All Future Shop stores in Canada Closing

[pylon]

Originally Posted by AcGold

As a fellow member of this crappy rat race I feel bad for all the people that lost their jobs. Guaranteed there were many of them living paycheck to paycheck that are devastated by this.

And I think Future Shop/Best Buy are giant ass hats for keeping it a secret. Especially in Alberta where things are shaky as it is right now. The employees should have been given a fair heads up to get their resumes updated and start making the rounds. Now, there will be a mad rush of them all at once looking for similar jobs. Just more incentive to avoid their stores for me. London Drugs and Amazon is where it's at for electronics anyway.

If anyone knows a FS employee impacted by this, put them in touch with me via PM. I might have an RV sales job for a young, enthusiastic sales guy/gal. And they will certainly make more than what FS pays.

[I-Hate-Hulse]

Originally Posted by Locke

Feroz! That was it! What a guy.

If he's that big a shooter in the world of sales - shouldn't he be selling something a little more big time? Like cars?

Or be a real estate agent?

[pylon]

Originally Posted by I-Hate-Hulse

If he's that big a shooter in the world of sales - shouldn't he be selling something a little more big time? Like cars?

Or be a real estate agent?

LOL, I 've dealt with Feroz too, unfortunately those 2 careers require licensing. I don't think 'parts unknown bro' is allowed as an address on the license applications.

[Kjesse]

So for the bigger stores, doesn't this leave Best Buy alone, with Staples, Visions and Memory Express competitors but each in different ways? Memory Express used to small but they now have more TV's in their NW store than one sees in Visions.

[darklord700]

http://calgaryherald.com/business/co...1500-jobs-lost

Only the Shawnessy and Beacon Hill store will convert to BB. The rest of Calgary Futureshop will be closed for good.

[cupraisedn89]

Originally Posted by hah

Feroz works at Staples on Macleod Trail across from Chinook as of a few weeks back. Very helpful salesman.

Haha ole Feroz, he had my brother and I in his lil"black book" he used to always take us to the computer and say " look brother, retail price I give you, look!!!" Dropped a lot of dough on him in my high school days lol

[Slava]

Originally Posted by pylon

And I think Future Shop/Best Buy are giant ass hats for keeping it a secret. Especially in Alberta where things are shaky as it is right now. The employees should have been given a fair heads up to get their resumes updated and start making the rounds. Now, there will be a mad rush of them all at once looking for similar jobs. Just more incentive to avoid their stores for me. London Drugs and Amazon is where it's at for electronics anyway.

If anyone knows a FS employee impacted by this, put them in touch with me via PM. I might have an RV sales job for a young, enthusiastic sales guy/gal. And they will certainly make more than what FS pays.

That's a nice thought, but honestly they can't do that. First of all they're publicly traded (Best Buy is) and second in that kind of industry you open yourself up to all kinds of problems if you tell employees they're out of a job in a week or two. Some will just not show up, some will steal and give amazing below cost deals to people and because the place is shutting down you would have a hard time sorting it all out. It sucks because I have no doubt that people there are not making millions of dollars and need those jobs, but I think that this is the way it has to be done.

[flamesfan6]

There has to be a balance though, look at target - they announced they are leaving Canada, did they just immediately close down? no they didn't, and the employees still go to work.

This is the SECOND time they have done this, a couple years ago across Canada, right after new years they closed a bunch of Best Buys - how did staff find out about it? They went to work and found a notice on the door saying they lost their job and the store windows were boarded up and security guards outside the building.

[pylon]

Originally Posted by Slava

That's a nice thought, but honestly they can't do that. First of all they're publicly traded (Best Buy is) and second in that kind of industry you open yourself up to all kinds of problems if you tell employees they're out of a job in a week or two. Some will just not show up, some will steal and give amazing below cost deals to people and because the place is shutting down you would have a hard time sorting it all out. It sucks because I have no doubt that people there are not making millions of dollars and need those jobs, but I think that this is the way it has to be done.

