Market Basketcase

Welcome to the Family Feud Retail Edition!

On one side we have Arthur T. Demoulas (ATD), former CEO of grocery store chain Market Basket.

On the other side we have Arthur S. Demoulas (ASD) who terminated his cousin ATD and has taken over the company.

Well, all would be all good if ASD didn’t want to make some major changes to the company.

First off, let me say that up to about six weeks ago, our family would make the 20 mile trip to the Market Basket grocery store in Biddeford Maine. The trip was well worth every time as the savings were significant. Along with the 4% discount that the company offers on most items, their prices were lower than any of the competitors.

The store was always extremely busy and always had about 2/3 of their registers open during the day.

That was until hell broke loose.

About six weeks ago, the employees started picketing the store about how the company was being operated.

They wanted customers to sign their petitions to give to the board of directors.

I was tempted to sign their petition as they were telling me their gripes.

Amongst their gripes was reduction of hours, change of benefits, and pay cuts.

However it was the last thing they said was the deal breaker and that was that the company had intended to close the Biddeford Maine store.

At that point, I walked inside to start my shopping with my family.

So what was wrong that made me not want to sign: at no point has anybody EVER said that the Biddeford Maine store would ever be closed especially since this store was one of the largest and more profitable stores in the chain. It was also the only one in Maine and has only been open for about a year and occupied the former Lowe’s location.

So my thought was this employee was embellishing his gripes by a falsehood, therefore he wanted to make his story seem even more sad.

However, walking through the store, it was obvious with many empty shelves especially in the dairy and produce sections that fresh products were not going to be available. Overall, we spent about 20 minutes in the store getting a few items and waited nearly that long at the one cashier that was open. Our family decided not to return until everything is settled with the company. And of course, shelves restocked again.

Of course, in that time nothing has been settled and at the time of this writing the following things have happened:

· ATD has offered to buy the company but the board has rejected the offer.

· Part time employees have been eliminated in the local stores and full time employees have reduced hours to compensate for the loss of business.

· Rallies at the home office in Massachusetts by both employees and customers have fallen on deaf ears.

· Employees have been told to get back to work or they would be fired.

· Job fairs were set up to hire new replacement employees.

Overall, this is a very troubled company with employees and customers both fighting against ATD and the board of directors. It seems that neither side is giving in and no end is in sight.

Now, you are probably asking yourself, why am I talking about this company on a anti-Staples blog?

The answer is very simple.

During the last 3 years of my existence with Staples, while the management didn’t change, much of how the company was run did.

Most of the effects applied to full-timers like myself were, but also many applied to the part-timers as well. Amongst the changes were (as of 5 years ago):

· Full time hours were cut from 40 hours per week down to 37 ½ per week. (no notice given)

· How vacation time was allocated and accrued despite agreement at time of hire (again no notice given to the change).

· Benefits reduced at slightly higher cost, not including that when I went on COBRA the benefits went up by a percentage greater than 3000% (not a typo). Of course there was warning about this which is why I cancelled.

· Raises during the last 3 years amounted to less than 25 cents total for the entire time. This was when the company was still expanding and managers were still making sizable bonuses while hourly employees got crap.

There is however one major difference between Market Basket employees and Staples employees and that is that Staples employees could not under any circumstances picket or rally at the stores or at the home office. Doing so would lead to immediate termination.

Since neither company has union employees, it appears that Market Basket is heading in the same direction that Staples is heading in. The big difference is that the management at Staples has not changed whereas the management at Market Basket has. Also customers did not rally in support of the losses that Staples employees were getting because the Staples employees never spoke up because they knew if they did they would get terminated.

Unfortunately, for both companies, it is the management that holds the employees hostage. They can either live with it or they can leave at their own free will.

Fortunately, or unfortunately for me, I had the choice made for me.