Yes. We were pushed. We were told we were self sustaining now, and we had to make money to make payroll. We were also told that we had prospective buyers, then, not yet, and "Don't Worry".
You all have to understand, that your DMs are being fed the same lines you are. They can only tell you what they have been told. When we "went dark", they got a conference call, at night, telling them that they no longer had a job. A lot of them had believed everything they were told, so they were totally unprepared for that. But a lot of them stepped up and started calling their Studio Managers to let them know. Some just had to stop because their hearts were broken too. In less than a year I'd had 4 different DMs, so by the time mine got through calling her regulars, she just let the grapevine finish it for her. I found out by a text from a friend who used to work for the company.
They were already in the process of closing 300 studios, who were all being packed up and readied to be shipped out on Friday, when Wednesday night they voted to close effective immediately. They put the pop up on the SAS computer Wednesday night, before some studios had even finished closing, so imagine that, you're still working when you find out.
Their benchmark last year was Easter. They wanted the Easter sales, and 3 days later we went dark.
AI