I don't buy that in this case.

They were closing a division of a company, not shutting the whole thing down, and could have easily put some Best Buy managers in place for the transition. It could have given some of the FS employees a chance to 'audition' for the Best Buy conversions. If there was potential jobs to be had at Best Buy, there would have been a ton of incentive for enough of these employees to slug it out, and the ones that gave up, could be shown the door then.

It was a bad move by FS/BB.

[Slava]

^ I had a job that ended this same way once. I was in high school and just showed up for work and found out that we were closed after that night and that was it. Other employees stole and basically had a field day. I was too scared and ethical to do things like that, but it definitely took place. I'm not saying that future shop would've seen big screen TVs walk out the door, but there is a "WGAF, I never liked working here and they owe me" kind of attitude that comes to bear when a place closes. I can see why they would just close and pay every their severance.

[Anduril]

Originally Posted by pylon

I don't buy that in this case.

They were closing a division of a company, not shutting the whole thing down, and could have easily put some Best Buy managers in place for the transition. It could have given some of the FS employees a chance to 'audition' for the Best Buy conversions. If there was potential jobs to be had at Best Buy, there would have been a ton of incentive for enough of these employees to slug it out, and the ones that gave up, could be shown the door then.

It was a bad move by FS/BB.

Considering the only difference of the sales people having fundamentally different pay structure versus Bestbuy, that alone is enough to warrant the mass release of sales associates. If they're interested in a higher hourly without commission then they can apply on their on merit. I don't doubt the Bestbuys would be happy to accept similarly trained and experienced employees on whatever basis they need.
Also, whether they gave the employees notice versus showing them the door all at once doesn't change the fact that they're all looking for jobs at the same time. The severance is already compensation for the lack of notice.

In the end the entire move by Bestbuy sucks. I don't really see how else they could have handled it. I don't like what they did but I can understand why they needed to do it.

[Pizza]

Originally Posted by pylon

I don't buy that in this case.

They were closing a division of a company, not shutting the whole thing down, and could have easily put some Best Buy managers in place for the transition. It could have given some of the FS employees a chance to 'audition' for the Best Buy conversions. If there was potential jobs to be had at Best Buy, there would have been a ton of incentive for enough of these employees to slug it out, and the ones that gave up, could be shown the door then.

It was a bad move by FS/BB.

As much as it would be nice for the company to do that, unfortunately being the nice guy would end up hurting them as employees are not sympathetic to the ones they work for

Similar to Salva's example, In my last company I've seen first hand the ugly side of what the employees would do when they were given time to work their last days

it was a 30 person Call Centre dept where many who worked there were in their early to mid 20's. Unfortunately, the company needed to make cuts and the Call Centre was going to be outsourced to a company in the states. On top of the severance, our Company wanted to be nice and gave a "1 month transition" instead of immediately handing the reigns to outsource. The 1 month was intended to allow employees a smooth transition to find other work while getting half days of training by a career transition facilitator

Good intentions but Unfortunately employees didnt see it that way. In that month they started to really slack off work, called in sick frequently. Some were less subtle and just flat out refused to work, despite being paid to. It got so bad that they had to call in people from other departments who previously worked in Call Centre to help out.

They were even "auditioning" for a skeleton Call Centre crew as pernament FTE but most of them knew who the strong candidates were and continued to act as they did

It's an unfortunate lesson for businesses wanting to do the right thing, but in the end, it hurts them more than if they werent nice. I dont blame Futureshop for doing what they did.

[Resolute 14]

Originally Posted by Ahuch

Just two I thought? The first one was attached to some Chinese restaurant with liquidation world around the corner.

Yup. Future Shop actually got driven out of that location because the land owner wanted to rip it down and build new facilities, so they jacked the hell out of the lease. But the company badly misjudged the market when it chose to build back into that area. That entire section of MacLeod is a dead zone for businesses not selling Tim Hortons or gas. Even McDonalds has gone under in that area.

