I work at another Company full-time where management makes decisions that actually improve customer service and employee moral as they are connected.

First, the ancient computer software they uses at the registers is the number one problem. If anyone has ever seen it, it resembles DOS and is over 15 years old. You need to remember over 200 number codes to navigate the screen. Since training is horrible you never know where to go. If you don't know how to access a certain part of the screen you have to find a supervisor, who usually has a line of questions from other employees with similar issues. Because of the long wait there are usually angry customers taking up the supervisor's time, which only compounds the issue.
If they upgraded the software, it would speed things up, which in turn add to more sales, since over a hundred customer's walk out everyday due to excessive wait.

Second is the poor training. They claim they want to train you, but than they say they are too busy and put you on the floor right away. I cannot think of anyone that has ever been fully training. The only way to learn is by trial and error. Any employees that were there long enough to learn anything were fired because they make too much money. Where I work full-time you can't work until you finished 100% training.

Third, if you make a constructive comment that may make the employee and customer's experience better, you are looked at like a traitor and belittled for thinking outside the box. This culture has to come straight from the top.

Fourth firing all the experienced workers whose only fault was accepting a wage that was fairly offered to them by the company resulted in lower moral and less experienced reps. I've never worked at a place where they would fire someone for making too much. Remember it was Circuit City that offered them that salary in the first place.

All in all, it is management on the Store level and Corporate level that is ruining Circuit City.

the margin on off-brand is often much higher (even if the price is much lower).

that gas station owner probably could have survived if he had a convenience store, raised his in-store prices on popular sellers & dropped his gas prices even with wal-mart (even with the service). people are willing to pay a lot more for convenience.

@RvLeshrac: perhaps when they start teaching sun-tzu to the mbas at the university of chicago school of business instead of the corporate thimblerig, the world will be a better place.

@goller321:

If only... it would save us from the horror of having them simply move to another company.

The real question is WHY DO BOARDS KEEP HIRING THEM?!

I cite, as I always do, the Japanese mantra of 'fire the leaders first.'

Ever wonder how so many Japanese businesses with bad PR disasters manage to survive with few problems? Yeah, it is because they fire the assholes at the top who make the poor decisions - they don't terminate the people who properly carry out their orders, no matter how badly designed those orders were.

Ssu-ma Ch'ien wrote that Sun Tzu said:
"If words of command are not clear and distinct, if orders are not thoroughly understood, the general is to blame. But if his orders ARE clear, and the soldiers nevertheless disobey, then it is the fault of their officers."

The words are no less true now than they were when (and if) they were said two and a half millenia ago, as is the meaning and intent behind them.

The thought that any retailer will ever give the lowest prices and retain and pay the best sales people is poor thinking. Once they get knowledgeable enough they move on or move up.
Consumers get what they asks for: lower prices at the gas pump? Self Service... and full service prices. At one time self service was less, but full service has died ( for the most part).
Did you hear about the guy who ran his own premium price full service store but then Walmart came to town and everyone scurried for the low price no help service, he had to close his store because everyone loved it- but didnt want to pay the higher price. But the only place to work in retail in town was Walmart, so he works there- and since he's paid like a Walmart employee - guess the only place he can afford to buy his groceries? Walmart.

I feel sorry for people that are happy to see to any retailer close. People are going to lose their jobs- and with less competition you will eventually be going to the only place in town when you want to go to a store- and that store can dictate prices, and they will be higher and the service?... self service...and no one will know the difference...just like today's gas stations.

@mac-phisto: Then the electronics store would be just like the grocery store. The ONLY People that sell you anything in a grocery store is usually the folks at the deli and at the meat counter. All they do is cut it up and wrap it for you.

you can't offer the consumer 20 different choices in gps units & expect them to decipher the differences. you also can't expect a minimum wage clerk to care to learn the products enough to make a sale - esp. when they're not trained properly.

what ensues is an environment where one of three things happen: the customer makes the "right" choice w/o the employee's help (in which case the employee has no real worth), the customer makes the "wrong choice", or the customer makes no choice. by right & wrong i mean that the transaction either makes money for the company (right), or costs the company money (wrong...naked loss leader sale, return of item, etc.)

in every one of those cases, there's no real point in paying the employee...they exist outside of the transaction instead of being a catalyst. & so, my advice would be: either pay & train your employees more or eliminate your floorwalkers, reduce your selection & simply employee clerks & stockers.

The hidden costs to our society of Circuit City type thinking are starting to show up more as the Oligarchs squander our human and ecological resources. Not only are we loosing our productive capacities, we are destroying the foundation to rebuild those capacities. Circuit City's downward spiral is the "canary in the coal mine" for a tendency in our country to reward the truly mercenary spirits amongst us.

Proposed Book Title:
Circuit City and the Death of Capitalism
How the Oligarchs are destroying our country and our freedom.

Wish I was articulate enough to write it.

Better the sales, involve deep knowledge of the product. A sales rep that can answer customer's questions and direct customer to the item he'll like, will earn repeated sales. A happy customer will refer his friend to the sales rep, and will come back himself for the latest gadget.

