Why not phone for info?
The problem is that towards the end, things got so bad that they did not even know at times where the district manager was, or even if the person was still employed with the company. At another point the person waiting for the bonus was moved to another store, after the original store closed that they were in, and both the district manager and even the regional manager could not be gotten ahold of. It looked like first the district manager got laid off, and then before notice was given as to who was the new district manager, the regional manager was laid off.
After they left it took a few weeks for them to find anyone that knew them to be able to give a letter of reference, that the original district manager and admin assistant had promised, prior to both of them being laid off.
I mentioned about filing a motion (basically a letter but it would get entered on the docket and require a ruling by the judge) with the court to ask for clarification but so far they have not wanted to do that.
I was shocked at how the chain of command broke down towards the end for a lot of the stores and even at some of the stores. I heard that a few employees were fired for stealing and there were rumors that at some stores the employees just started to loot the place the last week or so. (My take on it is that some employees were upset at not being told anything, including not even having a definite last day at times or the store being closed in advance of the original deadline.)
I think part of the problem was that no one really communicated what to expect and even seemed to act like the company was not going to live up to the commitments it had made to people since it was not telling anyone anything. some employees only found out when their store was closing by the news or looking at the docket for the case. Even at the end, some of the management, including the liquidation company, kept harping on about things like staying in dress code and other things that were meaningless since the store was closing. (what was the company going to do, fire them?) At other times, some employees could not get anyone to help with things, such as the wiping of the computer system when the procedure sent out was not working for a workstation.
I also heard that some items were shipped and then reshipped to stores as stores closed down and the leftovers had to be sent to a still opened store in order to have a chance at selling.
Louis J. Desy Jr.
