Today, Borders laid off 136 employees, which is about 12% of their corporate workforce. Their CEO says “I greatly admire the tenacity and focus that employees at all levels here have shown as we drive to significantly reduce expenses and bring other key financial measures in line.”
Way to be tenacious, guys.
My friend is one of those 136 people. Sigh. Another friend’s job is safe (for now) but the other two people in her group were fired and her boss was demoted.
In other news, Barnes and Noble is building another store in Baltimore.
Is there some special school CEOs or their minions attend to maximize the twattitude of their press releases?
We need a bigger stim package.
Iceland here we come.
Some day it will be the execs that either get cut first or at the very least see some salary reductions before mass layoffs.
Hopefully those unemployed find work quickly. Though recently I went to the Borders across 4th thinking to do my part for retailers and not just feeding the great book addiction through Amazon, and then immediately regretted it. The selection was not good, and a minor but noticeable annoyance: the price tags were all covering the UPC codes and ISBN numbers, making it more difficult to get the books logged into my itrackmine account.
It would be nice if someone would open better bookstores, maybe specialty shops… shouldn’t the bad economy start reducing costs to make such things possible?
If they had actually carried the just-released book I wanted, and would get it in stock within a week and a half of me ordering it from their store, I would buy from them.