Radio Shack E-Fires 400 Workers 512
KingSkippus writes "You've got mail! ...and no job! The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is reporting that RadioShack has notified 400 workers by e-mail that they are being laid off. The e-mails state, 'The work force reduction notification is currently in progress. Unfortunately your position is one that has been eliminated.' Nothing says thank you for your years of service to our company quite like an e-boot out the door."
Wow... (Score:5, Insightful)
Worse than... (Score:3, Insightful)
Have you (Score:5, Insightful)
I used to want to work there, back when they sold computers and gizmos for hobby electronics instead of being a glorified cell phone store (though I do suppose cell phones are a type of radio, so it is more fitting...)
Re:How the #%$K is this news? (Score:5, Insightful)
Whose idea was this? (Score:3, Insightful)
Severence pay (Score:5, Insightful)
Hey, at least they are taking care of their upper management with up to 36 weeks of severence pay. Otherwise, they might have to actually give up a whole week of vacation in the Bahamas! Who cares about the nameless masses below them. That's why they are nameless masses!
Re:yep (Score:2, Insightful)
I thought about this for a few minutes, and I think I disagree. It must be very clear to everyone involved that these were very significant budget issues, not related to talent or skill. The only depressing part would be admitting that you were dumb enough to work for them in the first place. It seems to me that such a firing would be less painful than a direct "You're too dumb to be employed" conversation, or a "We gave you a chance, and you didn't live up to expectionations" letter.
They got screwed. It sucks. But at least it's nothing personal.
Actually This Is A Good Thing (Score:4, Insightful)
This means that eventually expert systems and other AI based systems will execute all firings in a fair and objective fashion. If you fail to meet your quotas, the "Virtual CEO 9000" will fire you with a nice little trite email. If you meet your quotas, then the "Virtual CEO 9000" may indeed give you a raise. No performance review will ever again be necessary where you have to interview for keeping your own job every year through kissing up to your former human manager, rather the "Virtual CEO 9000" will instead be constantly evaluating your usefulness to the corporation in real-time and compensate you objectively.
Just imagine what this would do for a company like Oracle that has about 10 maybe 11 engineers doing all the real work in the company with about 50,000 managers whose idea of work is schmoozing with other like-minded individuals on a golf course all day long. The "Virtual CEO 9000" could cut out so much bloat that profits would go so through the roof that Larry Ellison could pay down the entire United States national debt of 65 trillion dollars or whatever it happens to be right now.
Seriously, I have not figured out why the board of directors at our largest corporations has not already outsourced or automated away executive management yet, when they happen to be the least efficient and least accountable group of people in your typical corporation these days. The "Virtual CEO 9000" doesn't need stock options to the tune of 400 million dollars like one of Exxon's former CEO's, instead it just needs some electricity to make the kind of decisions that your typical corporate bean counter makes based solely upon some Microsoft Excel spreadsheet calculation where they say "AHHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAA THERE IS THE FAT WE NEED TO CUT. THAT DARNED IT DEPARTMENT IS NOT SELLING ANYTHING AND INSTEAD IS JUST COSTING US A LOT OF MONEY, LET'S FIRE SOME EXPLOYEES AND SLASH THEIR BUDGET!".
Oh wait, I forgot that modern corporations usually have a board of directors that also just happens to be personal friends of the executive management they are supposed to be directing. Nevertheless, my point still stands that being managed by a cold, unfeeling, computer application like the "Virtual CEO 9000" is still better than being managed by the sociopaths that typically run our public companies today.
Re:Sign of the future (Score:4, Insightful)
The second coming/rapture will be by email (Score:1, Insightful)
email is a bad way to fire people. (Score:5, Insightful)
Email isn't reliable either. There's no guarantee that people read their email on a regular basis, and even if they did spam filters can filter out an email like this.
Re: RadioShack e-fires workers (Score:2, Insightful)
An example from the health care scene: I know a child with a respiratory disorder that had to wait for 2 months just to get a bed. After getting the bed, the child survived only for a day. Its really sad how cold we have become in the pursuit for money and power. We have forgotten how peoples lives get affected by our decisions. There are countless people who are such dedicated workers, people who genuinely care about the company they work in, people who suffer silently when their dedication and committment is met with a terse email saying 'Piss off dawg, we don't need you no more'.
Is it any wonder then that stuff gets outsourced to destinations like India? And that more and more workers are coming from America to work in India?
