Peace Out John
Many peeps called it. He’s on his way out
12 replies (most recent on top)
I read that email and thought it was full of cr-p. JM walks away with a ton of money and leaves us working for an owner who drives his employees into the ground. I remember my first GIG book stating how JM wanted to show how he could run a huge company without treating people how they are treated in a corporation. This was the best company I had ever worked for as far as how the employees were treated. Was it perfect? No, but it was pretty dang good. Did some things need tweaking? Absolutely, but it was a well run company making a lot of money and paying the employees well with great benefits. Then around 2008 Walter Robb was put in charge and in a very short time things went to h@ll.By the time JM came back it was too late to fix it and the Board wanted him to sell. He should have stood tall and said NO! Since 2008 the company became more Corporation and less Core Values. Pay is still good but benefits stink now. Labor cuts are ridiculous and the product mix is more fad than staples. As soon as a guest falls in love with something it gets discontinued. We have so many resets that the employees can't keep up with what we carry and we are getting away from the bulk department while our competitors are increasing theirs. Our once beautiful produce is now as bad as Walmart's. At one time we added 100,000 square ft to SWD and then moved almost everything except produce to UNFI. This company has more out of stocks and shorts us more than you could ever imagine and we are supposed to believe you care about money and profits? We waste more money buying color coded brooms/dust pans and squeegee's only to throw them out and change colors again. This company has thrown out more equipment and displays and remodeled then changed it back, that it is looking so incompetent. I see what gets trashed or redone over and over and think "how many employees could we have had stocking shelves for that wasted money?" Going 70% part time and 30% full time might save on benefits but what we lose with employees who have no vested interest in their job is a lot more than the few dollars saved on benefits. Global is clueless and it shows in the decrease in sales, cleanliness of stores and moral of the people. Maybe they can come up with another useless clipboard program to "help" us. All the good people have jumped ship or are going to jump ship and now JM is jumping ship too. Thanks for selling us to a greedy company whose owner wants to break my back so he can play space ship. It is hard to walk away from over 20 yrs with a company but I believe it is my time to jump ship as soon as I can too. Thanks for nothing.
Lols @ low margin. Maybe most grocery stores, but the target margin for grocery at whole foods is like 43%. at one point our bulk almond butter was an 80% margin. Most other grocery stores are at about 20%. They also do things like having loss leaders, selling a cr-p ton of thing they make little margin on for cheap but it brings the customers. Whole Foods doesn't do that. Every single time there is an email saying we have to combat our "whole Paycheck image" the very next tag batch is full of nothing but price increases.
If JM never started WFM, who would have been the one to build up a nationwide chain otherwise? from what I saw, WFM bought out smaller mom and pop or several store health food shops and aggregated them into WFM. Was Wild Oats a possible better successor if JM never started out?
I think the problem all along was that they are a grocery chain and grocey stores are very low margin and subject to the whims of consumers like everything else. Not defending JM. He is probably an egotistical man. Amazon coming in and forcing the hand by buying the shares up was on Bezos.
Was emailed out to everyone
Where is this news coming from?
ill just say what we all know.... the guy looks like a prisoner of war from vietnam
Zero leadership ability or presence. personally i think he is a grifter and judging by how bad WF was doing before amazon (business wise), he clearly has no clue what he's doing. good riddance
Let’s see how they scramble to get teams together for JM visits on his farewell tour. Gonna be interesting cuz you know they won’t let him see the true conditions of stores
Next year after holidays, regions combine and them all ELs, rvps vps xps zps n waterver they are called will b playing musical chair soon. W JM gone all core values will be gone. TM happiness already out the window work 45+ n get no breaks w lil pay; customer satisfaction here is ur return now shut up n keep buying; product quality and its standards here is ur coke and doritos no one cares bout ur health, vendors which vendors i can get it cheaper if i put amazon label on it bye bye 365 brand, community donations good luck in getting a donation when only one is chosen every 3 months, stockholder value wait u might still get ur money as long as these “team members “ keep working their @&& off for cheap labor. N who cares if they quit we got plenty of people who will take their place.
Yup tx JM for selling your soul. So much for a great wedding love at first sight. More like a red wedding.
I figured he retired years ago he was basically just a puppet, spewing off about core values and everything when they were gone years ago , so either this guy lives in a fantasy world or he's completely out of touch.
he knows the holidays are gonna be a s**t show and wants to wash his hands....a.c.gallo too....can we send them tofurkey dinners for thanksgiving??? and some of that cr---y pre-pack stuffing???
Just as a common sense rule: if this many people at the top are "retiring" or "seeking new adventures".... that's your cue to run.
Something big must be coming down to have all these people "deciding" to leave.