In my 1.5 years there we went through 3 private equity firm owners. Each one making worse changes than the last. I quit when the 3rd firm made shit so bad the ENTIRE kitchen staff walked out.
The second firm fired a GM they recruited from across the country because he didn’t get the place out of a $2M hole in one year
Could be, but a lot of the time PE buys struggling firms.
What's funny is, really, 2million is a drop in the bucket.
And being a hotel, that 2mil could simply be the difference between some needed renovations or maintenance and a decline in stays and not be a real issue.
The problem, really, is PE often has no patience and wants results, and their money, right now, which is fine when you're talking micro factors but you can't just handwave away macro factors that are out of a firms control.
3 PE firms in nearly as many years sounds like PE with more money than understanding of their markets and goals and how those align with their acquisitions.
The first two firms were ones that specialized in refurbishing and reselling office buildings.
The $2M hole was due to massive delayed renovations right after Covid.
Owners of the third firm left behind a note at lunch that I found while clearing their table. Literally naming people who “sucked” and who were gonna be fired. Somehow that note got to every person on the list 😶👀
Hotels especially failing hotels are not a spot to try to make quick money. Recovering a failing hotel is a long term process, I've done it. It starts at the employee level, at every level of the operation. You need good housekeepers to clean rooms properly, maintenance to properly fix things, management to check those rooms and fixes, and front desk to make sure guests are happy and most importantly to farm reviews. Thing with hotels is once you have bad reviews, you have to drop prices, lower prices means the quality of your guests will also go down, meaning you have to rely on those housekeepers and maintenance people more, then it's up to the front desk staff even more to farm good reviews. If you can get good reviews and go from say 3.5 stars on Google up to 3.8, you can charge another $10 per night and get a bit better guests. Those better guests don't trash the rooms, so housekeeping can do better work in the rooms because the rooms aren't as bad. So then you have people happier with their stay and able to get 5 star reviews easier. Once you get to 4 stars you can charge another $10-15 per night. If you get to 4.2+, you can either raise prices a bit more, or you can start coasting because you're in the green again because you're selling more rooms at the right price. Depending on the PE company if you're able to refranchise to another brand and start fresh on reviews, that can be a quick turn around, but if you're not refranchising you might be fighting against hundreds or thousands of bad reviews, making it take an incredible amount of reviews to move the needle. If you have a front desk person not asking for reviews, forget about it. If you have housekeeping not doing their job right, forget about it. Same with maintenance. If your general manager isn't willing to go into all the rooms and double check the cleaning and fix small misses, you're not going to see a change. It's a really hard task, takes months of consistent hard work, but if the pay is right and upper management is supporting it can happen.
I grew up in and around the hospitality industry and worked in it for 6-7 years across 10+ properties and brands. The biggest thing they all seem to do and it never works is go out and find their dream GM or head of maintenance guy and massively over pay that one single employee and expect them to fix everything for them. Hotels have a ton of staff and choosing to spend 80% or more of payroll on 2 or 3 staff members then bitch about no one caring, lack of effort, we need to be a team, etc its just hilarious to me. Watched that exact scenario play out at 4 different hotels.
Yep, I experienced that at two properties, and once with a brand where I was the 'dream GM' they hired! Upper management just doesn't seem to understand that yes while you can overpay one person and get some good results, hotels are an entire ecosystem and you can't expect one person to fix all the underlying issues no matter how much you pay them. You can't heap money at a GM and expect them to check and fix 100+ rooms every day, but you can distribute that pay to the housekeepers and they'll check those 100+ rooms to make it so the GM IS able to check and fix those rooms because now instead of 4-5 small fixes in each room there's only 1-2 if any small fixes in them. The corporate heads just don't understand how the business works it seems.
The corporate heads just don't understand how the business works it seems.
