Commentary: Black Friday Gets Blacker

When I started working in retail over 20 years ago, the earliest time that stores opened the day after Thanksgiving was 6am.  Now it seems that retailers this year want to start as early as 9pm on Thanksgiving night.

Certainly, this is just SO wrong for employees and customers as well.  Why should employees subject themselves to losing family time just because their job wants them to work on Thanksgiving?  It is a little thing called CORPORATE GREED!!

When I worked at Woolworth, I never worked Black Friday because there was enough help so that I didn’t have to.  At Staples, I never had to work that day either until my 8th year with the company when they wanted everyone to work that day.  It would not have been a bad thing except for the fact that part of my agreement of scheduling was that I had Fridays off and I would work all Saturdays and Sundays instead.  This was an agreement that was violated by scheduling me on Black Friday.  To add insult to injury was that by the time I arrived around 1pm on this day, all the customers had all but disappeared for the day.  So here I was along with 2 other cashiers (usually) with absolutely no customers.  What a waste of payroll!!

Certainly, Staples believes in punishing all their employees equally without even taking into consideration that I had already made an agreement with them stating otherwise.  What really got me angry is the fact that usually I had previously taken trips to Connecticut for Thanksgiving dinner to spend the holiday with my uncle and his family.  Unfortunately,  I didn’t spend the holiday with them during my last 4 years which also happened to be the last years of my uncle’s life.  If you think I am bitter, you are so right.  I could not return over 250 miles just to return to work the next day and feel well rested.

So I feel very sorry for the employees who usually travel and will miss out on spending time with family just so that their employer can make tons on money.  It doesn’t matter if many of these employees would be holiday rate, absolutely nothing can bring back family from the dead.  This is certainly something that the greedy executives should consider when scheduling these unreasonable store opening hours.  Apparently, these companies need the money to pay their CEOs top dollar and make those unbelievable bonuses. 

A Friendly Reminder to Everyone

This is just a reminder that name calling and general rudeness will not be accepted at any of my accounts.  This includes MySpace, Twitter, Facebook and through my Gmail or Hotmail accounts.  I feel it is necessary to bring this up because there has been those people who make their desire to make uncalled for comments that are inappropriate. 

If you don’t like what I have to say then don’t read it.  Its that simple.  I write this blog for the world to read to explain my problems/complaints and other issues with Staples.  My purpose is to keep people from having similar things happen to them on their own jobs or even if they are an employee with Staples.  All of the information that I present is 100% TRUE despite much of it being denied in the past by Staples.

I am also open to any comments/questions that anyone may have about anything I write about.  I will give an honest answer to all of them.  Feel free to ask.

I also encourage people to join my Facebook page, even if you are not a Staples employee.  The reason is that the more people who join the more of a presence it will have in a Facebook search.  The link to the page is http://www.facebook.com/pages/Staples-The-Truth-Nobody-Wants-You-to-Know/#!/pages/Staples-The-Truth-Nobody-Wants-You-to-Know/190692867661863

Thank you for your understanding and continued support…

Addendum to Previous Post (Lunches)

I failed to mention that the punches of lunch breaks DID calculate correctly unlike the BREAK punch, so there is a purposely scamming issue with that punch procedure.

One thing that bothers me, however, about both types of punches is that each of them verbally punish an employee if they try to punch more than 5 minutes early or punch in late more than 3 minutes.  Many times I have had timeout issues that happened that I had to wait longer than 3 minutes just to get the opportunity to punch in.

Each time that a punch is missed, punched late, or didn’t take a break it shows up on a report printed out every day by the managers.  Certainly, I was always on that list because as I said I ever used the break punch.  They must really hated seeing my name everyday on that list…oh well!!

Lunch Time - Another Chance to Lose Time!!

Lunch is such a simple concept.  You go to the time clock, punch out and then disappear for a certain period of time…or so it should be…but it really isn’t…

The simplest times were back in the Woolworth days.  If you worked at least 6 hours, you were entitled to a 15 minute break and a ½ hour lunch or no lunch if you didn’t want it.  If you worked 8 hours or more, you were entitled to an hour lunch and two 15 minute breaks during the day.  Most days this worked out perfectly, but there was the occasional snag that kept me from getting both 15 minute breaks, but I looked at it as “no big deal”.

HQ never really mattered for a lunch break because I was never there long enough to even get one.  I believe I got only 1 during the whole 7 weeks I was with the company and it was a ½ hour in length.

