When you land a new job, it’s a time for excitement and devotion. Even if you’re there during your high school years, a new gig could easily turn into something more. However, some locations recruit new workers as they’re sinking. These people learned the hard way how their employers were going under.
#1 Melted Plastic
I used to work at Waldenbooks. On one of my shifts, I remember that one of two registers caught fire. The fire department put it out, but rather than pay to haul it away, the company left it. So, we just had this hulk of melted plastic where it was left at the checkout. The store closed up shop about two weeks later.
#2 Same Old
I worked at Best Buy for a while, got fired and then went to work at Circuit City. I knew it the second I walked into that store. Six months later, we were told it was closing. Best Buy constantly updated fixtures and designs. Everything was bright and new. I imagine that Circuit City looked exactly like it did when it first opened.
#3 Paycheck to Paycheck
I worked at Babies R Us for three years. For part-timers, our hours would fluctuate based on sales from the previous weeks. If we had a bad week, as much as 75% of us would get called off future shifts. It was so random. I could have 10 hours one week and 34 hours the next. It felt like the employees were not the only ones living paycheck to paycheck.
#4 Hollywood Video
I worked in GameCrazy inside a Hollywood video, but our location was actually steadily busy up until the end of its days. Netflix definitely cut into it, but it was not a tech-heavy city, so streaming wasn’t catching on quite yet. My dad was one of the first adopters of Netflix there. This happened in, like, 2009.
#5 Getting Out Early
Former CompUSA employee. The speed at which they started changing the slogan increased, they introduced and rescinded a rewards program inside of six months, and they started pushing bait and switch selling tactics in our monthly store meetings. I handed in my resignation the day before they announced the company closing.
#6 Sorry, We’re Out
I worked in the warehouse at Sears in college until 2007 when I graduated. We were regularly running out of inventory and everything seemed like it had to be ordered on a case-by-case basis. I was the person in the back that loaded the tool boxes, treadmills, snowblowers, etc. into vehicles. When you're running out constantly of your top revenue-generating pieces, something isn't right. Also, they didn't even bother updating inventory. I had a friend there that walked off with a couple of big screens and nobody ever even noticed.
#7 Can’t Afford It
I worked at a Kmart that was owned by Sears. The last year we were open we lost over $400,000 because of theft. I also know we were going to close when we couldn't get merchandise in because the owners couldn't pay the bills for it. Sometimes, half the shelves were empty because we couldn't afford to stock them.
#8 I’ll Write You a Check
I had a friend who once worked for Rodda Paint. You could tell that it was getting pretty bad, especially towards the end. It got to the point where they were on cash-on-delivery for all their wallpaper. The wallpaper department associates were actually paying for deliveries by writing personal checks to the UPS drivers.
#9 Career Change
I worked at Lonestar steakhouse. There's not too many of them left anymore, if any. I worked an open to close shift one night, by myself. I had two tables and made 12 dollars. I started a career elsewhere shortly after that, and six days after I left Lonestar for the new position, the restaurant closed. The employees weren't told either, they showed up and the place was shut down by corporate already.
#10 Weasel Words
I worked for Borders from 2000-2008. When I was laid off, I was working what had originally been three job descriptions. They decided to eliminate that position too and dump all the work on my already overworked boss. They called it “restructuring” and other corporate weasel words, but I could see the ship was sinking. I still miss that place.
#11 Waiting it Out
About a year before they started liquidating Circuit City, they brought back a "semi-commission" structure based on the margin of your sales. When they started to liquidate, people in my store would hide the stuff they wanted and wait for it to drop down to 80-90% reduced. I remember hiding an Onkyo Receiver, a $2000 Polk speaker system, and Optoma HD Projector. They probably retailed for around $4k total. But, I ended up spending some $400 for all three the second to last week before closing. I never came back.
#12 Big Red Light
I worked at Blockbuster, but I quit a few years before they finally bit the dust. Probably we could tell that they were going under when they started chasing Netflix and copying them rather than trying to find a way to actually do something new. Also, when nobody could get a decent manager to stay on, that was a pretty big red light.
