Former employees tell BuzzFeed News they got a day’s notice that they would be losing their jobs, even after repeatedly asking if their stores were closing.
Wet Seal's store closure discussion script:
Part 1; 2 and 3 are below.
Obtained by BuzzFeed News
"I have to advise you of a decision that will affect you."
That's one of the first lines in the script used for laying off employees of teen retail chain Wet Seal this past weekend. "Affect" was putting it lightly, given the decision was to close at least 60 stores within a week, offering hundreds of part-time employees just a day's notice (managers got a few additional days) that they would be losing their jobs and, in many cases, their livelihood.
The document, obtained by BuzzFeed News and included in full below, illustrates the cold approach Wet Seal took to shuttering stores this month. The struggling retailer, which told investors in December that it planned to close 60 of its 528 stores by Jan. 31, waited until Friday to tell managers which stores would be closing after weeks of assuaging them that 80%-off discounts were normal, shipments were on their way and the business was doing fine, according to BuzzFeed News interviews with staff.
The worst part: the stores would close just days later. Wet Seal is now at the center of a social media firestorm for ambushing its employees in a manner that former employees and customers have deemed unnecessary, disrespectful and deeply misleading.
According to interviews and posts on Facebook and Instagram, store managers and assistant managers were instructed to dial into a 2:30 p.m. conference call on Friday, without any knowledge of what the call would be about. District managers delivered the news and store personnel were left to inform associates they no longer had jobs. Some, including managers, are working into this week until the stores "vacate" — still less than seven days' notice. The script for telling employees was emailed out after the call, and started with: "As you all know, the company has been struggling financially. We've tried cutting costs everywhere we can, but it has not been enough." It included instructions on how to handle questions about severance — none — and a potential bankruptcy. "I recognize that this news is not easy to hear."
The company has not replied to requests for comment.
This picture from a Wet Seal at Seattle's Northgate Mall has gone viral. Redditor DevoidSauce told BuzzFeed News he took it at 4 p.m. on Sunday.
Reddit: DevoidSauce / Via i.imgur.com
Employees were, understandably, stunned and deeply frustrated.
"We were seeing signs of 80% off and we knew we never did that in the store," said Tiffany Alston, a 23-year-old who worked part-time at a Wet Seal in Arlington, Virginia for 16 months. After Wet Seal began offering such discounts in December, Alston's manager and an assistant manager asked their district head whether the store was at risk of closing.
"Both times, the response was, 'No, it's just an awesome holiday sale, we're not closing, there are several locations going through the same sales and everything,'" she said. "So we said, 'Okay, maybe she's right.'"
The closing stores, whose supplies of new merchandise tapered off in the past two weeks, have been emptied quickly. Alston said kids hanging out at the mall stole some of her store's mannequins on Friday; employees weren't able to catch them. Valentina Garibay, 20, who was laid off from a Wet Seal in Chino, California, said her store sold mannequins for $25 and tables for $50. She noted the company didn't provide boxes to send back leftover merchandise, so she and other part-time associates had ask for spares from other mall stores and a nearby Walmart. Worse, two employees, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said some stores received boxes and instructions for packing and mailing back IT items like cash registers before formally learning of the layoffs.
Wet Seal probably wasn't expecting the jarring nature of its layoffs to go viral. On Sunday, Redditor DevoidSauce posted a banner from a Wet Seal window in Seattle's Northgate Mall that criticized the chain. The sign, made by employees, displayed a litany of frustrations in the form of a checklist: unpaid and unused vacation and sick time, the abrupt notice for employees who spent as many as eight years at the company, the interim chief financial officer's new $95,000 raise (disclosed, regretfully, in a regulatory filing the same day the closures were announced.) The sign also noted the store's No. 1 sales status in the district and gave thanks to customers.
Employees have posted similar signs in Wet Seal windows at other malls. The images and reprimands to Wet Seal have flooded the company's Instagram and Facebook pages and are showing up on Twitter with hashtags such as #ClubWetSeal, #BoycottWetSeal and #ForgetWetSeal.
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