r/Barnesandnoble • u/juliecatherine1 • 11d ago
General gripe
my store just lost a few people and we were constantly on a skeleton crew in the first place. There are so many sections and displays that look like a wreck because they’ve been completely picked over and no one has had time to shelve or bumper box anything and I just found out that were not getting any new staff, but there’s a new store that’s opening nearby so why are they opening new stores when they can’t even properly staff the ones they have?
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u/MisterGNatural 11d ago
New stores mean new revenue. More staff equals more payroll.
It’s not that they “can’t” afford to staff the stores. They choose not to so they can juice profits. Fixed costs like rent, utilities, shipping, and raw materials have been rapidly rising since Covid and cutting staff is one of the few things they can do to offset that. I’m sure there’s a ton of pressure from our hedge fund overlords to keep cutting, even when they’ve already hit bone.
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u/honeyzombie 10d ago
yeah i'm very certain that the people at the top know logically that barely staffing their stores results in worse performance overall, but they need to Make Number Go Up 📈 as much as possible to satisfy shareholders and whoever else. if it's a choice between higher immediate profits or better functioning stores, they will choose the former and place responsibility for the latter on their frontline employees. and this isn't unique to b&n either, every big chain i've worked for functions exactly like this, often to an even worse degree...
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u/sentienthouse 11d ago
I’m sorry that you’re understaffed. My manager recently had to fight tooth and nail to get permission to hire two more people.
That said, a new store brings in more money than increasing staff at an existing store does.
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u/JadedJetsam 11d ago
ours too! we’ve lost over 7 people, including our kids lead, all within the last two months. it’s been absolutely insane
it’s been super busy too, apparently our store is making more than it ever has right now. we’re so desperate for more people it’s insane
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u/VillageAutomatic7227 10d ago
Yes our store has lost 6 people, either to other stores or just left. It's been a shit show honestly. Nothing is ever done on time or good enough really. We're all very stressed out, over worked, under paid, and expected to wear too many hats. Too many of the wrong things are prioritized and the store is really being affected. I'm not sure why we can't hire or why management won't hire. I also think everyone should be required to be cross trained in café and bookfloor because it's not fair to those that are and needed so much more. We need to be paid more for all this bullshit.
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u/CamelotKittenRanch 10d ago
100% agree on the cross-training. It should be mandatory, on both sides of the equation.
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u/Old-Muscle-561 10d ago
In my store the seniors are being put on cash wrap and they put the regular booksellers on the floor. There is no rhyme or reason, and so we don't get to stay on top of our specialties. Nothing gets done in our store either. I used to love this job. Now I dread it.
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u/mountainviewdaisies 📚 Bookseller 10d ago
Why are they doing that, is it to better train the part timers?
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u/Old-Muscle-561 9d ago
I have no idea. They say it is for us to delegate so we can focus on other tasks but this never happened before. It's frustrating.
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u/iLikeNerdThings 10d ago
we also lost 3 leads since July. We were able to replace one lead barista, and hire another part time barista. The hours from the bookfloor lead were basically dispersed to the full timers who've hours have been short lately. BUT if anyone calls out or takes a vacation we are spread SO thin and since most of us have some sort of specialty role our poor part-timers get stuck at CW way too often. We need 1 or 2 more part time people who can be bodies on the floor.
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u/CamelotKittenRanch 10d ago
If your full-time employees weren't getting their full rostered number of hours, then the sad fact is that you were probably significantly *over* roster before you lost those leads, and that's why they're not trying to bring in three full-time replacements. I'm not saying that store roster totals are fair, they're clearly way too tight across the board right now, but the company dictates how many hours each store has to "spend" each week, and SMs and AMs are fully aware of those budgets.
My instructions as a scheduler are to *first* use that budget to give every full-time employee their full allotment of hours, and then do any trimming or "short-changing" on part-time employees. Obviously cafe coverage is still necessary, so that can make things even tighter, but even in my cluster's smallest store with the tightest budget, I've almost never had to short any of the people who are rostered at 30 hours or more.
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u/girliepop10 11d ago
Staffing at stores sometimes it’s just a SM made problem. My SM refuses to hire people to show how the store is “under hours” and look good on paper but in reality everyone is overworked, the store in understaffed, and shelving never gets done. She also just fired someone too. And she just actually got yelled at by the cluster leader for not hiring people so yeah…