#13 Bad Taste
I worked at a Sears Hardware store in high school and on a few breaks when back from college. It was the same kind of experience you'll hear others tell about shuttered stores (obviously not nearly enough customers). When they opened the Home Depot two miles down the road, I knew it was just a matter of time.
Perhaps the weirdest thing was in the breakroom. They had a piece of paper on the wall with a bunch of tombstones bearing the names of rivals who had closed. I don't remember what stores were on the tombstones other than Lowe's being on one. Even at the time (this was the mid-‘90s) I thought that was a little premature and in somewhat bad taste.
#14 Blockbuster Total
I worked at Blockbuster. I was there when they started Blockbuster Total access to compete with Netflix. You would add movies to your account, they mail the DVDs to you. You could return the DVDs to any Blockbuster and as soon as they scanned them in, you’d get the next movies on your list sent out so you didn't have to wait as long for turnaround. Even better, you were able to rent a movie at the Blockbuster for free that you turned it in at.
It was actually a great service, you could get tons of movies and it was really easy to get people interested in signing up for it. Foot traffic in stores increased, the amount of candy and snacks we sold increased, we even had an uptick in paid movie rentals for non-new releases because parents would exchange their movie for a new release and get a couple for the kids as well.
Then they started to change it. They restricted the amount of movies you could exchange each month. Different plans had different restrictions on what movies you could get, how many new releases, etc. It became really difficult to explain to customers because there were so many restrictions in place. After a bit, you couldn't exchange a movie in-store at all. Foot traffic dwindled again and the chain along with it.
#15 Unsustainable Business
I worked at the Discovery Channel store in a mall around 2007. We had huge $30-40k sales days during the holidays. But, come January, some days were less than $500. I read an article that the then-new CEO of Discovery communications was considering ending retail sales. I found a new job shortly thereafter, and about a month later heard from some co-workers that they were shutting down. It was a fun place to work, and they had a few cool products, but most was overpriced garbage, and certainly not a sustainable business.
#16 Out of Date Delivery
I worked for Hastings back in 2013 while they were just starting the spiral. The biggest problem at that time that I could see as a lowly supervisor was that the system for ordering items was about 20 times slower than just going online to Amazon and ordering it. You'd pay two dollars more, but it got to you in three days tops. There was probably more, but that was a big piece that stuck out to me back then.
#17 Clearly Struggling
I used to work for Borders as a cashier. It was a decent job, I got to read books and drink coffee from the cafe in my spare time. Plus, the employee discount was great and I would buy gifts using it all the time. I left a few months before the closing announcement, but it was clear that they were struggling.
#18 Weigh the Options
I got a job at Sears. I figured out they were definitely dying because I was getting a whopping four hours a week, 5:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. on Sunday mornings. It left me plenty of time to find a full-time job, and when I did find a decent job, I just stopped showing up to Sears. My manager called me asking if "I really wanted to give up this job, and that I needed to carefully consider my options." I told them that I weighed my options and my new job gave me 10 times the hours, and nearly twice the pay.
#19 Taking Down Companies
I worked at Qualex (Kodak One Hour Photo), Blockbuster, Steve and Barry's, Caribou (while they still exist, it's only just barely, and they've contracted a lot), Saturn, and a few others that no longer exist. Funnily enough, it was never on the downswing while I was there. Mostly, anyway. I should have companies pay me not to work there.
#20 Best College Job
I remember working at Blockbuster around three or four months before they shut our store down. My co-workers were all zany and had no cares, all the way up to management, when the ship started going down. The interview process was also such a joke because it involved two parts: a group interview and a one-on-one.
The group portion involved us gathered around a bargain bin of movies, and each of us had to pretend to recommend one of the terrible movies in the pile as if a customer would really be going through that garbage. Then in the one-on-one, they basically asked if you were comfortable working any holiday they asked and if you didn't mind cleaning the toilets.
