Feeling Dead
On August 3rd, CompUSA had an Executive Broadcast and in it they announced that 15 stores will be closing. On that list, the Lombard CompUSA where yours truly works at, is one of them.
If you were to look on CompUSA.com right now, Lombard CompUSA doesn't even show up.
We're already being wiped from the memory banks.
In the immediate future this means a lot of changes, some which will be felt immediately and others later.
For one, we no longer own any of the products in the store. The liquidator owns it now and gets to set his own prices for which we just ring them out and have nothing further to add or do. Good luck trying to sell a protection plan. People think CompUSA is going out of business even though the company is not, just the store so they're not interested at all.
I stopped in yesterday hoping that perhaps I would be able to get pictures of the store before they...made it look like some ass-backwards warehouse with shit all over. Unfortunately I was too late so all pictures I do have inside of the store show the "Store Closing" and "X% off" signs all over, disgracing it. At least the outside pictures of it show what CompUSA looked like in its "prime".
I feel very emotional about this because well this CompUSA used to be on the corner of Finley and Butterfield in Downers Grove. When I was a much younger boy, my father took me to CompUSA to purchase things you couldn't find anywhere else: computers, computer software, hardware, accessories, and those hard-to-find parts and cables. There was no Fry's. Best Buy and Circuit City were places to look if you were going to buy a car stereo or home appliances. Computers cost $5,000 a piece, weighed 60-80 pounds and were nowhere near anything defined as portable. (And lord did they have margin. Companies made money selling just the hardware.) I grew up with these experiences and became entrenched and fascinated with computers and technology and have watched this industry grow and expand like a child having seen it grow from it's toddler age. Now, the very thing that helped me learn to find that passion in my greatest hobby and something which the very knowledge makes me feel smart and have confidence is now being closed.
It's not being closed for some horrible scandal or lawsuit. It's not being closed for anything we've done.
It's being closed because a vain, incompetent jackass decided to move this store 4 years ago to the location we reside at now. Sure it's a bigger, brighter store and is one of the newer ones in the region. Still from the outset it was born into failure. Like the Island of Misfit Toys, since the move this store was never given a chance. It's location is accessible through one traffic light and getting to it from Butterfield (a major road around here) lets you see it but requires the usage of an offramp and turning 2 more times to get to it. And if you are going westbound you have to completely turn around by the time you see it. Most people keep driving by and see the Best Buy in an easy to get to location. Our store was then plagued by out-of-stock issues since we didn't get the amount of "foot traffic" in the store they cut down what we carried. So none of the new stuff, or enough of the advertised stuff, was shipped to us. We had to scavenge: beg, borrow, and transfer from other stores in order to sell Apple laptops and desktops for instance. The number 2 seller in the region (of 10 stores) and they kept promising to ship more units but that promise was never honored. The number 2 seller of TV's (LCD mostly) and once again we had to beg, borrow, and transfer from other stores. The number 1 seller of RAZR's when they went on sale, having up to 30-40 backordered in the course of a week and still we were stiffed on new and advertised phones.
We're a unique group of employees at Lombard that neither can be found nor duplicated anywhere else.
I started on a brief thing for each associate but there's so many to list and well it'll be behind a friends only wall too so if you're interested, some of the stories are well worth the read. We may be a ragtag group of people but goddamnit it's like breaking up a family. Each person will be missed and lord knows if I don't stay in this company I may never see many of them ever again. Some probably using this as a springboard to leave CompUSA for themselves as well. The rest may get transferred to other stores far away from one another. Even if they pissed me off or did something stupid, it was accepted, forgave, and we moved on. You came to expect certain things from certain people and even those who no longer worked for us still had a place to come back to, share memories, and catch up on things. Now when Caitlin comes back from college for break there will be no CompUSA to come back to.
I haven't felt this upset so strongly in a long time.
It seems the only thing to do is to have the band keep playing strongly and proudly as the ship sinks down.
Try and keep morale high. Remember the good times, the bad customers, and all the blood, sweat, and tears we've all put into this store.
How at one point I donned what became known as the "Bob the Builder" gloves and became a carpenter and electrician for a week.
The asinine policies from Dallas.
The pissed off customers.
The 1 step forward, 2 steps back workload and corporate policies.
The idealism that is strangled by reality.
Damning them to hell for eternity, putting us in a location we could never succeed.
The realizaiton that this is the end...and my sadness that I couldn't do a goddamn thing to stop the trainwreck from happen except stand on the side and see each and every point of failure as it started to buckle, collapse, and as of two days ago: explode.
