[Store Closings] Who here has had to go through one before?

[Mike Taylor]

I've gone through two store closings in the past decade. One was a small sports fan shop, the other was a major toy retailer. What are your memories related to clsoing a store? Happy, sad, funny... it doesn't matter.

[hecubus]

I've been through three myself over the last 30 years. The first was the pharmacy my family owned. We were basically driven out of business due to a welfare reimbursement freeze in Wisconsin at the time.

The second was a small bookstore I worked in shortly after I moved to my current city. It wasn't a bad job at all. One day, after we had been open about six months, I got a call at home from the manager asking me if I could come in to work. When I asked why, she simply said, "We're closing the store." That was it, no advance warning or anything. I just went in and helped pack everything up.

The third was a video store. It was a small, Southeastern Wisconsin chain called Planet Video. I had worked there about a year or so, and we were doing great business, even beating Blockbuster.

One afternoon, we got a call from the corporate office. My manager (who is one of my favorite people I have ever worked for) took the call back in the office. After she was done, I went back to the office to find her crying. When I asked what was wrong, she said she had just been notified that Planet Video has just been sold to BB and we would be closing.

We discovered a bit later that the guys who owned Planet Video had basically done the whole thing on purpose. Apparently, they had owned small chain video stores in a couple other states, and set themselves up as major competition to BB, then, after a couple of years, they would sell their chain to BB for a huge profit, and move on to do the whole thing all over again.

We did have some fun with the closing though. The employees were allowed to buy almost any movie in the store for the used price and, since we found out that the owner of the building we were leasing was responsible for cleaning up the store, we took crowbars, hammers and anything else we could find and completely demolished all the shelves and fixtures, since they told us they were all being thrown away anyway.

The only good thing that came out of that whole thing was that BB had to hire all of our employees at their same job description and pay rate.

[daleduke17]

I have gone through one store closing and it was long and drug out. This particular company had like 65 stores across two states. They started closing stores in phases, with my store being in the last phase (now that, to me is torture :P ). My location got just about everything that the other stores didn't sell through. Also, we ran the shit dirt cheap. The last couple of weeks were the worst. About six aisles (out of 17 or 18) were completely blocked off, bakery was shut down the last week, the meat shelves were empty, produce area didn't have any produce (it was being used as a regular stock area, and the following things were gone from the front end: soda coolers, magazine racks, lottery machines, Western Union terminal and most of the candy merchandisers as well.

I quit a few days before the last day, but still went in to say "goodbye" on the last day the store was open. There was a few people milling about, along with a skeleton crew (most of which were being used up front as that was one of the only areas left operating) of employees. What a drag that was. This store, when I started there, was one of the best stores in town (for a town of 100,000+) and had a pretty loyal following. Now, it was reduced to two or three aisles of miscellaneous junk, maybe 10 employees (it had close to 70 or 75 at its peak when I was there), and two or three checklanes (the rest were cannibalized to keep the rest working, along with no one to use them).

Luckily most of the employees (myself included) found work at several of the other stores in town. Truth be told, I would probably still be at the store had it not closed. I was in line for a possible promotion to key carrier, enjoyed the coworkers and had seniority on about half the store (great for OT - not too bad for less than 3 years there).

[Mike Taylor]

Going into detail about my original post. My first store closure (1999) was at North Pier Festival Market in Chicago, which used to be one of the big tourist stops in that part of the Windy City. I worked for Sports Avenue, a little shop that sold memorabilia for the various Chicago and midwestern sports teams. We grew to be a pretty close knit little group, despite some of the occasional disagreements. At the time that I started, the North Pier building was a hive of activity. We had the BattleTech Center and Cyberia upstairs, three anchor restaurants, a bar, and a fair-sized food court, in addition to the kitschy little trinket shops for tourists. Over time, things slowly dwindled away as the building management company really didn't give a shit about the profitability of the place. They were trying to sell it to a big developer. Eventually, two years after I started, the place was a ghost town (even Starbucks left) and our little store was one of the few places still turning a profit (thank you, Michael Jordan ). What made it especially rough was that my boss was a single mother who had just had her baby. We shipped off what the company wanted to keep to the St Louis store, and marked down the rest. At the end, it was just me and her closing up shop.

During this time, I was also working part-time (and later full-time) for the Chicago FAO Schwarz. If you've ever seen Big or Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, you've seen the New York location. Man, that place was a joy to work for. Kick-ass pay for a sales associate, excellent benefits, and we were all just a bunch of big kids. It's also the job I worked for the longest of any of my employers (five years). Lots of celebrity customers came through. Lots of after hours parties. We had toys that no one else could get and we were often the FIRST retailer to have a hot item.