The actual job was a joke. Blockbuster was bought by Dish Network and they assigned one or two of us to come in and try to sell cable services to innocent people who just wanted to rent Lincoln Lawyer. I made one sale and they never even ponied up the commission they promised. Instead, they let me keep a box of movies and games that I had stashed.
Towards the end, literally everything became available for sale: DVD racks, weird promo character cut-outs, and the freezer for ice cream. Eventually, I'd come in, eat a Slim Jim off the counter and drink a brisk iced tea, waiting for the end of my shift. When the store closed, all of us had a bonfire where we burned all of the stuff that got leftover. 10/10 best college job ever.
#21 Minimizing Expenses
I briefly worked at Kmart after my family moved to a new state. It was readily apparent that higher management was just trying to minimize their expenses until the stores were forced to close so they could have the largest post-bankruptcy payday they could muster. It was sad because most of our customers would tell us how much they loved us over places like Walmart. If they had decided to invest in Kmart and actually cared, it could have made a comeback and been a decent competitor.
#22 New System
I worked at a Sears as a temp holiday appliance salesman around the time corporate was closing down its first massive waves of stores. I think the biggest writing on the wall was that they apparently changed their commission structure around the time I got there. Asking the other salesmen who had been there for years, I learned that with the new system, you basically made about 30% less than the compensation system they had prior. Our orientation included someone from corporate going over how amazing Sears was, and how great it was doing. About a year or so later, that store closed. I only really worked there for two months.
#23 Breaking News
Circuit City. All the talk said we might be going under, but management told us not to worry. They also said that it was only the midwestern stores. A week later I found out on the news, a couple of hours before my shift started, that I no longer had a job. They let us work another month to liquidate but had no keys to the building and we had to be escorted in and out.
#24 No Pay Raises
I worked for Kodak in the mid-1990s. Digital photography was emerging, but emulsion photography was already moving to minilabs, away from wholesale mass production. Among workers, most felt we were doomed, but equally most of the older people. Many had been there 20 or more years and seemed to think they'd be okay for “a few more years.” However, our CEO used to come and give speeches about how we had a future as long as we didn’t seek pay rises.
#25 A Total Circus
I worked for a Kmart in the early 2000s when the chain was starting to fall away. This location was a total circus. The store itself was dirty, in an unrenovated and outdated sort of way. I saw a bulletin about how a secret shopper had asked an associate for help and he told her off. Training was also a joke, and it was super easy to swap UPCs so goods could be purchased for other prices, as long as the prices weren’t too high.
By far, the worst area in the store was the warehouse. There was never enough item stock when there was a blue light sale, but other than that, items were incredibly overstocked because Kmart didn’t care. There were huge boxes blocking the warehouse aisles, so I literally had to climb over piles of haphazardly stacked stuff. I quit that job after I decided that I wasn’t going to break my neck for minimum wage.
#26 Two Steps Behind
I was a manager at Borders. When it closed down, I was totally doing the work of what used to be three manager positions. I knew it was over when publishers no longer took orders on credit when I did corporate sales orders for businesses. I loved that job and the people I worked beside. Unfortunately, it was a poorly run company that was always two steps behind its competitors.
#27 Taking Over
I worked at Blockbuster and I honestly thought they had something good going. Back when Netflix was still a DVD-by-mail service, Blockbuster had the perk of being able to rent any DVD online and return in-store. You’d also get another rental for free immediately instead of waiting for the two-way mail cycle. It seemed like the best of both worlds until streaming started taking over.
#28 Empty Spaces
Everyone liked K-Mart over Walmart, but I knew it was over before the announcement when I noticed huge storage tubs on shelving all over the store. Instead of restocking numerous products, they would just consolidate smaller products and fill the large empty spaces with those storage tubs that were for sale. It then came to a point when they didn't even bother with those and it was just empty spaces.