I'm a former shacker and NOT surprised (Score:3, Insightful)
I found this organization to be utterly classless, morally bankrupt, and totally incompetent. The sole exception to this was that INDIVIDUAL store managers and a couple of reginal guys were fantastic sales people and had solid retail skills. The entire corporate profile is designed to mass produce cheap crap and sell it at a huge margin, sucking every ounce of effort and creativity from the few good sales kids and retail level managers who give huge efforts to eek out a poor living.
The times I was in Ft. Worth for one reason or another the level of waste and incompetance was stunning to behold.
-- Please forgive the poor spelling and typos. I'm typing on a small keyboard and have limited editing here.
Re:HP _did not_ fire you by email on Monday. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How the #%$K is this news? (Score:2, Insightful)
In what universe does this 'personal firing' by the 'overworked underpaid manager' benefit anyone? Does Mr Overworked enjoy firing? Does the fired employee benefit from some half-assedly personalized and prolonged epilogue to their membership in the Radio Shack Family?
No, it's all just a total logistical nightmare that's all bullshit anyway. Just fire people in hordes, make sure they can collect their unemployment, write a form-letter-of-recommendation and cut the bullshit down to the absolute, positive minimum.
Re:yep (Score:3, Insightful)
Who ever did the e-firing, didn't do there job. Or at least avoided the hard part of it. If you're going to fire some one. If you're going to tell them they aren't needed anymore. It would have been decent to tell them in person.
Anyone who thinks this is no big deal, was either never fired or didn't like the job they were fired from. You also can't assume the ones being fired don't care, or don't like there job. Everyone deserves to be fired by a person, no matter how much prior notice they were giving. You don't KNOW you are fired, until you are fired.
Those endorsing this problaly want to use it in the future, because they don't have the cojones to fire someone in person.
Don't be so Victorian and naive! (Score:5, Insightful)
If you don't like the word 'union' then pick another, but you need some sort of collective ability to organise and respond when the big guys put the pressure on. They screw around with your workmates, you all stop work and threaten to take the company down if they don't start behaving better. Drastic, sure, but the USA is *proud* of its free market hire em and fire em attitude, you aren't going to get some middle manager to change their way by asking them to remember the unwritten rules of Lord's cricket ground and the British Raj. They are watching over their shoulder as well...
you must be kidding (Score:5, Insightful)
What kind of phantasy world do you live in? Labor rights and relations have come a long way since the 19th centuries; companies didn't use to fire employees by E-mail, they used to work them to death and kill them.
You're confusing a company with a thinking, feeling person. Companies are like big, impersonal machines, and they have always been. Complaining about being fired by E-mail makes just about as much sense as taking the BSOD or a washing machine malfunction as a personal insult. The company doesn't want you anymore, so just move on. If people get fired too often in your opinion, then the solution is to fix the system (by working for more labor rights), not to whine about the form in which you get fired.
What a sociopathic view... (Score:5, Insightful)
Human interactions are not measured just in how many dollars they make for your (or their) bottom line. Sometimes you can take 5 minutes off your busy schedule just, you know, for the sake of making someone's day less shitty. Just because it's the humane thing to do. Someone has just been fired, and it won't kill you to just say a few soothing words and show (or fake) some compassion. Or just show that someone at least remembers their name, or that they worked there. Put a human/humane face on the whole deal, you know.
Yes, being fired is just normal and just part of how the economy works. It's not the end of the world. Etc. But it's still a stressful event in someone's life. It won't kill you to lower someone's stress a little.
It's also an awakening to the cruel reality that, for all the bullshit "we're all a big family" speeches, you're just a nameless disposable cog in the corporate machine. A cog that's served its purpose, produced all the profit that could be made, and now is disposed of when no longer profitable. All the "we're all a big family" idea not only flies out the window, but it turns out that it's never been true anyway. That's not how families work.
And that's not a cheerful thought. Humans aren't robots, and the millions of years of evolution have sorta hard-wired us to be social beings. Our brains are wired for person-to-person relations, not for a nameless-cog-to-faceless-entity existence. That's too why we build father figures in the sky (i.e., religion), or conspiracy theories with a few people responsible for all this or that, or anthropomorphise our computer/boat/gun/whatever. Because that's the kind of thing we're wired for, and the kind of thing we understand: _people_, not faceless machineries.
