rolfo87

@frigg: Nope, still too soon.

TendoMentis

as an ex-circuit sh*tty employee i am glad to see the execs get the axe after they laid off all the talented sales people in the stores! im glad i left ccity before it took the giant dump on itself.

EasyGT

As a current "technical position" holder in a department known for its flaming canines, (trust me, we techs aren't all full of $hit), I asked way back when about the status of our store. Luckily ours wasn't being closed, simply because we had the highest floor traffic in the district.

Immediately after hearing this, I looked to the left. Then to the right. To that, I responded sardonically, "....really" with a sense of scorn rivaled only by Dr House himself.

This place is going to go tits up. With practices that we have, our store isn't going to stick around much longer.

To give you the dynamics of our bench quickly, I'm known as the good cop and my other tech is the bad cop. Basically I'm no longer to sell or mention any repair services that cost less then 100$. Our diagnostic is 60$ and our "fix it" package which is some sort of faux-vaule runs a minimum of 200$. I die a little on the inside every time I offer one of these. People don't want to spend this kind of money.

I understand businesses need to make money. I also understand that if you're good at something, never do it for free. But bending over the customer and taking them for all they have isn't going to make anything better.

And our Store Manager is less then a month old into the company, and she has noooooo idea how to do anything. She's a nice lady, but drastically inexperienced to be walking into a shitstorm like this.

So...guys and gals at giz...are you hiring by any chance?

DrChaos

@jdbaile3:

The credit card is being run by Chase. You'll need to pay it off even if they close all of their stores.

Samets

@Kounji: I think the whole experience disgusted him so much he actually moved to the Amazon.

He's posting from a public terminal powered by a goat on a treadmill.

m4ximusprim3

@m4ximusprim3: fantastic work

@werk

@Aminojaku: And if the employees signed At Will agreements when they started, they have no recourse.

EBone

My company literally just laid off approximately 10% of our staff (with our layoff a couple months ago, that totals about 30%). I'm glad I made the cut this time. And the last time.

Gann

@m4ximusprim3: I like the cut of your jib.

Hyman Decent

@jdbaile3: You weren't very funny, either.

Hyman Decent

@Aminojaku: Where do you live?

Gibberish

Damn...I just bought a two year protection plan on my Zune there.

Don't make fun of me. I got the Zune for free using the two year plan I had on my Creative Zen.

Oh well, 50 bucks for an 80 gig mp3 player aint bad at all.

Tony Bullard

@Aminojaku: And that WARN Act has no effect in a "Right To Work" state like Florida. You can be fired for no reason and you are not due any severance.

rgspb

@Aminojaku: And that WARN Act has no effect in a "Right To Work" state like Florida.

I'm curious how you think it works where a state law can override a Federal one. Especially under the 14th Amendment.

The only way the WARN act wouldn't apply to a "Right to Work" (read: right to be fired) state is if the statute itself was written not to apply to such states, and I don't see anyplace in the statute with that language.

Like basically every employer I imagine CC is counting on the fired employees to simply be unaware of their rights under the law.

crashfrog

I used to call it Circiut Sh*tty

Sad to see so many losing jobs on the count of it though.

MissRabbit