R.I.P. Circuit City 1949-2009

We’ll look back on today and remember when a retailing giant fell to it’s knees. It was announced today that Circuit City would cease operations and hand over control of it’s stores to liquidators. 567 stores will be closed by March 31st 2009 and over 34,000 Circuit City associates will be left jobless.

It doesn’t really matter anymore how they got themselves into this predicament. It’s over now. I have to say that I know exactly what these associates are going through. I was laid off from a retailing company 3 years ago after going through a liquidation sale.

If you have never been through a liquidation sale consider yourself lucky. The liquidation company sends a representative whose sole purpose is to make as much money in the least amount of time as possible. The liquidation company essentially owns the assets of the company as they purchased it for roughly pennies on the dollar. The liquidator goes through the building placing integrity seals on all the fire doors and dock doors to make sure employees are not stealing anything from the store. During these times store shrink can skyrocket from disgruntled employees. They will usually conduct a store inventory of all assets and thus begin the liquidation of the building.

Sometimes you get a good person in charge of the liquidation who understands what the associates are going through. Employees are in shock and disbelief as their world is being turned upside down. At other times, you can get someone who simply doesn’t care. They are there to do a job and be done with it, and the associates. When I worked for Media Play several years ago and we began liquidation, my staff and I did something our liquidator said he has never seen before. “We Went Down With The Ship, With Class” We continued to operate the store as best we could under the circumstances. However the longer a liquidation sale progresses, the harder it becomes to go on. A liquidator once said to me, “As The Discounts Go Up, The I.Q.’s Of The Customers Go Down.” He was 100% right. Many a times we would get patrons screaming at us because we couldn’t accept their returns on merchandise or we were trying to rip them off. One lovely exchange had a woman screaming at a poor 16 year old cashier of mine that couldn’t accept her return. I tried to reason with the guest as she screamed at us to return her $19 DVD as if her very life depended on it. Finally, the liquidator came over and instructed her to leave. The last thing she said as she walked out of the door I will never forget. “I’m Glad You’re All Losing Your Jobs!” I wonder as I type this if she has been effected by the economic downturn. I hope she never knows what it’s like to lose something you worked so hard to build.

My favorite memory of my stores liquidation was when we were given a replacement liquidation supervisor because our supervisor fell ill and was hospitalized. We were counting a deposit and discovered through some system error that we were $400 over in cash for the day. This man created a dragnet in the store. He was convinced that a cashier had planned on stealing the money and they were staging it. I explained that the registers were acting horribly since we began liquidation because of the crazy discounts. He told me it was better to be $400 short in cash than $400 over! To this day, I still try to work the logic through on that one.

So I will end this post today by saying my heart goes out to the 34,000 Circuit City associates. I actually interviewed with them for a position 3 years ago. I wound up declining the job offer when they wanted to pay me $10,000 less a year than what I was currently making, and work a minimum of 50 hours per week. Today, I’m relieved I turned the position down or I would be repeating history today. Rest in Peace Circuit City, I used to enjoy shopping in your stores years ago before you began all of the cutbacks in service and other areas. I can’t say your a complete victim of a bad economy, but you made yourself very sick before things started getting bad. At that point, there was no hope left.

I for one will not be picking over your cadaver. I deplore liquidation sales. I would rather remember you in a happier time and not on your deathbed.

Keep Moving Forward!