A company can make 2 mistakes : cut on marketing and lay off the best sales reps.

excuse the spelling...i'm a one finger key banger...

i can't say anything bad about our (salisbury md.) store....the help there have been fine and return policy is very liberal......i would hate to see them go umder 'cause i would be forced to us best buy....i avoid best buy like the plague.....at least there is a pretty decent,staples nearby............

YES, Circuit City's decision to fire the knowledgeable staff was bad for the consumer.

These firing decisions were not made to save the company money. The firing decisions were made in order to concentrate wealth and power into fewer and fewer hands.

As others have mentioned shareholder activism is difficult given the filtered and diluted nature of the holdings.

Other countries partially deal with this issue by taxing the wealthy incomes at much higher rates that we do here (up to 55%) and putting that money into social programs like health care, transportation, education, etc. so at least there is a safety net for those who do lose their jobs from the poor decisions. Oh and they spend a 100th of what we do on their military, but I digress.

CompUSA anyone?

I guess I should have studied Gordon Gecko more faithfully.

This is the same thing as mutual fund managers being awarded 10's or 100's of millions of dollars for losing "less" than the other guy.

thought it was pretty ironic

They have almost no debt and too much cash/assets to disappear too soon. Give 'em five or six years and then delight in the empty buildings.

I don't think Circuit City is long for this world anyway.

I guess a check was issued somehow or another

The shareholders do not seem to mind or care anymore. I am not normally for more government intervention, but the GREED is out of control.

That's the problem. Index funds, et. al., have disconnected the stock-holder from these decisions. Aside from HP, what other large-profile companies have made sweeping front office changes due to STOCKHOLDER pressure?

The common stockholder, whose probably holding the stock in his 401k, has no idea what CC pays its president, CEO, etc.

I worked sales for a small independent home theater provider when I was college and it was one of the experiences I had because of the relationships you built with customers- I believe that is what sustained and continues to sustain the business which is still open five years later.

To the issue at hand- having too many execs leave at once can cause a company to implode from destroying investor confidence (though how much lower could it go?) - while it is hard to argue for them to stay perhaps if they are retained and slowly replaced it will save the company from imminent doom.

I don't cheer for corporate destruction as a matter of course, but sometimes the old companies which no longer serve their customers' (and hence their shareholders') interests ought to be left to die.

Steven Rash, 24, said he was one of 11 workers fired at a Circuit City in Asheville, N.C. The store manager broke the news during a meeting at 8:15 a.m. and escorted them out of the store. Rash said he has worked for the retailer for seven years and was one of the most junior members of the affected group.

He said he earned $11.59 an hour and worked from 15 to 20 hours a week. He received four weeks of severance pay. Though he has a full-time job at Bank of America, he said he needs to find part-time work to help pay his student loans."

If you get rid of $11/hr employees... what people are left? Just like Crap Depot, you get the $8/hr people that have ZERO incentive to sell anything or do any real work.
And this after the massive lay off a couple years ago and the removal of their commission. Even those left at the store are going to look at this as a very good reason to just say fudge it and stop doing any real customer service.

Personally, I believe that exec pay should be tied to their employees' pay rates. They can earn up to 100 times the pay for their average employee (including workers in other countries.) It would put a grinding halt to outsourcing and keep exec pay at a more reasonable level.
I stopped in at the old work place (10 years ago old...) to wish a season's greetings to a former boss the other day. He manages a WW Grainger branch and they too have the right attitude... customer service. They may cost more, but they are still growing because the cost difference is made up for by a reduction in redundant activities to fix the screw ups that occur with other suppliers and their reliability.
Home Depot, b contrast, gets almost no contractor business in my and many other areas, because they cannot rely on orders to be filled with any consistency.

Where's the proof that the loss of 3,400 salespersons led to the 2nd quarter loss? More likely, the "axing" of these salespersons helped to lessen the 2nd quarter losses. Don't assume cause and effect.

DON'T WANT!!

Astonishing that upper mgt. would reward themselves for creating such a money losing cess pool. I'm betting none of them have actually been in one of their own stores in the last year-- anybody want some of that action?

Anyone want to take a side-bet that the metrics used to define executive "performance" don't actually relate to selling more stuff?

Usually the people throwing money at executives are other executives. It's incestuous at the top!

Capitalism is great. The free markets always sort these issues out. Let's just make sure we do indeed have a free market (think comcast, etc.)

@bustit22: Tis true. I'm a business now. Just started. I'm trying to stay out of the ground.

@timmus: I'm an investor. Mostly mutual funds. So chances are, I do have some Circuitous City. Yeah, so I'll always have concerns about bad management.

Are you sure you're at the right site?

Turfing experienced and knowledgeable front line sales staff while rewarding upper echelon management is not likely to increase profits. This is especially true because Circuit City's main issues seem to be customer service related.

Also, ever think that the losses might have been BIGGER if they didn't axe those higher-cost salespeople?

There's STILL investors??? The stock trend looks like this [finance.yahoo.com] and there are still investors hanging around and having concerns about RETAINING these same executives?

I wonder if he's considered the possibility that his earnings are imperiled BECAUSE his management team remains intact.