Aaron Flynn arrived to work early as usual two weeks ago. Nine-thirty in the morning. A Circuit City store manager and employee of eight years, he went to work opening the store.
He unlocked the doors. Loaded the registers. Updated employees with the daily news.
But while he was tucking a drawer of cash into a register, an employee approached him with his own news. Have you heard about the layoffs, he asked.
Minutes later Flynn read along with millions of Americans skimming morning papers what he most feared. Circuit City Stores, the nation’s second-largest consumer electronics chain and his security net for more than eight years, was going belly up.
“We had an idea that we might possibly be bought out,” said Flynn, a single father who supports a 3-year-old daughter. “But no one mentioned the idea that we’d close for good.”
Saving no time at all, he began calling old friends and colleagues hoping there might be one open job in this broken economy.
Flynn and 50 employees at the Santa Cruz branch will lose their jobs on March 21. They will join 34,000 other Circuit City employees globally.
The 59-year-old company, originally known as Wards Company, announced it would liquidate all of its merchandise and layoff its entire workforce on Jan. 16. It became one of the latest victims of a serious economic crisis that has paralyzed the world economy.
Yesterday Home Depot, the country’s largest home improvement retailer, announced it was cutting 7,000 jobs and closing its Expo stores as the recession continues to freeze the housing market.
“I’m always worried I’ll be laid off,” said Robin Volstorff, a part-time employee at the Home Depot in Santa Cruz. She said they’ve been cutting hours since last November. The part-timers are the first to go.
Santa Cruz-based Plantronics, the world’s leading producer of lightweight headsets, announced it was cutting 18 percent of its workforce earlier this month.
The crisis has pushed unemployment past 10 percent in Santa Cruz. Watsonville has reached 21 percent, nearly three times the national average.
That’s more bad news for guys like Scott Glass, who has sold TVs at Circuit City for more than a year. Since finding out he’d be fired in March, he’s lost his house and totaled his car. And no one’s hiring. Now he spends his days split between sending out resumes, couch surfing and walking a few miles to a job that won’t exist in less than two months.
“I’m sending out resumes everywhere,” Glass said, with a somber sigh. “Anything I can possibly think of.”
So far, Circuit City hasn’t provided any resources for employees who will soon be cast into a needle-thin job market, according to Flynn. “There’s no communication from up top,” he said. “I talk to my boss, the liquidator, and as far as I know he is all that is left.”
Flynn has posted fliers in the break room that the Job Exchange, a national job placement firm, dropped off recently. But other than that these employees are on their own. “A few employees have asked me for letters of recommendation,” he said. “But that’s about all I can do.”
As for Flynn himself, single father and soon to be ex-manager — he’s optimistic that he’ll be able to find a new job. He has an interview this Wednesday. But he warns it won’t be so easy for a lot of these employees.
Another store manager is on maternity leave, he explained. She’s expecting her sixth child. She will lose her job along with everyone else at the store on March 21.
“A lot of these guys will have to go on unemployment,” Flynn said, waving his hands out on a store full of empty boxes, discount posters, and sullen employees in red. “This is their livelihood.”
Originally published in the Cournalist.