Sadly, that ride came to an end in January of 2003 due to a lease issue between the old and new owners of FAO. Back in November of 2002, they announced our impending closing to us and promised all of the full-time employees who stayed until the end a hefty severance package (which they did indeed deliver on ). It was sad having to tear the place apart, but at the same time we still had a lot of fun. On our last day of business, actually our last few minutes of business, the entire store staff let two especially bad SC's know what they thought of them, management included. After that, when we were taking down the fixtures and whatnot, we had paid lunchbreaks, including one that expanded to two hours and involved a small amount of drinking. The day after they let us go, we had a huge party at one of our coworkers' houses and got really drunk. Only time I ever had a hangover-- and I won't ever get that blasted again. FAO sputtered on again for a couple of years as a shop inside the Carson Pirie Scott department store, but the then current owners of FAO found themselves going into bankruptcy not once, but TWICE in a year. I hear there's a new FAO under new ownership in the State Street Macy's store now. I doubt it would be the same.

[DerangedHermit]

I haven't worked during a real store closing (with the liquidation and all), but the store I work at did close an old location to move into a bigger location in the shopping center. There wasn't much liquidation or anything since most of the good product was moved to the new store as well as other stores. All that was weird was that the shelves weren't really being stocked in the old store for the last week.

Our company opened another location that was bought from a competitor (as a result of them buying another competitor) and THAT was interesting. Within the span of a week, they closed the old store, renovated it, and reopened it. They did a really good job for only closing for a week.

As an aside, the supermarket was split into two after it closed: a gym that is still operating, and a Steve and Barry's that just closed within the past week or two. Yeah, so they're only using half the space now.

[JLRodgers]

I've worked through two workplace closings. One was a Little Caesars, the other a factory (I worked in the offices).

LC: we were told one day we would be closed a week later (or so).... we weren't allowed to tell anyone - but we told our loyal customers (actually I was offered the business, no strings attached, no money needed [upfront], I just had to change the name -- after seeing the books, doing other things -- I had to decline [sadly I've always wanted a restaurant too ] even though I knew it could work in a few months [the relaunch cost more than I had]) Basically a place's reputation does to the toilet once employees are selling foods with bugs in the flour, 1-2yr old frozen product, and the employees are having sex on the prep tables. When I and a new management went in, we had 4-8x the sales within a few weeks (instead of 5 people working a day and no sales, we'd have 2-3 people working with $200-1500). It was just sad -- especially when the owners had us work the last day and do a special sale that generated close to $5000 a day (that we had recommended prior to get business again) that would've allowed it to stay open.

The factory was.... expected. But as it was I was one of the last to leave. There were only 2 windows-based programmers (the others were AS400 programmers). It was a race to see which programmer got a job at another company first - I lost, so I was at the place til the last day. It got to be soo slow (there's no new product development when a place is closing, no new things bought [so you get behind on the current tools], that we ended up getting paid to talk and browse the internet. Other employees on the floor had their staff reduced by 75% - and they too were standing around talking (let's just say, they only needed enough product for maybe 16 employees to do -- they had a few hundred, so they did one product, took a 15 minute break, another product, break, etc).

[Evil Queen]

Dunno about stores but I was at a restaurant that shut down.

On New Years Day. It was Teh Suck.

[powerboy]

I have been at one store closing. It was actually good for them, because they did not know how to run a business. I was actually going to tell them that I am quitting, but when I walked in. I found out that they were closing. So I just stayed to the very end.

[Bella_Vixen]

I've been through it twice for 2 seperate gas stations.

First time was at my first gas station. It was a surprise only to the day it actually happened. It was an Amoco station, I'd been told that the owner was given a better deal to tear down and rebuild as a BP then to buy the land outright, or something. So, it was going to happen at any given time. I think we were given maybe a week's notice...but now that I give it more thought, I think we were told that when whatever gas was in the tanks ran out, that was it. The manager and a couple of the mechanic boys did inventory and whatall; took about a week to get everything situated, because:

Bossman bought ANOTHER gas station for his chosen few to work at during the rebuilding.

For THAT store, it was again just a matter of picking a day...only a little more abrupt.

The 'Lounge was looking for profitable gas stations in good areas to buy, and they made Bossman an offer he couldn't refuse. I was told that it might happen in July (about 3 months away), but it could also happen tomorrow.

Monday, June 6th. I was working the morning shift , when Bossman told me that that was the last day. Luckily, I had met the DM for the 'Lounge, and he already had me in mind for a couple stores in the area. Anyways, we had been transfering stock to Bossman's new, rebuilt store for some time, so there wasn't much to do. At the end of my (normal) shift, I just had to pack up the candy and chips, and drag all the soda, etc, out of the cooler. Since this was a VERY small store, it took less then an hour. Bossman let me go, and he waited til the gas truck came to pump out whatever gas was left in the tanks.

It was sad for me, because I LOVED that store. I met Fave Ex® there. I could trade with local business people for personal gain (yaaaaaaaaaaaay Glass Doctor!). I could run that store without even trying. The only time Bossman came to the store when I was working was to grab the bank deposit, or to drop off a special order from his other store. It was MY store.

