The repeating process of lost innocence
I'm obviously not perfect. I have screwed people over, and caused my share of unjust situations. Despite this, I feel like I'm - overall - trustworthy and honest. At very least, I try to be. Additionally, I feel as though my scope of what I consider dishonest is relatively objective. That's why I can't wrap my head around this situation that we are now contending with.
I ended my employment with Coconuts/Transworld Entertainment approximately eight years ago. About three or four years prior to that was when they bought out Wherehouse Music, a prominent west-coast music chain that had approximately ten or twenty east-coast stores. One of which I worked in. I did my best to assimilate into corporate culture, but I couldn't take it seriously. If there's anything that should never be corporatized, it's a music store. The ideology behind corporate music stores is that they dedicate a handful of people as "buyers" - this is an actual job position. Their job is to find new music that should be stocked, keep tabs on what would be hot. In a corporate chain, there's often five or ten of these people for the entire chain - people who live several states away and have no idea what's popular in specific locales, let alone what's popular independently. Though, hand-in-hand with this lies the fact that when a music store corporatizes, they have little to no interest in what's popular independently, because the spots that could be afforded to local talent would be more appropriately used stocking Miley Cyrus CDs or Taylor Swift t-shirts (current day references, dial them back 10 years to make them relevant to my experiences). This factor was the first - of many - issues that would drive a divisive wedge between me and corporate culture. I watched popular local bands be denied consignment deals - something the store always offered in the interest of local talent - because we now had specific planograms that were guaranteed to maximize profit. The next step was to turn us all into sellers. We were no longer clerks, and we no longer got hired for our knowledge of music, but hired on our ability to push a product. It didn't matter what we thought was good, or what we thought might interest people; it became a literal challenge to sell the most. And it didn't matter what the 'most' was. We'd be forced to push CDs or DVDs, or preorders to either (any of those, fairly legitimate to promote).. then eventually, it came down to pushing candy. Or backpacks. Or magazine subscriptions. Literally anything that would make a buck. I would often look around that store as it deteriorated into a sad heap of depraved, desperate attempts to make the quickest, most profitable dollar, and every sweep I made destroyed my belief in the store bit by bit. And it hurt. It hurt me to watch the bastardization of something that I felt was genuine and pure be consumed and processed. That was the second job I'd ever held, and when I got the call that I was being hired at a music store, the feeling I felt was essentially unparalleled. I got the call on Valentine's Day during some sort of a rush, saying that if I could come in today, I was hired. I abandoned my then-girlfriend on Valentine's Day to get that job. I don't regret it at all, but I regret what I felt like when I finally left my position. Five years and a corporate blitzkrieg later, I felt defeated, and jaded. And extremely, extremely disappointed.
That store only got worse, and more sad, after my departure. People blame digital downloads, or piracy, or the state of the music industry as to why music stores are disappearing. I can say with great certainty - none of those are the problem. The problem lies in the corporate interest in any profitable independent source that seems to be making money. That's what destroys music stores - losing touch with the common person and what they come to a music store to look for. Not iTunes. Not piracy.
Shortly after meeting my current girlfriend, she left an independent 'kitsch' store for a prominent (and much better-paying) store manager position in a local mall. The store she got a job in was one that I had frequented constantly in high school. The product lines had changed (I can't blame them for abandoning pleather pants and industrial t-shirts; even I can identify when the river runs dry) but the overall ambiance of the store hadn't really drastically altered from a good, solid concrete basis of providing music-related audio and attire. But it didn't take long before I started hearing stories of the same old changes that I had sat through. Soon the product lines altered to fit trends that didn't exactly coalesce with the existing atmosphere of the chain. Soon, more and more trends became more and more prevalent, regardless of whether they were relevant to the existing customer base. And eventually, the news came down that there was now a different CEO in charge. Shortly thereafter, the company completely changed hands. And that step was the true beginning of the end.
As each change occurred, I would watch my girlfriend come home from work. When she was first employed there, it would often be a story of what silly thing happened at work; maybe what crazy person came in and tried to order something off-the-wall. It got worse, and worse. Stories of things that were exact shadows of what had happened at Wherehouse-turned-Coconuts. Perfect comparisons of when everything went south for me. And I tried my best to tell her that things were headed south. To a degree, I still blame myself for not asking her to leave on her own accordance, because I was frightened as to how things would turn out. I'd seen that path, and I managed to dodge the bullet myself, but I should have been more assertive when I warned her that it was turning into Transworld. My then-assistant-manager position afforded me and relieved me of a lot of grief and potential unemployment, simply because I had been in that position for a notable amount of time. Had I not left on my own accord, the next time things got dicey, I would have ultimately been terminated from that position. Unfortunately, she stuck around to get screwed. The corporation decided to switch district managers around - and found one who was just raring to be cut loose on her new district. Corporations love to have marching orders, and people who will fall in line with their orders. Instead of store managers, and assistant managers, they now have sergeants, and lieutenants. People that will fall on a blast for a dollar. My girlfriend was never that person and her superior officer identified that and did what needed to be done to discharge her. I won't say that the reasons they gave were not legitimate, but the manner in which they were collected were underhanded and malicious. Her replacement - the assistant manager who had previously been passed up for the store manager job in favor of her - finally got his rise to glory. The new DM apparently either found some shining redeeming quality in him or felt bad that he had struggled in the company for so long without a promotion - so our household income got cut loose because the DM held more importance in finding a subordinate rather than finding a colleague. And the story can be bent in any way that they want to bend it to make it my girlfriend's fault, but ultimately - I've seen those signs. And it's nothing but an S.O.S. When you sacrifice quality for a dollar sign, it's a recipe for failure. I've seen it happen. Good luck to that store.