They do theyre just purely driven by greed and higher profits at all costs. One staff member is one insurance policy if they spread that salary across 5 staff members it cost more because insurance policies. Godbless America. I got out because the last 3 I worked at post covid got had gotten used to incredibly low payroll costs from short staff during covid. Well post covid business started picking back up but they all seemed to want to retain those low payroll costs and not hire more staff just triple the covid staffs workload for no extra money. Fuck that. Last one i worked at was a 350 room with 3 pools and a event center hotel an I was one of 3 maintenance men for the entire place lol. They wanted hourly pool tests so my days were spent just walking back and forth across the place testing all 3 pools hourly. And you can be sure no one was doing PM's.
Yea unfortunately it just makes no sense because when things aren't done properly, the sales dry up, meaning less money to be had. Running things properly may cost more, but it means more consistent profits in the long run. But short sighted is the name of the game!
Really the problem is when they are publicly traded. They have to put the shareholders first even above running the company properly because otherwise the shareholders will vote the C levels out. That turns it into a race to the bottom.
Hotels especially failing hotels are not a spot to try to make quick money. Recovering a failing hotel is a long term process
I spent a lot of years working in hotels and I agree. Reputation is more important in the hospitality industry than most other businesses. Once you have a bad reputation, it's near impossible to shake it. And it's certainly not fast, cheap or easy to do.
The cocaine fueled building explosion of the eighties and ninties filled with organized crime and back door deals set their expectations too high.....or gm was a fall guy to appease the shareholders with either blood or money, and the money came up short.
Yeah for a fucking hotel of all things that's wild. It's an industry entirely built on the whims of other industries. Was he supposed to set up a few ten day movie festivals in town?
The company I work for was just sold for around $1 billion US.
When the (now former) owner was going through the process he refused to even consider any bids from PE firms. Wouldn’t even let them see any financials or anything. Just said no.
He’s a Wall Street guy so I asked him why he didn’t want those firms to bid. He said he didn’t want to do business with people who would tear down what he helped build.
Fifteen years ago my Dads boss decided to sell his business after building it up for 60+ years. He also refused to sell to anyone who wouldn’t continue the business and keep the employees. Took a sizeable cut to the overall sale price to make it happen (not that he didn’t walk away with many tens of millions), but it was important to him that it wasn’t just dismantled for profit. Today that business has almost tripled in expansion size. I guess that purchase worked out for them.
A bloke in N.Z built a plastic container business over 40 years and sold it for 600 million. Part of the deal was it had to still be manufactured in NZ for 20 years so that people kept their jobs, I'm sure that would have cost him money.
I used to own a duplex, and had a cousin renting one side. When I decided to sell it, I refused offers that wanted him out. Walked away from 15k but he still lives in the home he's lived in for the last 10 years
Thank you. 🫶 I had to move my household twice in 3 years because both times my rental was sold. For the first one I had a year to find another place, so I found a nice 3 bedroom house I could afford to rent only a few minutes from my job. The owners assured me they had no plans to sell. When my lease was up they only wanted to renew for 6 months, which I thought was sus, and then when the 6 months was up they dropped the bomb.
Hardly surprising, PE dont buy to build a company up, they dont buy to improve, rather they buy to squeeze more money out of the company and to strip any capital out, once its a empty husk they either sell it on or declare it bankrupt for the tax write off
Private equity are purely about destroying to make money, not creating or growing
The only reason we dont call them vulture funds is because they don't even wait for the company to be in trouble before they sweep in, they destroy healthy companys as well
If your company is taken over by PE, ignore everything they say and promise and start looking for a new job immediately
The problem is that labor, as a resource, is easily obtainable and highly subsidized for them. Many expenses related to having an employee is pre-tax or subsidized in a way, except for wages.
We are financial assets more than production assets.
Plus, we are expected to handle our finances like a business. But not like any business, a business with surplus revenue. One that sees more advantage in managing assets and finances instead of the day to day operations.
Do the menial work, but be savvy with every penny earned. Before you even take a penny, participate in as many employer sponsored benefits as possible. Healthcare insurance will lower the taxable income. Contribute the max to the 401(k). And then whatever left over, instead of spending that, invest it so that the dollar earned today is worth more than a dollar plus inflation next year.
The solution is simple to them. Just invest instead of spend. Like the successful people/businesses do. Why worry about work when you can turn that pittance from work into an asset.
