Barnes and Noble currently operates around 620 bookstores in the United States and they have just shuttered 400 of them, or 65% of all stores. The company is still delivering online orders to the curb or outside of your apartment. Although delivery times might be slower, because many of their fulfillment centers have closed or are tremendously understaffed.
All of the people working at the stores that have closed will first make use of their Paid Time Off. After that, employees with a year or more of service will receive up to two weeks of pay. Any of the employees who worked there for six months or less will be laid off.
“With the closure of stores, we are obliged to make the hardest of choices,” CEO James Daunt said “The truth is that we cannot close our doors and continue to pay our employees in the manner of Apple, Nike, Patagonia and REI. They can do this because they have the resources necessary; we, and most retailers of our sort, do not.”
“This is a devastating situation in which to find ourselves and we understand the personal impacts of such action,” Daunt wrote. “When a closed store is permitted to reopen, we will do so, and we intend to rehire. No one knows by how much our sales will decline, nor for how long,” Daunt wrote in a separate note to staff on Friday. “We do know, however, that the drop will be unprecedented and that we must assume this will be measured over a period of many weeks, and possibly of months.”
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.