Management's stock options are in the tank. Only now are they discovering that cutting out tens of thousands of their most experienced employees was a mistake.

People read the news. Millions of consumers read about the way Circuit City decided to cut costs by eliminating their most loyal workers, the ones who had been there for years through previous cutbacks, elimination of benefits, and other indignities. At least among liberals in this country, there was definitely a trend never to step in Circuit City again given how they treated their workers, just as millions of people would rather shop at Costco rather than Wal-Mart.

With Circuit City, many more people than liberals were disgusted with them, and so it's no surprise store traffic plummeted and never recovered.

Corporate America will definitely learn a lesson from this. The next time any big company wants to fire their most seasoned and expensive workers, they'll do so very quietly.

The lesson which should be drawn from the Circuit City incident is not about publicity but the importance of trained and skilled workers to the company's bottom line.

The company said a sharp fall in sales of product warranties, services and other product add-ons contributed to a loss of $207.3m (£104.5m), or $1.26 a share.

Employees have to give a damn to sell that stuff. It's easier not to bother, and it takes a bit of sales savvy.

and since corporate controls the press, well you get the picture.
S1959 is in the docket to close the only remaining news source, the internet.

I expressed my displeasure with their employee relations in an e-mail to their PR people last year along with the admonition that I would never set foot in a Circuit City store ever again and I have stuck to that promise as I will continue to do. I was never a big buyer at Circuit City although I have bought several things there through the years. I view their yearly sales results as well deserved schadenfreude.

I hate that CompUSA is closing down, and I will be ordering more products on-line now, but I will definitely be staying away from Circuit City and I discourage all of my friends from shopping there.

Tilting at windmills is easier as one nears senior citizen status!

I asked a friend yesterday if he goes there and the answer was No. I never went there in the beginning and they could be gone by end of next year. I do feel bad for all the employees that had nothing to do with the CEO great idea.
jo6pac

... Circuit City for a while about 8 years ago while I was in school. A warehouse guy - stocked shelves, carried out large items and loaded them into people's vehicles. This holiday season I needed to get a camcorder so I figured I'd head over there. Things have changed a lot in their stores.

When I worked there, floor/sales staff worked on commission. They pounced on people as they walked in the doors. That's obviously not the case anymore. I looked at the camcorders, found one I liked, asked to buy it at the counter, and was told to wait for a salesperson. So I waited. And waited. And waited longer as the salespeople had a little conversation in a corner. One looked up after some time and figured he walk over and see if I needed anything. He sauntered to the back room after I told which model I wanted and turns out they didn't even have it in stock. It took me about half hour to find out they didn't have the thing.

And turns out they've stopped selling big box appliances like fridges, washers, and dryers. It's basically all electronics now. Sad, sad, sad. There was a reason I quit that job and left that company. Oh, and the stuff they waste. Shame everything gets compacted. They'd throw out hundreds of feet of coax cable if one of the connectors was broke/stripped off. We'd always ask to take the stuff since splicing a connector is easy as hell, but the answer was always, "No." They had to throw it out so they could write it off.

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The company said a sharp fall in sales of product warranties, services and other product add-ons contributed to a loss of $207.3m (£104.5m), or $1.26 a share.
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It's difficult for me to get worked up about Circuit City, especially in comparison to a Best Buy or whatever. The quote above points out what I see as the scam aspect of a lot of electronics sales. The questionable extras that the salespeople try to push on the public. So I'm supposed to mourn the loss of jobs by the people that are skilled in pushing these scam features? True, they're the proven sales talent. I recently saw a web item noting that Best Buy still has a fake internal web site that it shows to people that come in and want the price they saw on the web for some item. The "experienced" salesperson then goes to a web terminal and shows the rube that he was mistaken about the price - through the fake Best Buy web site. Nice quality sales practice.

Go to any web bargain hunting site and you'll quickly note that pushing extras on a sale is a standard practice of the most disreputable sellers. The extras are usually of questionable value and grossly overpriced. Hence the value to the seller. The harder the push on the customer for the extras, the more questionable the quality of the seller. Fly-by-night dealers do this until they become well known, at which point they move on to a different name and address, but the scheme stays the same. Great bargains in ads that never materialize, but the few rubes that fall for the extras represent great profits.

for one thing, i seem to recall a news article about the extravagant bonus their CEO received -wish i had the url...

another thing; nostalgia: back in the day, they were where Tandy computer owners bought their machines and took them for repair. i loved the old Tandy computers a bunch and that was a major window shopping place for me.
-i remember also going there for regular PC repairs once, about 1993: i had a 386 where i'd installed a hard drive with screws too long for the job, and i screwed right through some logic circuits on the solid state board atop the drive. the circuit city repair guy (can you imagine there being such now?) did a fine job soldering little fine jumper wires (3 of them)on the board. that drive never failed since. the cost of the job was nominal, cheap even.

lastly; there's one nearby, 3 blocks away, and my gal reeeally wants me to apply (again even) to work there. not sure why, but she loves the idea. maybe it's the supershort commute (walking distance to me). maybe it's the benefits (not much different from most anywhere else as far as i can tell). maybe she figures i'll get great discounts. i dunno, but it beats working at walmart... as i say, i've applied there before, and they didn't hire me (and i was a little surprised). learning now they've done some lay-offs somewhat explains it.

at Circuit City! Not that I go there frequently, since stores are essentially scam places.

see i went there 7 times in my whole life.

As a best buy employee I can tell you: we dont employ tards in management. But Circut City obviously do. That's why there name is 1 consonant off from Circuit Sh*tty.

So think about that. Best Buy rox as we have all the best employees & merchandise. so i guess you can throw in the towel now, sense you know by now,