Price and Context, Part II

After learning the latest on Barnes and Noble, one might imagine that the accountant I mentioned in last week's blog post had somehow taken over the struggling chain:

Fortunately for me, I'm more of an Amazon or Half Price Books guy... (Image via Pixabay.)

... Following the "how to slit your own business throat in one easy lesson" plan, it is laying off head cashiers, digital leads and others in their stores who are 1) full-time employees and 2) have the experience and knowledge that helps a store run smoothly. The company says it will save them tens of millions of dollars a year. Which it might, on a protected profit and loss sheet. What those projections don't show are the number of customers and individual transactions that will be lost because customers can't get help when needed, can't get their questions answered and can't find the books they want because they haven't been unloaded from their boxes yet.

Oh, and that's not all. Employee morale and training opportunities, a valuable part of any business, apparently didn't factor in to the decision making, either:

... The remaining employees have just seen a huge round of layoffs and wonder if they're going to be next. Moreover, they don't have the experience to do the jobs of those let go. Is it any wonder they are feeling worried and depressed about their work situation?

The only rational explanation I can come up with for this is that those in charge see a very short time horizon. I suppose I could be wrong since I am not a businessman. Nevertheless it looks to me like if they had a chance to return to viability before, they just blew it.

-- CAV