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Long time, long time. If you know me, you know the drill. I have the attention span of a magpie and tend to simply vanish for a while. I thought I'd come back and maybe let some stuff out, cause it's turning out to be a unique time.
So the doomsayers are at it again, once more the financial gurus are saying Blockbuster Video will not stand much longer. And the funny thing is that they may be right this time. The company, a few weeks back, issued a Bankruptcy warning, shortly thereafter stock prices plummeted. Our majority stock holder fled, and now theirs an apparent power struggle in our board of directors. Blockbuster is in a huge amount of debt, revenue is dropping.
The rats are fleeing, Titanic is sinking.
It's a unique experience watching a company crumble from the ground floor, from the inside. I see all the trappings of corporate desperately try to lower costs. Stores close down, rental terms change to include daily rental charges, for the past four months we haven't had any bags to hand customers, and now when we get them they're generic plastic bags with no company logo.
And of course, the hours have been cut. I work at most two shifts a week, I rake in maybe twenty hours per paycheck.
There's an oddness in the air, the feeling of desperation. You can almost feel the shifts and quaking of a falling empire. Months now we've been pushing confection bundles instead of Rewards and Movie Passes, candies popcorn and soda, low cost and high gross. Employee free rentals go from 5 to 10 to try and entice the employees to stay without offering us additional pay, hours, or benefits. We're again altering our cue line to a configuration that we had tried a couple months back, and only received grief from the customers. Management fights against management to keep the weakening structure steady.
The place is starting to feel alien to me now, with how little time I actually spend there, the changes throw me. I recently learned our Assistant Manager is getting his own store... next week, which will have a blow to my store's dynamic. We're gaining two employees from another store, which will not help with hours. One of those employees worked at my store before as a third tier manager, she burnt a lot of bridges leaving when she got promoted to the now closed store's assistant manager. Now instead of taking a demotion back to a Shift Lead, she'll still be an assistant manager.
I remember when I started this job, I already knew the industry was failing, I gave the company five years, shortly after I changed my prediction to three years. I've been working here now for two years, and it doesn't look like we'll survive another.
I hear the toll bell ring, it has come time for Blockbuster to pay the ferryman. We were killed by Netflix, we were killed by Gamefly, we were killed by Redbox... but we handed them the gun. We were killed by our own hubris. Blockbuster is an archaic giant, held up till now only due to it's size. Ten years ago it could have been a pioneer of the industry, leading media rentals to a bold future, instead it huddled back, clutching it's antiquated ways.
I feel anger towards the heads of this company, who now in the last hours try to save themselves. They cut costs, they close stores, they limit hours. They do nothing, NOTHING, to improve, to evolve. They only seek to cut spending to once more see a gross, they do not attempt anything to draw in new customers to increase that gross. I feel anger at these people because their cost cutting hurts stores, hurts managers, hurts employees, hurts customers.
Maybe all this is wrong, maybe again like last year massive cuts and store closers will work. But the giant is slowly shrinking. Soon enough the sheer size of this ancient monolith will not be enough to sustain it. I just wish that if this company can pull through this harrowing time, it will actually attempt to move forward and become new, instead of remain in the past and become stagnant.
So the doomsayers are at it again, once more the financial gurus are saying Blockbuster Video will not stand much longer. And the funny thing is that they may be right this time. The company, a few weeks back, issued a Bankruptcy warning, shortly thereafter stock prices plummeted. Our majority stock holder fled, and now theirs an apparent power struggle in our board of directors. Blockbuster is in a huge amount of debt, revenue is dropping.
The rats are fleeing, Titanic is sinking.
It's a unique experience watching a company crumble from the ground floor, from the inside. I see all the trappings of corporate desperately try to lower costs. Stores close down, rental terms change to include daily rental charges, for the past four months we haven't had any bags to hand customers, and now when we get them they're generic plastic bags with no company logo.
And of course, the hours have been cut. I work at most two shifts a week, I rake in maybe twenty hours per paycheck.
There's an oddness in the air, the feeling of desperation. You can almost feel the shifts and quaking of a falling empire. Months now we've been pushing confection bundles instead of Rewards and Movie Passes, candies popcorn and soda, low cost and high gross. Employee free rentals go from 5 to 10 to try and entice the employees to stay without offering us additional pay, hours, or benefits. We're again altering our cue line to a configuration that we had tried a couple months back, and only received grief from the customers. Management fights against management to keep the weakening structure steady.
The place is starting to feel alien to me now, with how little time I actually spend there, the changes throw me. I recently learned our Assistant Manager is getting his own store... next week, which will have a blow to my store's dynamic. We're gaining two employees from another store, which will not help with hours. One of those employees worked at my store before as a third tier manager, she burnt a lot of bridges leaving when she got promoted to the now closed store's assistant manager. Now instead of taking a demotion back to a Shift Lead, she'll still be an assistant manager.
I remember when I started this job, I already knew the industry was failing, I gave the company five years, shortly after I changed my prediction to three years. I've been working here now for two years, and it doesn't look like we'll survive another.
I hear the toll bell ring, it has come time for Blockbuster to pay the ferryman. We were killed by Netflix, we were killed by Gamefly, we were killed by Redbox... but we handed them the gun. We were killed by our own hubris. Blockbuster is an archaic giant, held up till now only due to it's size. Ten years ago it could have been a pioneer of the industry, leading media rentals to a bold future, instead it huddled back, clutching it's antiquated ways.
I feel anger towards the heads of this company, who now in the last hours try to save themselves. They cut costs, they close stores, they limit hours. They do nothing, NOTHING, to improve, to evolve. They only seek to cut spending to once more see a gross, they do not attempt anything to draw in new customers to increase that gross. I feel anger at these people because their cost cutting hurts stores, hurts managers, hurts employees, hurts customers.
Maybe all this is wrong, maybe again like last year massive cuts and store closers will work. But the giant is slowly shrinking. Soon enough the sheer size of this ancient monolith will not be enough to sustain it. I just wish that if this company can pull through this harrowing time, it will actually attempt to move forward and become new, instead of remain in the past and become stagnant.
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