I ended my employment with Coconuts/Transworld Entertainment approximately eight years ago. About three or four years prior to that was when they bought out Wherehouse Music, a prominent west-coast music chain that had approximately ten or twenty east-coast stores. One of which I worked in. I did my best to assimilate into corporate culture, but I couldn't take it seriously. If there's anything that should never be corporatized, it's a music store. The ideology behind corporate music stores is that they dedicate a handful of people as "buyers" - this is an actual job position. Their job is to find new music that should be stocked, keep tabs on what would be hot. In a corporate chain, there's often five or ten of these people for the entire chain - people who live several states away and have no idea what's popular in specific locales, let alone what's popular independently. Though, hand-in-hand with this lies the fact that when a music store corporatizes, they have little to no interest in what's popular independently, because the spots that could be afforded to local talent would be more appropriately used stocking Miley Cyrus CDs or Taylor Swift t-shirts (current day references, dial them back 10 years to make them relevant to my experiences). This factor was the first - of many - issues that would drive a divisive wedge between me and corporate culture. I watched popular local bands be denied consignment deals - something the store always offered in the interest of local talent - because we now had specific planograms that were guaranteed to maximize profit. The next step was to turn us all into sellers. We were no longer clerks, and we no longer got hired for our knowledge of music, but hired on our ability to push a product. It didn't matter what we thought was good, or what we thought might interest people; it became a literal challenge to sell the most. And it didn't matter what the 'most' was. We'd be forced to push CDs or DVDs, or preorders to either (any of those, fairly legitimate to promote).. then eventually, it came down to pushing candy. Or backpacks. Or magazine subscriptions. Literally anything that would make a buck. I would often look around that store as it deteriorated into a sad heap of depraved, desperate attempts to make the quickest, most profitable dollar, and every sweep I made destroyed my belief in the store bit by bit. And it hurt. It hurt me to watch the bastardization of something that I felt was genuine and pure be consumed and processed. That was the second job I'd ever held, and when I got the call that I was being hired at a music store, the feeling I felt was essentially unparalleled. I got the call on Valentine's Day during some sort of a rush, saying that if I could come in today, I was hired. I abandoned my then-girlfriend on Valentine's Day to get that job. I don't regret it at all, but I regret what I felt like when I finally left my position. Five years and a corporate blitzkrieg later, I felt defeated, and jaded. And extremely, extremely disappointed.
That store only got worse, and more sad, after my departure. People blame digital downloads, or piracy, or the state of the music industry as to why music stores are disappearing. I can say with great certainty - none of those are the problem. The problem lies in the corporate interest in any profitable independent source that seems to be making money. That's what destroys music stores - losing touch with the common person and what they come to a music store to look for. Not iTunes. Not piracy.
Shortly after meeting my current girlfriend, she left an independent 'kitsch' store for a prominent (and much better-paying) store manager position in a local mall. The store she got a job in was one that I had frequented constantly in high school. The product lines had changed (I can't blame them for abandoning pleather pants and industrial t-shirts; even I can identify when the river runs dry) but the overall ambiance of the store hadn't really drastically altered from a good, solid concrete basis of providing music-related audio and attire. But it didn't take long before I started hearing stories of the same old changes that I had sat through. Soon the product lines altered to fit trends that didn't exactly coalesce with the existing atmosphere of the chain. Soon, more and more trends became more and more prevalent, regardless of whether they were relevant to the existing customer base. And eventually, the news came down that there was now a different CEO in charge. Shortly thereafter, the company completely changed hands. And that step was the true beginning of the end.
As each change occurred, I would watch my girlfriend come home from work. When she was first employed there, it would often be a story of what silly thing happened at work; maybe what crazy person came in and tried to order something off-the-wall. It got worse, and worse. Stories of things that were exact shadows of what had happened at Wherehouse-turned-Coconuts. Perfect comparisons of when everything went south for me. And I tried my best to tell her that things were headed south. To a degree, I still blame myself for not asking her to leave on her own accordance, because I was frightened as to how things would turn out. I'd seen that path, and I managed to dodge the bullet myself, but I should have been more assertive when I warned her that it was turning into Transworld. My then-assistant-manager position afforded me and relieved me of a lot of grief and potential unemployment, simply because I had been in that position for a notable amount of time. Had I not left on my own accord, the next time things got dicey, I would have ultimately been terminated from that position. Unfortunately, she stuck around to get screwed. The corporation decided to switch district managers around - and found one who was just raring to be cut loose on her new district. Corporations love to have marching orders, and people who will fall in line with their orders. Instead of store managers, and assistant managers, they now have sergeants, and lieutenants. People that will fall on a blast for a dollar. My girlfriend was never that person and her superior officer identified that and did what needed to be done to discharge her. I won't say that the reasons they gave were not legitimate, but the manner in which they were collected were underhanded and malicious. Her replacement - the assistant manager who had previously been passed up for the store manager job in favor of her - finally got his rise to glory. The new DM apparently either found some shining redeeming quality in him or felt bad that he had struggled in the company for so long without a promotion - so our household income got cut loose because the DM held more importance in finding a subordinate rather than finding a colleague. And the story can be bent in any way that they want to bend it to make it my girlfriend's fault, but ultimately - I've seen those signs. And it's nothing but an S.O.S. When you sacrifice quality for a dollar sign, it's a recipe for failure. I've seen it happen. Good luck to that store.