There really is no point in sugar coating it at this point. Liquidation and watching the place you have worked at for two years--your first job and the place that showed you how to be grown up and proved if you could survive in the real world--be shut down kinda sucks. Don't get me wrong, at the end of the day it is just a minimum wage paying job that when compared to the others around is kind of awful. It was my awful job though and I was pretty good at it. Everyone knew it was coming eventually, the entire corporation I worked at is on the brink of collapse and being drove into the ground. I don't believe many people know what it is like though to be one of the little guys on the inside watching as everything falls apart. So I am going to paint a picture of what it is really like to work at a retail store on death's bed.
One of the first things that happens is the shift in the entire atmosphere of the place for the employees. It no longer becomes that place that you both dreaded going to because it went mundane work and also loved because you enjoyed your coworkers. It becomes a sinking ship that you bought a ticket for and are now being ushered aboard. There is this feeling of uncertainty every second. Will any of these people you have spent years working with be there tomorrow? Will you be there tomorrow? Will there even be a store tomorrow? Of course the managers are trying to keep everyone calm and quiet. They tell everyone to be positive and work their hardest. It just makes it feel even more like you are walking off a cliff though, with someone behind you saying, "Come on. It's not that far of a fall."
The first few days of the public knowing are absolute train wrecks. Suddenly it is as busy as Christmas time, nobody is buying anything though. They are just coming for sales that haven't even started yet. They have heard rumors though. "Everything is half off. They close next week. They're practically giving stuff away." No, nothing is on sale. We don't close for 2 months. Many people get mad when they find this out. I was cussed at more in that first week of the announcement than in those two years just because I had to tell people their fantasy of us throwing them merchandise was not real and that I did not know when the sales would start.
That goes back to the whole uncertainty thing. The fact that nobody knows what exactly is going to happen doesn't help it to go away. Everything is on this need-to-know basis, and I suppose that sounds good to the corporate heads. All it does is lead to rumors though, and rumors lead to more people jumping ship and quitting than the actual news would have.
It's been two weeks now. Half your staff is gone, The customers keep coming, but not buying. They seem to get angrier with every day. Then all of a sudden here comes the cavalry. Magically 50 people get hired in a night. It's a god send! Except no. They aren't trained. They haven't even had orientation. A computer selected them to be hired based on records whose requirements seemed to only be that they hadn't killed someone. They are handed a uniform and thrown out there to "help." Most of the time they end up just getting in the way and wandering around like lost puppies, being paid while doing this of course. Being paid money you were told we didn't have in the budget, hence why there were never any raises. Weird how that works.
The sales hit. You think that since you have a staff of 100+ people, way more than you did on Black Friday, that everything will be OK. It absolutely is not though. Half of the people supposed to come to work don't. The ones who do are the ones pulled off the street who can barely walk in a line let alone stack something in one. The customers are at their fiercest, angered by how things still aren't cheap enough. They try to bargain with you as if you, a minimum wage paid teen who is just one of thousands of gears in a corporate machine are the one setting the prices, and then get mad when you don't. Empathy is kind of dead. Everyone there is just trying to get out.
The schedule becomes less of a set in stone guideline and more of a suggestion. You still might get your off days. You probably won't though. You might have a five-hour shift like you always have and are supposed to. Chances are you will be working a nine-hour one instead. You come in at 5 o'clock like was posted only to find out that that morning someone decided you were coming in at 1 o'clock instead. Now you are late for a decision made less than 12 hours from the one you were told officially.
What I am trying to get at is that working at a place that is closing is not fun.. It's an experience that I don't think many people actually go through, especially in the area I live in that is made of small towns and mom-and-pop stores that seem to be open for eternity. From what I have seen my job disappearing is just an inconvenient blessing to the people in my area. It's just a sale and a rush to get the good stuff before we sell out of it and lock up the doors. There are people behind those doors though and many of them are worried about a lot more than a price drop.