[Tyler]

Futureshop became a great place to try out things in person before I bought them online.

Also, price matching Amazon on everything couldn't possibly have helped.

[CaptainCrunch]

So weird

I just got a new Future Shop credit card, they had recently transitioned to a new finance company. And now its dead. I'm betting they're not happy with that. Here's your new credit card that you can't use anywhere.

Snippy snippy

[browna]

Originally Posted by Ahuch

After that one closed they re-opened one right around there a few years later. I think it was open for a few months or a year and then it closed again

Well, around 1990, Tiger Electronics opened that store attached to Bona Roma, around the corner from Liquidation World. Then after a few years Future Shop (either bought them out or they went under), and it was there for at least a decade and a half until Deerfoot Meadows was built, then the closed it (and now its the Co-Op gas bar).

FS' real estate department was about as efficient as most other parts of that company, for agreeing to anchor that new development a few years back; the place lasted less than 2 years. Only thing different was that it had an expanded musical instrument department.

[Reaper]

It sucks for the short notice but they basically did it so all the former employees wouldn't end up with the headphones of their choice during the shutdown.

[Bunk]

I worked at the Northland one at both the original and newer location, and one in Toronto when I transferred schools, during my undergrad years. Damn, I made a lot of money there selling TVs and stereos, really paid for a lot of my school. That extended warranty

I remember three consecutive Boxing Days where I made over $800.

I was also there right when Best Buy took over. I remember all the corporate propaganda when Best Buy was entering Canada about how evil it was. Then a few weeks later they bought Future Shop and suddenly they were God's gift.

[CaptainCrunch]

I was there after I got finished with the military and college. I was making more money then my friends who had gotten jobs closer to their degrees, but I didn't care, it was easy to make money. Sell products, get over a 5% CSP and you were making great money.

The worst thing that happened to me was when I joined the manager training program. Suddenly I went from working 5 days a week to 6 days a week. I was flying to Edmonton for pointless meetings twice a month, and on top of that, when I was running the floor I wasn't making commission and I was working til midnight doing the closing.

It was a brutal boot camp environment, when you worked there you bought into the morning cheers and the process and saying the word "fantastic" a ton.

Boxing day was a highlight. My last boxing day I made about $2000.00. We bought in these super top secret all in one samsung computers with a 20 mb hdd and a mb of ram, They were beasts in those days. Each store got limited numbers and they were door crashers. They had 100.00 spiff on top of commission. I spent the night before calling my 10 best clients and told them I would meet them in front of the store at midnight and bring them coffee and donuts. And then I stacked them back in my corner of the store. They came right for them and I pumped 10 out the door in 10 minutes.

I was there when they went public and bought a bunch of shares and got my family in on it too. I was there when they went into the States and cockily proclaimed that they were going to kill the big boys with our low prices and excellent policies. I was there 6 months later when they got chased back across the borders clutching their spanked butts and proclaiming that they couldn't be competitive with the buying power and dirty tactics of the huge box movers. But we all saw the writing on the wall. We knew that the big boys were going to chase us back across the border and kill us for daring to infringe on their territory.

I spent 4 years with them, paid off my student loans and my parents for helping me with college. But with the good came the bad, working for that company destroyed every relationship that I was in because FutureShop at the time was jealous of anything that would take your time and focus away from them. I was pretty much an alcoholic because of the performance stress, and working with a lot of people that were more then happy to bury a knife in your back to steal your sales and make you look bad to management.

I'm sure they mellowed out later. I'm grateful in a way because it was the ultimate corporate and sales bootcamp, and I learned how to deal with people.

But you also learned to really resent and hate the customers that came into the store because believe it or not, most people are jerks.

[Hugh Jahrmes]

Already wondering if the Red Deer BB location has picked up extra staff; went in today to grab a wall plug plug wifi extender/window shop a complete Sonos setup, and the place seemed packed with staff that actually wanted to help me.