Staples, however, had their own rules and then even violated them.  Here is how it all started:

When I was first hired at Staples, the break and lunch procedures were similar to Woolworth’s.  At least that was the way it was supposed to work in concept, but in practice it NEVER worked out that way.  Why?  The reason has more to do with scheduling (another future post) than with my need for a break.  Usually I started my day at 1pm in the afternoon.  The management told me that I should take a break around 3pm to get one in before I went to lunch.  My lunch period was usually scheduled at 4pm because the other day cashier left at 5pm so I had to get it in before they left.  Of course, having a break less than an hour before my lunch not only was stupid but unfair as well.  Nobody else in the store had to do anything that stupid..only me because of the scheduling of help.  So usually I ended up not taking a break before lunch at all.  To make matters worse, depending on the scheduling, I never got a break later in the night either.  Certainly, there was NO fairness in all this, not only that but it wasn’t legal either.  I felt no need to complain because the management didn't want anything to do with the problem nor did they want to concern themselves with it.  Since there was no human resources person in store anymore, my complaint would go nowhere. 

To make matters worse with the company, about 6 years into my employment with the company, Staples made a major change in scheduling.  Employees would now only get a ½ hour lunch break instead of the previous hour break.  The time employees worked during the day was cut back to accommodate this lunch schedule shift.  So now a situation that was bad got worse, a lot worse.  In fact, the store manager at the time Terence told me one night “don’t expect to ever get another night break ever again…I just don’t have the staff to cover it”. 

At this point, I thought this was a HUGE mistake, not only on personal level, but a legal standpoint as well.  I don’t think Terence realized the implications of what he said at all, but given it was just another stupid thing coming out of his mouth, it didn’t surprise me.  It was then I had decided to make a change, one that they would have to accept to be somewhat fair to me.  I told them that I wanted to take a 15 minute break along with my lunch break (total time gone 45 minutes), so that I would get at least one of my breaks.  Terence reluctantly agreed to this and it remained in effect during the remainder of my employment with the company despite being hated by the future management.

Throughout my entire employment with Staples, I figured that I was probably cheated out of about 100 hours of breaks that were entitled to me.  Certainly, nobody ever care that I ever got breaks, but eventually it came down to that management didn’t care whether or when anybody got breaks.

Interview Section:

Why did you not report the unfair treatment of breaks with the Department of Labor?

Certainly, that came across my mind a few times.  I just didn’t really feel that I wanted to make a bad situation worse by reporting the issue and chances were that Staples would have said it was MY choice not to take breaks, not a scheduling problem.

Terence seems like such a jerk.  Don’t you think he regretted saying what he did?

I don’t think Terence ever regretted anything he ever said.  He was just way too stupid to know what he was ever doing.

It seems that when Staples changed from an hour lunch to a half-hour lunch break, they also cut back employees work schedules as well.  Is that true?

Yes, they did.  And not just to compensate for the half-hour, but a complete scaling back of work hours.  I will discuss this in my next post. 

Next Up:  Full-Time or Part-Time:  Scheduling Makes All the Difference (or Does It?)

Store Review: Books-A-Million Opens at Former Borders Location

It has been a little more than 50 days from when Borders shut their doors locally and Books-A-Million (BAM) opened up. Sadly, the wait was NOT worth it. 

First, let me say that this is my first experience with this company.  Maybe I really was expecting a lot from this store, but instead got nothing but disappointment.  Certainly, this store is not elegant from the outside when compared to the ones on their website.  It looks just like the Borders it replaced.  The only difference between this store and the former Borders is the name on the building.  It did get a fresh paintjob to cover up where the lettering of Borders was, but remained the same color otherwise. I think the paintjob was probably the most work done to the entire building. 

The metal-rotting fencing still surrounds the café entrance and still looks as bad as ever did.  When you get to the main entrance, you are greeted by the store hours which ironically is the same hours sign that Borders had. 

When you step inside the store, I got the strange feeling I was in Borders with the only difference of the magazine racks shaken up.  Instead of being lined up vertical to the windows, the magazine racks are lined right up to the windows and for the first time ever, the racks were NEAT and STRAIGHT.  I wonder how long this will last…

As I continued to walk around the store, the children’s section is in the same place as the old store as well as the video and cd sections.  What’s worse is that the racks are exactly the same racks used by Borders. No wonder they stopped selling their fixtures when the store was closing.  To make matters worse, some of the racks still had the tags on them from Borders of the sales price of the racks.  I don’t know if this was an oversight or they intend to sell the racks, but either way it didn’t look good.

It took me a few minutes to finally find an employee working out on the sales floor, but I noticed that some of them were former Borders employees.  Naturally, like as with Borders, they were dressed in street clothes, but now they have to wear a stupid black apron.  Don’t this company know that you only wear aprons when cooking or dealing with tools?  A company misstep I believe.  Ironically, but happily, some of employees are Borders employees.  They should feel right at home.