And the kind of email oozing an "you're one of the nameless drones we're discarding today" tone, like these people received, only serve to amplify that to the maximum impact possible. It's just twisting the knife in the wound. In the ammo arsenal of unpleasant human interactions, this is the dum-dum.
And if you're willing to advocate that just because the humane alternative is "just a total logistical nightmare"... well, as I was saying, you have some serious upper management potential.
Re:you must be kidding (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:yep (Score:4, Insightful)
Not at all. If I'm ever in the position where I need to fire somebody, I would definitely do so in person.
I know this is a huge deal for the people involved, and I'm not excusing Radio Shack's actions; I'm saying that there could have been far, far worse mistakes than the one they made.
I don't see anybody endorsing this course of action; I know I'm not. I just think this is not the worst possible outcome. Employees could have not been given any warning; they could have been fired without a severance package, instead of up to nine months of free pay; or they could have been escorted off the premises by security instead of a manager. Radio Shack's blunder seems mild compared to what others have done.
Re:The real story (Score:2, Insightful)
In essence, store clerks unlucky enough to be assigned to underperforming locations were the first to feel the long knives although I would image there was at least some shuffling to fill in for natural attrition. Same applies to managers I would well assume. That corporate cutting came later would be the expected flow, although sometimes corporate gets the gullitine first.
No surprise then although no one looks forward to job elimination. Unfortunately this is the continuation of a growing trend.
But did not Radio Shack Corporate bring this upon themselves?
Clearly the early mainstay of the business, hobby electronics, was flagging in the classic regard but was increasing in parallel areas. Less descrete components and integrated circuits were being sold but areas such as car stereo parts was ramping up big time for example. Radio Shack failed to indentify and capitalize on the shifting trends opting to become just another consumer electronics retailer and a rather poor one at that.
That the average hobbyist was no longer building around 741 op amps didn't mean the hobbyist was going away, rather, they were simply changing venues. In the Radio Shacks around here you cannot buy speakers, enclosures, crossovers and all the rest. RS used to be a good source for this and now that every kid on the block is spending megadollars to amp out the stereo in their hoopty, where is the neighborhood Radio Shack?
By the same token there is a large market of people looking to Mod their computers. Again, where is Radio Shack? You could build quite a list beyond the two examples I mention, of RS completely missing the boat and it's sad really. RS was not known for top of the line but stuff was readily available and the company enjoyed success due to convenience and accessibility.
As someone else pointed out, Radio Shack is perhaps best known today as a tier two cellphone store but that market is saturated and highly competitive with corrosponding declines in profit margins. The halcyon days of cell phone companies as high margin revenue generators is over for now it's all about volume. Cell phone sales will not save the company and they cannot compete with Walmart, BestBuy, Comp USA and Fry's etc. Least wise not directly but they turned their back on the "do it your self" crowd and that was their market at one time.
So Radio Shack fades into the sunset?
Put it this way. If the company has what it takes to dig themselves out of this hole, they should have had what it takes to not dig such a hole in the first place. They didn't and I doubt it.
Re:Don't be so Victorian and naive! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Wow... (Score:4, Insightful)
Techie 1:- Have you checked the sensors for dust?
Techie 2:- No, but they can't all have got dusty at the same time, surely it must be something they all have in common. Let's check the computer again.
I know I've missed the apparently obvious through a very similar argument.
Re:Have you (Score:3, Insightful)
Surely you have dealt with people before who don't know as much as you, you need to find a way to communicate your problem simply. What do you expect a salesman to know everything in the store, especially one like radio shack with thousands of hobbiest/expert products.
Re:How the #%$K is this news? (Score:5, Insightful)
If I still worked at Radio Shack, why should I give a shit about the company - and stuff like that shows.
This is heartless (Score:3, Insightful)
Here's some irony for ya (Score:4, Insightful)
- Radio Shack Canada no longer exists
- Radio Shack Canada is now "Circuit City: The Source"
- They now carry more electronics components than they have in 5-10 years
At least there is some place local where I can buy SOME components again. I'm happy. Digikey is great, but you just can't run out and grab something you suddenly need when your main supplier is mail order.
I just wish they still carried those little Archer PCBs etched for a single ~14-pin DIP. I used my second-last one last weekend.
Re:Sign of the future (Score:5, Insightful)
Um, it sounds like the company won:
Re:yep (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Worse than... (Score:2, Insightful)
no corperation gives a rats ass about their employees.
this has been true for decades.