ETA: I had ordering power. If there was something that I thought would sell well, I ordered it. I didn't have to ask permission or anything. I was always right. I remember when Monster first came out. A guy came in, giving out free samples. Bossman was actually there, and I talked him into it. He said I was responsible to see if it actually sold. Two days later, he was getting an account for his other store.


Next day I had my interview at the 'Lounge, and started there on June 13th.

[K245five]

I had to go through a store closing in early 2006. The grocery store I worked for had been in business since the late 1970's, and for two decades did monster business. But, by the time I started working there in 1999, it was starting its downhill slide. The store still did respectable business at that point, but nothing like the old days.

Several things contributed to the store's demise. For one thing, many of the employees there had been working there since the late 70's, early 80's. They were great workers back in the day, but they were all in their 50's or older by that point and really starting to slow down and show their age. A few of them could still keep up with the newer ones though. Most however were getting sick and injured really easy and having to take off frequently. Also, we were a union store, and we had problems there because the older ones got everything due to their seniority. All of the FT, key, and lead positions went to them, as well as the primo vacation time, personal time, etc.. They just couldn't handle the rigors of a FT position like they used to. Nothing personal against the older workers by any means, they were mostly good people personally. Father Time just caught with them and kicked their asses. Given these things, younger workers with potential felt cheated and often quit in frustration.

We also plenty of "screw-up" employees who were protected by the Union who constantly needed babysat and were continually running to the steward to file grievances. One guy in particular literally filed FIFTY(50) grievances during his 16 year tenure there! And there were almost all frivolous in nature!

Furthermore, our store owner up and sold the place out of the blue to a corporation that royally sucked at retailing in 2000, and that, along with the other factors listed above, well the results were inevitable. And the old-timers all thought that the store would never, ever close!

This corporation had been steadily buying up stores in our general metro area for quite awhile, and finally decided to sell off all of them to independent retailers in late 2005. Unfortunately, ours was shut down in early 2006.

We saw the signs pointing in that direction months before hand. They were severing ties with plenty of DSD vendors, placing merchandise across the board 5, 10, and eventually 15% off, not replacing the overnight manager when he quit, etc.. They finally broke the news to us after New Years.

The store had "shrunk" to a fraction of its normal size by the last day. I had opted to take a vacation week the last week because I had no desire to be on the "death watch", as it were. But I still stopped in the last day to say my good-byes. Plenty of Corporate people there from LP and a smattering of Accounting people to ensure that we didn't "go crazy" and destroy and/or steal company property. One LP woman in particular was a real beyatch who refused to let us go beyond the front end when several of us wanted to take one last walk through the place. That's when she made the "go crazy" remark.

Was it sad? Absolutely. But, life can and did go on. BTW, I wished we could've done the thing one poster said where they told several SC's what they REALLY thought of them on the last couple of days. There were PLENTY of people who we would've liked to have said those things to!

[XCashier]

On our last day of business, actually our last few minutes of business, the entire store staff let two especially bad SC's know what they thought of them, management included.

Ooh, do tell! I love a good SC Smackdown Story!

I've never actually gone through a store closing, but a few companies that I worked for where the managers basically bullied me out of my job ended up closing their doors within two years of my leaving. You reap what you sow...

[Kagato]

Personally I have not been through a closure myself, but I came pretty close, I was working as a network administrator at an internet cafe that had pretty shoddy management, they were cutting corners and underpaying workers, not to mention it was found out that the management were skimming money from the takings and not declaring it.

Found out about a week after I had quit that the owners had filed for bankruptcy and the cafe had gone into liquidation.

[Mike Taylor]

Ooh, do tell! I love a good SC Smackdown Story!

I've never actually gone through a store closing, but a few companies that I worked for where the managers basically bullied me out of my job ended up closing their doors within two years of my leaving. You reap what you sow...

I've posted the story before, but it goes something like this:

During the last few weeks of business at FAO, we had these two vultures (ostensibly women) who would come in seemingly every day and pick through the leftovers, trying to bargain down items that were already as much as 90% off! And every day, one of them had this poor baby lashed in the stroller who was SCREAMING at the top of his lungs. They would be there for hours and hours, picking through stuff and trying to haggle only to be repeatedly told NO!

The last day comes, closing time hits, and the vultures are still there (with the very unhappy baby) and they... WILL... NOT... LEAVE!

Kathleen (one of the managers... and a very sweet Irish lady) walked up to them and said, "Look, my employees want to go home. Since this is our last day of business and they are under no obligation to be nice to you, get out!"

We were all lined up on both sides of the aisle and we cheered as the vultures left.

[MadMike]

I never closed a store, but my one friend I worked with at the home improvements store helped close one of our other locations. He told me the following story:

He was using a forklift, and one of the other guys told him to bring it into the back room. My friend thought the doorway was too small for the forklift, but the other guy swore up and down it would fit, and insisted my friend try. Turned out my friend was right. And then the other guy had the nerve to yell at him.