Day Eleven

As we push toward the two week mark  we’ve adjusted to the idea of our jobs being gone, our store dwindling down to a pile of dusty books and battered Paperchase products and even to being completely cut off from the corporation whose name is still on the doors we come in through every day. The big thing affecting us now is an issue of loyalty.

We still haven’t been given a solid close date. Six to Eight weeks, by the end of April at the latest is all we have. We repeat it automatically to the customers who ask (who increasingly are starting to get that no, there is no relocation, there is just us trying to keep checks coming for as long as possible.) But this makes things really really tricky when it comes to job hunting.

I had my first interview Friday afternoon. It went well but when it came to “What’s your availability?” I didn’t know what to say. Of course I want to close out the store. There are problems with people flaking out or otherwise not being reliable and I feel a lot of loyalty to my GM and SM (sales manager). They’re good people and they deserve solid workers to the end so they aren’t in this alone. But I have to be able to prepare for the inevitable too.

In the end I said I’d like to close out the store, hoping that it at least showed the prospective new boss that I have loyalty. Both my GM and the interviewer responded very favorably, saying they’re more than willing to work with me on availability. But I’m sure not everyone is as lucky.

At least two of my coworkers already have new jobs and are either working both to the point where it’s all they’re doing, or have cut down significantly at Borders for the other job. Some of my coworkers already had other jobs. At least one coworker went back to school, overjoyed to be able to transfer to a Borders closer to her, only to have that store end up on the closure list.

We know that we don’t have an end date because it depends on how fast we liquidate the products on the shelves. We also know that the liquidator is going to let prices linger as high as possible for as long as possible (and the customers have picked up on this too, based on their buying behavior). So we’re in limbo which doesn’t help assuage the fear that we’ll show up one day only to be told we won’t be opening that day and we need to go home. (Granted we have a bit to go before then, but the anticipation of a thing is almost always worse than the thing itself.)

And then there are other things. Like employee bitterness. I’m trying not to dwell on the bad. I’m trying not to let my own feelings of anger, loss and betrayal overwhelm me. But there are others out there who weren’t trying back before bankruptcy. It’s easy to find other sites where anger and bitterness is king. It’s easy to let yourself embrace that because it’s easy to find yourself lost in a load of bad business decisions, watching GMs and RMs and corporate jerks wander off to other jobs and wonder “What about me?”

And then it’s easy to say “Well if they won’t treat me like I deserve I’ll profit off them anyway.”

I’m told it’s normal when you work retail, but I can’t help being not happy about Borders’ policies that treat employees like thieves, but then also restrict what we can do on the floor to actually impact our shoplifters. The nervousness about employee theft has risen, and more than once comments have been made that make me feel like I’m being treated as if I’m already guilty. Sadly, because of the actions of a few management has every reason to be paranoid about the rest of us who are playing by the rules.

And it sucks. I’m saying that a lot, but its true. It sucks that people have been hurt. It sucks that grunts have to pay for the slowness and stubbornness and greed of the higher ups. Its sucks that because some people lash out with greed, “justified” by their hurt and a sense of entitlement, our managers have to crack down on all of us and treat even the people who are obviously in the clear as if they aren’t.

It hurts more than my feelings, it tries to tear away at the loyalty that’s kept me both at the job, and from saying “fuck it, at least I’ll get those DVDs I’ve been eying”. It chips at the already strained moral and makes it harder to set foot into the store for each and every one of us.

Most of my co-workers and I used to be lucky enough to have a reason other than “It pays the bills” to come into work. The store closing has been like someone made a list of all the things we liked about our jobs and is systematically eliminating them.