Only so much of their wealth is really supported by the increase in consumer debt, which their employees own.
They need to resolve the issues with employer sponsored benefits.
I understand the sense of inevitability, but it's manufactured by those who need us to believe it, and it can be unmade. Industrial capitalism is a recent phenomenon in human history, and neoliberalism is only like 50 years old. These are not laws of nature.
Plenty of countries out there rocking the socialism that we could draw from.
That's why they spend so much money and time on the propaganda to turn socialism into a boogyman word. The answer is right there, but too many don't understand what it is and have learned to fear it.
That's why they spend so much money and time on the propaganda to turn socialism into a boogyman word.
Recently I've had a bit of luck using made-up phrases like "neighbor-family" and "local cultural network" to sway rabidly anti-socialist individuals into embracing totally-not-socialist solutions.
By framing society-scale problems as things affecting their immediate family, then expanding it cautiously outward to embrace neighbors and neighbors-of-neighbors, they seem to miraculously discover along the way that the government should be behaving in this manner towards all of us.
The only difference between "far left socialists" and the average American is that while the socialist aims to help all those who need it, the Average Joe helps his brother from facing homelessness, reluctantly aids his old neighbor, sympathetically refuses to help the guy down the block, and is outright furious about helping the guy one city over.
Stripped of sociopolitical context and cultural "trigger words", most people agree on these sort of solutions/approaches without hesitation. It's odd. And a bit sad.
And they have discovered the profit in misery. They are buying rest homes and vets. Deaths are up and people can't afford pet care. One common PE trick at rest homes is to send people to the ER for any minor problem.
Loot the value from a long-established brand and run with the money. It's what they always do. They don't contribute to the economy, then consolidate wealth for the few.
And Shopko. And this hits small town America hardest. We lost our Shopko a few years ago and Walgreens (and a severely overpriced grocery store) is all we have left. If Walgreens closes, I’ll be facing a minimum 45 minute drive for just about everything I need. In winter during bad weather, I’ll just be shit outta luck.
Relief is on the way for you. God willing, we’ll get rid of that unprofitable USPS and we’ll let free market capitalism decide if delivering things to your house makes sense or not. Prescription drugs, letters from CMS, Amazon packages…god willing, you’ll soon have to drive 45 minutes to pick up any of that!
I feel badly for the affected workers, but our neighborhood won't miss much if our Walgreens closes. Their pharmacy closed over a year ago, so those jobs are already gone. What remains is little more than a glorified liquor store with overpriced OTC meds, toiletries, and seasonal junk.
Left the company in 2019, and it felt like it was dead even then. A far cry from the way things were when I joined in 2006. Corporate idiots kept expanding for years when any reasonable person could see that Amazon, online pharmacies, and 90 day mail-order pharmacies were going to kill brick-and-mortar business.
I used to be a floater pharmacy tech for them in my area and the contrast between a busy store and a slow store was stark, you could tell which locations were going to close because their pharmacy would be dead for hours on a Saturday, then other stores would have endless lines in store and drive thru. I liked working the slower stores because it was less stressful. Ended up going to a grocery store pharmacy after 2 years because I was offered a full time position with better pay. I don’t work retail anymore and I don’t miss it, but I appreciate that Walgreens at the time helped me get my certification and into a new line of work.
Im old but I remember when Queens NY was going from well kept neighborhood to danger zone slums. Now to rent, lat alone buy will cost you 30x what a family of 4 lived off mostly comfortable, with a few vacations on.
In the 90s and 00s, a joke around Chicago was: how do you know your neighborhood is about to be gentrified? They just opened a Walgreens and Starbucks on the corner
Funny because as a worker you can just make sure to fuck them over for double the amount.
Businesses don't understand that they need their workers and if their employees
If you're A supervisor and you just lost your Christmas pay? Maybe don't spend the extra effort to investigate potential theft from one of your employees. They are paying you to do your job, not for that extra brain power you keep in reserve. Save it for your friends and family.
You save a dollar of money fucking me over, I'll make sure you lose two in a legal and ethical way.
