Day Thirty Five

Remember when I said that I was primarily sticking it out because I felt loyalty to my coworkers and without them I wouldn’t be going through this? It’s true and days like today really drive that home. Today we were all exhausted, tired of being jerked around by Borders, the liquidator and customers and most of us were finding it hard to keep a fake smile pasted on my face much less find a reason to put a real one on. And it showed.

Of course it’s hard not to be short tempered with customers when yet another person is complaining how their fifty percent off books are still too expensive (when two book are under $11), bringing up a pile of books they “don’t know if they’ll get”, want to know why you don’t have this week’s new releases (at liquidation prices), want to complain because they can’t use the bathroom (or they just wander up to use it anyway) or yell at a manager because we won’t help them move the fixture they bought. And sadly it occasionally spills over to snappiness in dealing with each other. It’s amazing how much of a difference smiling faces and people at your side makes when it comes to dealing with this.

In other news we have this article from PW that I forgot to point out last night. Long story short here’s a run down of the key points:

• Borders will keep it’s TN distribution center open (the closure was announced in February, before Chapter 11 was filed) but close their PA distribution center. (Three hundred+ of those employees are getting severance packages.)
• Borders asked for permission to enact a “retention plan” which includes between $4.7 million and $7.1 million in bonuses to upper level management to keep them from jumping ship during the bankruptcy.
• Plus another $1.2 million to keep “store director level employees”.
• They also admitted 70% of the top 17 employees have been with Borders less than 18 months.
• The company providing the extended warranties to people who purchase the plan to cover their ereaders bought from Borders has reported that Borders hasn’t paid them and are demanding payment or they’ll refuse to honor warranties.
• Borders also petitioned to be allowed to return stock they got before they declared bankruptcy for credit now (even though they probably haven’t paid for the product in the first place, which would essentially make the publishers not get paid for books they sent, then also have to give Borders credit for returning it.)

A commenter on the PW article says:

So Borders is offering severance packages to the distribution center employees? That’s as they should. Guess how much severance they’re paying to the thousands of us who’ve been with them for years and now find ourselves working liquidation sales in closing stores? NOTHING. NO SEVERANCE. Nor are we allowed to transfer to a non-closing store. When our stores close, everyone–from the GM’s on down–will just be booted out with nothing but an insincere “Thank you.”

To which I have to answer, “Wait, you got a thank you?”