Hey, I agree with you buddy... (Score:3, Insightful)
Working for corporations means you
I've been laid off once before, and if I had to choose between an email and having it done in person I'd take the email.
Feeling like you got special, personal treatment being laid off in person is like feeling you got special, personal treatment from the greeter at WalMart. It's meaningless fluff.
Steve
Re:Not surprised (Score:3, Insightful)
One of the largest? Sure. One of the most respected? No way. Why did we call it a Trash-80?
RS was known for selling substandard computers and parts all along... we knew, but accepted it because they were so cheap. Kind of like a Yugo.
Radio Shack has become useless. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:yep (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:yep (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, while getting the axe is tough, I really fail to see what difference it makes in how your told.
Most people at one time or another, I guess, have been laid off/downsized/fired at some point in their career. It is something that is never easy to hear, but, really I don't think it would matter to me if it was by email, phone or in person. Actually, I'd almost think it would be easier to get by email...that way you don't have to sit there feeling weird in front of the person telling you your services are no longer needed.
I sure as hell know it is easier to give bad news of other kinds by phone or email rather than in person.
Re:Lost Verizon contract? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:yep (Score:3, Insightful)
(while I kid I do know someone who was fired over the phone because the DM was a chicken shit. $10-15K in high end camera gear dissapeared overnight).
-nB
Re:I know what my reply would be (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Lost Verizon contract? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:yep (Score:3, Insightful)
While I sympathize with you...I'd have to suggest that you all didn't plan very well for those kids, did you? You should have money put back to fall back on...I call it my "fuck you" money. Why did you not work and save a bit to fall back on before having kids? With proper planning, you could have the money saved to put the wife through school, etc. Why are you living in CA? You could move somewhere else where your income would buy you more...
I'm not trying to be callous, but, people do get themselves into fixes...and they have to deal with it. If you have kids, you need to plan for them, and make sacrifices for them if you have them. Maybe your wife will have to drop out of school for awhile, sad, but, hey, if you'd not had kids till after she was out, you might not be in that fix. There are things you could do...but, you gotta research what's out there, and make the effort.
My comments earlier really were made more in the direction of people being emotionally tied to their jobs....not so much financially tied to their jobs. But, with the kid thing, yep, it is tough....but, people should do planning before having them. I mean, you check your finances and budget before buying a new car don't you? You save for a house don't you? Why should you not do the same thing for kids, those are bare min. 18+ year investments!!! It is like credit card debt...if you get into it without thinking...you gotta do what it takes to make it up and get out of it.
You may indeed have to consider moving to where you can afford more, and indeed your wife may have to drop out of school till you catch up. Tough, but, it can be done. Either way, I'd not ever consider my employment at a company anything more than temporary, you can be let go at the drop of a hat.
Good Luck to you!!!
Re:Have you (Score:2, Insightful)
So, Radio Shack would rather have people who can politely tell you they have no idea what you're talking about and can't help you at all, vs. someone who knows what you're talking about, and has suggestions to solve the problem that you might not even thought of but doesn't say 'sir', slouches, and doesn't look you firmly in the eye?
That explains a lot.
And, no, that's not really Radio Shack's fault. It's society's fault for valuing stupid things, where the appearance of being helpful is more important than actually being fucking helpful.
I hate it when I go into stores, and people ask me if they can help me, and then, when they try, the only response on my part should be 'Well, we've determined that you cannot, in fact, help me, because you have much less knowledge about this than I do, despite you working in a damn store selling the things'.
Seriously, that's excusable when you stop some random employee walking by the door area in Home Depot. Maybe the guy works in paint and is a paint guru, but knows nothing about sizing a door. Fair enough. But Radio Shack is small enough that I could explain the basic concepts behind everything there in a day, explaining that this is an RCA connector and how a typical wireless router is used.
Re:yep (Score:4, Insightful)
When I was laid off by Unisys back in 1992 after working for them for almost five years, it helped cushion the blow to see how hard my manager (who is the one who told me) was taking it all. He was told from above to let three of our four-person programming team go that same day - our side of the Airline Center ended up laying off 20% of the staff all told - and it really shook him up, even though we all knew for months that it was coming.