The incompetence is so overwhelming it creates a buildup of acute rage and sadness simultaneously.
tomjoad
If you were to look on CompUSA.com right now, Lombard CompUSA doesn't even show up.
We're already being wiped from the memory banks.
In the immediate future this means a lot of changes, some which will be felt immediately and others later.
For one, we no longer own any of the products in the store. The liquidator owns it now and gets to set his own prices for which we just ring them out and have nothing further to add or do. Good luck trying to sell a protection plan. People think CompUSA is going out of business even though the company is not, just the store so they're not interested at all.
I stopped in yesterday hoping that perhaps I would be able to get pictures of the store before they...made it look like some ass-backwards warehouse with shit all over. Unfortunately I was too late so all pictures I do have inside of the store show the "Store Closing" and "X% off" signs all over, disgracing it. At least the outside pictures of it show what CompUSA looked like in its "prime".
I feel very emotional about this because well this CompUSA used to be on the corner of Finley and Butterfield in Downers Grove. When I was a much younger boy, my father took me to CompUSA to purchase things you couldn't find anywhere else: computers, computer software, hardware, accessories, and those hard-to-find parts and cables. There was no Fry's. Best Buy and Circuit City were places to look if you were going to buy a car stereo or home appliances. Computers cost $5,000 a piece, weighed 60-80 pounds and were nowhere near anything defined as portable. (And lord did they have margin. Companies made money selling just the hardware.) I grew up with these experiences and became entrenched and fascinated with computers and technology and have watched this industry grow and expand like a child having seen it grow from it's toddler age. Now, the very thing that helped me learn to find that passion in my greatest hobby and something which the very knowledge makes me feel smart and have confidence is now being closed.
It's not being closed for some horrible scandal or lawsuit. It's not being closed for anything we've done.
It's being closed because a vain, incompetent jackass decided to move this store 4 years ago to the location we reside at now. Sure it's a bigger, brighter store and is one of the newer ones in the region. Still from the outset it was born into failure. Like the Island of Misfit Toys, since the move this store was never given a chance. It's location is accessible through one traffic light and getting to it from Butterfield (a major road around here) lets you see it but requires the usage of an offramp and turning 2 more times to get to it. And if you are going westbound you have to completely turn around by the time you see it. Most people keep driving by and see the Best Buy in an easy to get to location. Our store was then plagued by out-of-stock issues since we didn't get the amount of "foot traffic" in the store they cut down what we carried. So none of the new stuff, or enough of the advertised stuff, was shipped to us. We had to scavenge: beg, borrow, and transfer from other stores in order to sell Apple laptops and desktops for instance. The number 2 seller in the region (of 10 stores) and they kept promising to ship more units but that promise was never honored. The number 2 seller of TV's (LCD mostly) and once again we had to beg, borrow, and transfer from other stores. The number 1 seller of RAZR's when they went on sale, having up to 30-40 backordered in the course of a week and still we were stiffed on new and advertised phones.
We're a unique group of employees at Lombard that neither can be found nor duplicated anywhere else.
I started on a brief thing for each associate but there's so many to list and well it'll be behind a friends only wall too so if you're interested, some of the stories are well worth the read. We may be a ragtag group of people but goddamnit it's like breaking up a family. Each person will be missed and lord knows if I don't stay in this company I may never see many of them ever again. Some probably using this as a springboard to leave CompUSA for themselves as well. The rest may get transferred to other stores far away from one another. Even if they pissed me off or did something stupid, it was accepted, forgave, and we moved on. You came to expect certain things from certain people and even those who no longer worked for us still had a place to come back to, share memories, and catch up on things. Now when Caitlin comes back from college for break there will be no CompUSA to come back to.
I haven't felt this upset so strongly in a long time.
It seems the only thing to do is to have the band keep playing strongly and proudly as the ship sinks down.
Try and keep morale high. Remember the good times, the bad customers, and all the blood, sweat, and tears we've all put into this store.
How at one point I donned what became known as the "Bob the Builder" gloves and became a carpenter and electrician for a week.
The asinine policies from Dallas.
The pissed off customers.
The 1 step forward, 2 steps back workload and corporate policies.
The idealism that is strangled by reality.
Damning them to hell for eternity, putting us in a location we could never succeed.
The realizaiton that this is the end...and my sadness that I couldn't do a goddamn thing to stop the trainwreck from happen except stand on the side and see each and every point of failure as it started to buckle, collapse, and as of two days ago: explode.
The incompetence is so overwhelming it creates a buildup of acute rage and sadness simultaneously.
tomjoad