#29 Getting His Job
CompUSA. I was working in business sales and could just tell the company was on shaky ground. I started asking my customers about what was going on and one complained about the low level IT tasks he had to do. I said I could do them. I sent him my resume and 12+ years later, I'm still in IT. I eventually got his job, too.
#30 Top 10 Companies
I worked at Sears’ auto center back when I was in college in 2008. I knew they were done for as soon as I started working there. The writing was on the walls since they were always losing money and the stock was always limited. We also released articles year after year on how they were in the top 10 companies to go out of business. I didn't care, though. It was a steady paycheck for a simple job while I was getting through college.
#31 A Year’s Time
I worked at Hastings. We got a new CEO and at our staff meetings they would play a video from them, once or twice a year. I remember him saying "aggressive marketing" and talking about doubling the number of stores in a year’s time. They even took one of our managers for this special promotional project where a bunch of the best managers from around the country were brought to Texas to open a Hastings in 48 hours. They went belly up six months after that. I had been doing a summer internship so I just got a letter with a check for $5.60 as my company bankruptcy severance.
#32 Here Comes Bain
I worked at KBToys from 1998-2003. It was doomed the moment Bain Capital bought them. When it happened, no one knew who Bain was. But let me tell you, we learned quickly that none of them had a clue as to how to run a business. They literally bought something they had no idea what do with, wasted good money on stupid things and then slashed and burned the moment things got rough.
#33 Last Two Checks
I worked for Waldenbooks for five years. Waldenbooks was owned by Borders and had been systematically closing them over the years. We knew our store was on the chopping block because of our location. When the word finally came, it wasn’t much of a surprise to us. We even got a severance package. What the bad thing was a year later Borders went under and many people went without their last two paychecks. I was thankful to get out when I did.
#34 The Raise is Coming
I worked at Teavana. I didn't think it was over when Starbucks bought us, but it was when Starbucks raised their base minimum wage for all their employees… except Teavana employees. It was super publicized when this happened, but we were blatantly left out, even though all our paperwork said we were employees of Starbucks.
I was an assistant manager at the time and was told by corporate to lie to my employees and tell them that "the raise was coming" even though no raise was ever planned. That's when I knew and started an exit plan. On the bright side, I have a ton of tea in my cabinet that I didn't pay for. So, that's kind of cool.
#35 The Test of Time
I worked at Blockbuster in the early 2000s. When Netflix first came out, we told our district manager how they mail DVDs directly to your door and asked what she thought. She said that she thought it was a joke and wouldn't last the test of time. She also couldn't let go of her Whitesnake groupie look from 1988.
#36 Pay Attention
My friend used to work at Circuit City in high school. Management literally never paid attention to anything. We took hundreds upon hundreds of dollars worth of stuff from there without anyone ever noticing. When they did inventory, my friend said they had $400,000 worth of shrink. $400,000! When he said that they were one of the better stores when it came to shrink, I knew they were doomed. I think they went out of business about three or four years later.
#37 Old Store Model
I worked at a Sears in high school and college. Overall, it was a good job, but it was obvious that the company was too diversified (selling clothes, mattresses, etc.) and was too stuck on an old department store business model with huge locations in tons of suburban malls. Had they scaled back on locations and selection, focused more on in-store appliance and tool sales, and gotten ahead in the online marketplace, they could still be around.
#38 Hourly Associates
Circuit City made a decision to fire every hourly associate who made more than $14 an hour in 2007. They did this to try to stop their loss of money, myself included, who made roughly $16. The blanket decision to fire most of their top earners based on a statistic spelled out the downfall for me. They would have needed to hire at least four or five high school kids to replace the revenue and value that I brought. They spiraled into disaster and then bankruptcy shortly after.
#39 Jumping Ship
Me and my dad worked for an extremely large construction company. It came out that the big wigs had embezzled around 75 million and didn’t lose jobs or were even prosecuted. Even after surviving the economic stuff of 2008, we still had a ton of jobs and employees. But, as soon as the big boss for our town jumped ship, most people followed. I knew as soon as the big guys knew it wouldn’t last because they were cutting jobs instead of making things right.