When I was laid off by Northwest Airlines in January 2002 after eight years, hearing the news from my director also helped, since he was obviously not happy that the layoff was occurring, and again that helped a little to cushion the blow (and I needed it that time, since that was a layoff I *didn't* see coming since I'd survived the mass layoffs after September 11th. We thought they were done).
An e-mail message telling you you've been let go is impersonal as hell. I'd really be angry about something like that. Hearing it in person shows a little bit of class on the part of the organization, at least IMO.
Re:Lost Verizon contract? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:yep (Score:4, Insightful)
Some of us aren't like that. I chose to work for Northwest Airlines, for example, because I had a few years of previous exposure to the airline industry and I wanted to work as a programmer FOR A MAJOR AIRLINE. Period. And while I worked there, I wasn't just a programmer, applications, one each. I was an applications programmer in the heart of their flight operations group. If my code failed, the airline didn't fly. Literally. And it felt good to feel like the stuff I was doing was a critical part of the actual operation.
Northwest was a company I felt very strongly about. I loved working there, and I'm still proud to know that I have something like 100,000 lines of code still running in their WorldFlight production system and handling a large percentage of their ACARS and surface weather traffic, as well as doing various other things. But it hurt me quite a bit personally when I was laid off because I'd invested over a decade of time (between contractor time and employee time) in that system, and I was really proud to be part of that particular group.
It hurt to leave, but I'm glad I was there. I do like where I am now, and I'm proud of what I do, but it's not the same.
I want to create software that actually MEANS something. I like working on projects that will have a real impact on some aspect of the company, and I sometimes put a lot of time and emotional energy into the designs I create.
Coding is a means to an end, certainly, but for me it's also an end in itself. The problem solving and design aspects are satisfying IN THEMSELVES for me, and I'm actually quite proud of some of the things that I've been able to accomplish so far in my short 18-year career as a programmer.
When I was at NWA, I would still be working there even if I had won the lottery. Why? Because that was a working and technical environment that I very much enjoyed being a part of, and solving problems in that context was a fun activity in its own right. I *WANTED* to go to work every day.
I believe that programming is art at a certain level, and I believe there is nothing wrong with an artist feeling some form of emotion over the works he creates.
If you don't get the kind of satisfaction that I do after coming up with a particularly elegant fix for a problem or a particularly efficient design, then I feel sorry for you because I think you are missing out on one of the really neat things about being a programmer. Our profession is to weave webs of logic and structure out of nothing! I think the whole virtual world of computing is an amazing thing, even magical in a way.
I agree that your job should not be you, but I don't have a problem with people who are willing to put some of their heart and soul into their work. It's one of the things which differentiates good software from great software, I think. For some people, passion is important. I was just going through the motions here, I'd be ready to find a different career. Instead, I'm doing what I love: writing software. I hope I'm able to do it for another 18 years, and hopefully until I retire...Re:Worse than... (Score:2, Insightful)
I got into a discussion last week with some friends at a bar, basically saying that corporations are just another flavor of a feudalistic system of government. Of course they nodded, but they didn't understand my point: we went to war with the British to get rid of feudalistic control over the American colonies, and yet we didn't think that a feudalistic system in the workplace was going to be a problem. Well, it is.
Corporations now own politicians. Some corporations make more money than entire countries. These corporations have no checks or balances; if a nation's government doesn't like something the corporation is doing, they can try to bring them to justice, but with corrupt politicians and the money the corporations hold, they can either buy themselves out of trouble, or simply move their operation to another country.
What we really need is a competing system of workplace governance that is democratically operated. These exist now in some parts of the world, such as the Moondragon Cooperative Corporation in Spain. These 'corporations' are owned and operated by their workers, with management and executives being voted into office by those workers.
If you believe in democracy, then you should be against the feudalistic system that corporations embrace, just as you would be against a feudalistic form of government in Iraq or Sudan.
Yeppers. (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm right with you here.
Radio Shack used to be a place where the hobbyist/student/geek-in-training could go to get stuff that no other local retailer offered. Back in school (70's) the campus store got a ton of business from the EE's and even from us students in the Art and Communications schools building small audio/video projects.
Now my local store is trying to be Best Buy but with 1/20th the floor space, 1/20th the selection and prices that are 15% higher. Did not some MBA over at the Shack's Ft. Worth headquarters have the temerity to point this out to the PHB's?
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Although golf was originally restricted to wealthy, overweight Protestants, today it's open to anybody who owns hideous clothing.
--Dave Barry