A couple of other things disturbed me as I walked around the store.  First, the counters that used to hold the customer kiosks around the store were still in place, but empty which made them look like empty tables.  I wonder if they ever plan on using these tables or just leave them as is.  The other thing still left over from Borders was the e-reader download station.  The giant red signs atop of the table was still there with two computers sitting on the table, one for employees and the other possibly for customers. 

A small café with 3 tables was located where the old Borders café was located.  Certainly, they need more seating than what they have especially since Borders always was full. 

As I was walking around, I noticed that many of the prices of the cds and dvds were higher than anything I have ever seen anywhere before.  Apparently their supplier requires such ridiculous prices.  In a future post, I will discuss pricing to a great extent.

One thing that will anger former Borders customers is that they charge $20 a year to get a discount on their products.  Certainly, in these times asking for that amount is steep considering the payoff.  I will be discussing the topic of membership cards as well in length also in a future post.  I didn’t make a purchase in this store because I didn’t want to feel obligated to get one of their cards.

Before I left the store, I went into the bathroom to see if that had any improvements.  Sad to say, there were none.  The same broken soap dispenser on the wall, the same broken toilet paper roll, and the same broken paper towel dispensers greeted me all around.  Interestingly, Borders had the bathrooms shut down the last 3 weeks of being in business, which made me think they were going to remodel the bathrooms.  No luck on that one at all.  Probably the single biggest disappointment in my whole trip to this store.

Overall, after 50 days, it looks like only about 5 minutes of remodeling was done to the store.  It reminds me of when Office Depot moved in where the old Kids-R-Us store used to be located-just another temporary location.  They moved out just after a year..it was obvious they never had any intention lasting any longer than that.  BAM seems to look like this same tragic potential if they don’t improve.

Pluses:

• Finally a local bookstore to replace Borders
• Displays look nice

Minuses:

• Looks exactly like Borders inside
• Fixtures broken in bathroom
• Membership not free
• Prices way too high
• Empty tables and odd fixtures remaining from Borders

Summary:

This is certainly not a good impression for this company entering into the northern part of the country.  If they think that keeping the store to look a lot like Borders, they are mistaken.  Sadly, there is no “WOW” factor in this store, just a lot of “ho-hum, been there, seen that”.  If you loved Borders, you will be right at home here, just stay away from the expensive membership card.

Grade:

• Store layout: B
• Pricing: F
• Helpfulness of Employees: F
• Functionality: F

Final Grade:  F   -- NOT RECOMMENDED

The Way I See It: Barnes & Noble Violates Privacy Policy

In the last couple of weeks, Barnes & Noble (B&N) has been aggressively sending out emails to former customers of Borders.  These emails apparently are aimed at customers who previously had Borders membership cards to encourage them to shop at B&N.  I really would not have a problem with this except that I have NEVER given my email address to B&N.  So, Borders violated their own former Privacy Policy of “not selling, renting, or giving away” customer information.

This leads me into thinking that Borders could never have been trusted with customer personal information.  What other information about me does B&N have?  Credit card numbers…previous purchase information…home address'/phone number?  Where does it end?

What bothers me even worse is that B&N has purchased the “Borders” name and website as well.  Did they decide to get all customer data with the name purchase?  These questions bother me to the point that if B&N REALLY wanted my business, they would be located within 50 miles of where I live.  Ironically, since they are not within a reasonable distance, it is hard to imagine that they wanted customers outside of 25 miles of their nearest store.  How many people will travel over 50 miles regularly just to make a purchase with them.  My last purchase with them was over 3 years ago and I never have belonged to their rip-off membership program.

It seems that since B&N has no real national competition anymore they can do whatever they want even if it means using customers’ information that they should have never acquired.  I say “JUST SAY NO TO B&N”.  They never had my business and they won’t earn it this way.

In a future post, I will discuss these membership/rewards cards at a longer extent and it may shock some at what they REALLY collect and how they use it…

Do You Want a Break? DON’T TOUCH THAT CLOCK!!

Every now and then, everybody could use a break even if it is just to go use the potty.  Sometimes this easier said than done as I will explain.

Way back in the Woolworth days, if you wanted a break all you had to do was just ask.  Normally the manager just had to find someone to cover for you and you were all set.  The manager would just write down the time you left and if the manager was nice gave you some leeway to your time so that 15 minutes could be up to 20 minutes if someone gets stopped along the way.  It was a wonderful way of handling the situation and was basically fool-proof.  No complaints from me on this one.