#40 Lo and Behold
I spent a summer working at Borders. One day, an older gentleman walked in wanting to return a book against some store policy or another. I had to tell him no. He started scolding me about how "this is why Borders is going out of business." I had no idea. I was a teenager and just wanted cheap books as an added bonus to my paycheck. Lo and behold, a few years later…
#41 The Right Stuff
I worked at HHGregg while I was in college for about a month. On my first day, I sold over $4000 worth of electronics and got $15 in commission because I didn't, "sell $4000 of the right stuff" (direct quote from the manager). They restructured the store four times while I was there to "increase profitability." They wouldn't sell new stuff. They didn't sell consoles, games or even furniture. All in all, I've never, ever seen a more mismanaged company. I left because I could see the downfall before any of the idiot managers ever bothered to look and quit. The entire company went under a week later.
#42 Completely Blindsided
I worked at Future Shop. I had no clue what was coming. We were completely blindsided. We went to work at 9:00 a.m. as usual and were told that the store was permanently closed and was becoming a Best Buy. We were also told that we'd have to reapply if we wanted to work there. Yeah right. I haven't stepped foot inside a Best Buy since.
#43 Something They Weren’t
I worked at Radio Shack from 2006 - 2008. The CEO at the time kept making ridiculous business decisions and kept trying to reinvent itself to compete with Best Buy. Instead of staying a hobby store, they tried focusing on cell phones and TVs. Their prices were always much higher than competing stores and they kept pushing accessories.
Over the years, they also kept trying to rebrand their names and employees by changing uniforms, products, and even changing the name to “the Shack.” Honestly, had they consolidated and stayed a parts store; they may have survived. But, at the end of the day, they just tried too hard to be something they weren’t.
#44 Huge Collection
I was a Hollywood video manager. My area supervisor told me to do anything I needed to sign people up for our monthly subscription package. I started signing people up without their knowledge and waiving the fee. It kept his job from being liquidated for a couple of months. We were one of the last to close and one day we got a UPS shipment from other stores. It ended up selling thousands of DVDs for pennies on the dollar. My collection was huge.
#45 New Food Court
I worked at a mall in its final days. The big sign for me was when they did a bunch of remodeling and put in a big new food court but Burger King and Subway were the only available options. At least eight other spaces were left unused. I quit my job there in 2014 and the whole building has since been demolished.
#46 Independent Bookstore
I used to work for a small independent bookstore in my hometown. This was about 20 years ago, just as Amazon was becoming a thing. I would work weekends by myself open to close. I knew the writing was on the wall when I would work an entire Saturday or Sunday without a single customer coming in. They closed up shop a few years after I started working there, unfortunately. It was a really nice place. Bookstores are awesome.
#47 No Answers
I worked at a collection agency that handled Hollywood video accounts after they closed. Hollywood video fraudulently inflated debt for customers after liquidation. People kept calling and asking why they owed hundreds of dollars. I used to get a lot of, "Why would they have let me keep renting?" I had no answers.
#48 Saving the Ship
My family had a restaurant in a small-ish town. I helped in every area except behind the bar. Once my grandmother brought me into the office to teach me bookkeeping, I saw with my own eyes that we had too many expenses and not enough revenue. When I came back from college with new marketing knowledge, I tried to help bring in more customers, but it was too late to save the sinking ship.
#49 Stock Prices
I used to work for Sprint Canada for only a couple of months. It was during a town hall meeting that the site director joked that since the stock price was so low, anyone with $1000 could become a major shareholder with voting shares in the company. It was at that point that I knew that it was time to find a new job.
#50 Abandoning the Niche
I worked at CompUSA and was being encouraged for the management track. But, I quit about six months before they went under. The writing was on the wall when they decided to compete with Best Buy by abandoning their niche. We stopped stocking a robust supply of computer parts and instead shrunk that department and started selling DVDs. It completely alienated all of the loyal "build it yourself" types and pushed them towards fledgling online retailers.
