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Comment by inostia | Hacker News Reader

Unfortunately, I have no sympathy for the company, as they recently laid off much of their full-time, expert-level employees for a quick and dirty buck, likely accelerating their demise. It is a shame, though, because in some places - despite the rise of local bookstores - they are the only place left to not only _buy_ books, but a place to "hang out" around books. They also host readings for smaller writers. Yes, libraries also fulfill this function, but where else can you bring your kids, buy a coffee, look at/buy some books or magazines and then go to the nearby mall?

I've always been amazed at how well-stocked B&N stores are, even in small towns like Fresno, CA. Likely one of the only places to buy a philosophy or classic literature book in the whole town.

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You have a fixed asset (facility) and variable assets (employees). If you are trying to keep your failing company from hemorrhaging money, you can cut the liquid assets, because you have to keep lights on.

The situation at Barnes and Noble is dire. Anyone of us in the same position would have done the same thing, if you cannot admit this, then you need to look at financial sheets and what it takes to run a business.

Bearing this in mind, a similar action was undertaken by Home Depot where they cut their experienced staff loose to save monies, but were not in dire straits, I was on the same bandwagon as you about the move.

Nonsense. If you can't properly staff a location, then you close that location. What B&N has done is made a system-wide staffing reduction. So now busy stores have fewer employees to help customers. This ends up hurting sales in all stores, ending in a death spiral.

B&N management has been incompetent for the better part of a decade; Riggio is mostly to blame since he can't seem to either delegate or let go.

Unless they targeted higher numbers of experienced staff at said slow stores where their higher pay and experience didn't result in significantly higher sales and largely left experienced staff at busy stores in place. I have no clue if that's how it was done, but it isn't required to do this sort of reduction evenly across the entire business.

The firing of the receiving managers and other positions were system-wide. Didn't matter what the store sales were, they lost these positions. At the store near where I live, they often have only 4 employees working at a time, for a very busy location. One at the register, one at the Cafe, one manager, and one bookseller. So good luck if you get a large group of customers who don't want to wait 30 minutes to purchase their books, much less find them on the shelves. It's a death spiral...

> even in small towns like Fresno, CA.

Fresno isn't a small town. It'd be the biggest city in ~50% of the states in the US.

Eh, fair enough. I guess I meant, "less culturally diverse" than a place like the Bay Area or Los Angeles.

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