HQ had a similar approach but the difference was that somebody only had 10 minutes (not really enough time in my book) and that included the time of getting back and forth.  I never really liked their handling of breaks, but I never had to worry about that too often.

Staples, as would be expected, is a totally different animal.  Let me start from the beginning.

Way back when I was hired back in 1996, the Human Resource person (yes, they REALLY HAD Human Resources in the store back then) Nikki told us new hires to NEVER use the BREAK punch on the time clock.  I always wondered why, but just took her word that it was bad.  About 4 years later and long after Nikki and the Human Resources left the store, one of the newly transferred Assistant Managers absolutely INSISTED that the BREAK punch be used on the time clock.  So like I fool, I decided to do it to see what happens.  The following is EXACTLY what happened and the end result.

First I was very careful to make sure that I took EXACTLY 15 minute breaks (the company’s allowable break time), carefully punching in at EXACT TIMES.  Something I noticed that was VERY strange was that when I punched out, the time clock stopped accumulating hours worked.  Yes, you heard that right:  TIME STOPPED!!  This worried me as to why this was happening.  It didn’t restart until I punched back in and then it only started accumulating time after the next minute after punching in.  So, honestly what happened here?  I also kept track of when I punched in at the beginning of the day, my lunch break (more on that in next posting), and when I left for the day.  I fed all this information into an Excel spreadsheet used to keep track of time and the surprise happened when I got my paycheck.

Nikki’s warning had become a reality.  When I received my check, I noticed that it was EXACTLY 20 MINUTES SHORTER of time than I had calculated.  When I approached the Assistant Manager that originally told me to use the BREAK punch and told her of “my check problem”.  She said “If you have a problem with the BREAK punch just don’t use it, just DON’T TELL ANYONE WHAT YOU ARE DOING!!”  My first thought was “HUH?!?”.  Apparently, something was VERY WRONG and a little research got me figuring out the problem.  To make matters worse was when I asked this manager if she would make an adjustment and give me 20 minutes added on to my current check to compensate for the “error”, her answer was a flat-out “NO!”.  So much for EVER using that AGAIN!!  I also let any manager know about my problem with it whenever they wanted me to use it.  When I mentioned it, they backed off quickly like as if I knew the SCAM…YES I SAID SCAM!!

Here is what happens: 

When anybody hits BREAK OUT, the clock stops.at the point of clock out retreating to the minute BEFORE YOU PUNCHED.  When they clock back in the clock takes a minute to set itself to track again.  So effectively, you lose 1 minute punching out and 1 minute punching back in.

Now you may be saying “Larry, It is only 2 minutes what’s the big deal?!?”

Well, first I am not Larry. AND the 2 MINUTES IS A HUGE DEAL ESPECIALLY WHEN YOU MULTIPLY 2 MINUTES TIMES THE NUMBER OF BREAKS PER WEEK!!  For a full-timer, with 2 15 minute breaks a day, 5 days a week, it results in the 20 minutes I lost.  For part-timers, if they worked 5 days a week, its 10 minutes lost a week.  Consider this money that should be IN YOUR POCKET, but instead goes to the company as FREE WORK TIME!!  SLAVE LABOR ANYONE?!?

I am now going to introduce something called a self-interview.  This is where I will interview myself on topics that we have discussed or have been in the news lately of related (or not related) interest.  It will be in a different color and be preceded by the words “Interview Section”.  Enjoy..

Interview Section:

Why do you think that nobody has reported this “SCAM” yet to the Department of Labor?

Fear…fear of becoming a whistleblower to something that should not be happening.  After all, chances are that someone could get fired for reporting them.  They are that kind of company.

Why do you feel this way?

Honestly, I would NOT have been surprised if this wasn’t part of the reason I was fired even though I knew about it for years.  It just took an ass* manager to do it.

Don’t you think anybody else has ever noticed their shortage in their paychecks?

This is the funny thing. Since way back at Woolworth’s, I noticed how many employees NEVER looked at their paystubs.  They just took their check and sometimes threw away the stub without even ripping it up.  They don’t have any idea how many hours they got paid for.  It is sad to realize how many employees are SO stupid and are so ignorant on what they are getting paid or the consequences of their tossing of paystubs. 

So, Staples is praying on the logical stupidity of their employees…

Exactly.  The more stupid employees they have, the happier they are..which is probably why I am no longer with them..They couldn’t take my “intelligence”.  Sadly, this will continue until the company goes out of business or somebody finally has the guts to speak up against this abuse.

They must cheat their employees in other time ways as well don’t they?

Oh yes, and that starts my next posting topic when I discuss lunch..always a yummy topic..well usually…

 

Next Up:  Lunch Time -  Another Chance to Lose Time!!