Know the business is short staff and needs someone to come in for a shift? Don't offer to take the shift.
Just remember the minute they can replace you with an automated process they will, so loyalty means nothing.
100%, its time to make shitty practices by shitty owners really, REALLY, unprofitable. If they want to take away every perk and dignity, its going to cost them their business. Death by 1000 papercuts.
In fairness, Walgreens as a corporation wasn't much better than private equity by the time this deal occurred. Been a shitty place to work for over a decade really.
i was out enjoying the unseasonably warm weather and saw the local one open. Seems like it was open most of the day. Fucking brutal. I'm sure the PE firm will use the loses associated with being open as a means to cut healthcare or other stuff included ing raises.
We were open yesterday but don't worry they also have cut hours to the bone so we were understaffed while handling all those customers who made sure to say gosh you're the only place open!
How can you make a Walgreens even more understaffed? Every time I go in there, finding one of only maybe two employees working to check you out has taken 15 minutes or longer. If there’s any sort of line or if I have a question for an employee it will take a minimum of an hour before I am able to leave the store. I avoid Walgreens like the plague
Not here, work at a hospital and for the last 3-4 years we found out the hard way because nothing open so difficult to d/c patients with no pharms open
My husbands company was bought out by PE. First thing they did was take away his portal to portal, exponentially lowering his qualify of life by requiring him to be in his work vehicle 3 extra hours per day in traffic.
I didn't know what that meant and imagined your husband worked at Aperture Science and GLaDOS no longer allowed him to make portals to get to and from work.
Turns out "portal to portal" is a legal definition for the time an employee must spend on work "integral and indispensable" to an employee's principal activities.
My wife works as a key holder at Walgreens. She worked all day yesterday with only one other person. She said she was slammed all day. Fucking disgusting.
CVS is the same way. Corporate has been cutting hours and most stores only have 2 people sometimes 1. Doesn’t help when everything is locked up, and somehow the associates are expected to work freight, unlock lockboxes and be a cashier.
I would be surprised if they make it that far. Every one in my city seems to have their pharmacy staff, and two other workers around the store. One to check customers out, the other to bounce around from their photo, cosmetics, and opening up lock boxes for customers.
Or they buy a popular restaraunt chain and gradually degrade the quality/quantity of the food while keeping the prices the same or even raising them. Happened to Red Lobster, Panera Bread, Jimmy John's, and it's about to happen to Jersey Mikes as well.
As long as we let them, private equity will continue to loot and pillage the United Stated of America.
Americans are totally being robbed by their wealthiest and based on how Republican always vote it looks like they’re just going to meekly sit there and let them. All while saying “more please!”
This is exactly what happened when my veterinary clinic was bought out. Wages and benefits were decimated. Half the nurses were fired outright - but only the ones with experience (and the highest salaries).
As if pre-private equity wasn’t bad enough. How good could their benefits have been before, and now they’re stripped of whatever little they had. Absolutely criminal.
The first thing Sycamore Partners did after acquiring Staples was take a $1 billion dividend and give it to themselves. This is legalized piracy for the billionaire class.
I’m not trying to be snarky, but what is the point of private equity buying all these business if the inevitable conclusion is they will be shut down in 12-18 months? Why even bother? Is it just to stip the assets like a thief in the night?
Pretty much just that, it's extreme short term gains by trying to optimize everything to make more money for the investors.
But again it's short term and the people in charge typically have zero experience in whatever companies they are buying out, and also have zero care as long as it brings in money for the investors.
Unfortunately the practices are so short sighted, that even if they aren't trying to asset strip the company they are basically going to ruin it because it makes things untenable for employees and if they sell a service usually the customers also. And it gets even worse if it gets sold off to a new pe firm because then they are going to make the practices even more lean from the previous one.
But hey, when we live in a society that only cares about profits quarter to quarter and not long term what does it matter if those at the top get a little richer now as the detriment to everyone else
You usually only hear about ones that get shut down within a year, but that's not always the case. It's sometimes a last resort for companies, like Walgreens. Sometimes they're able to turn things around through aggressive cost-cutting and restructuring in which case they sell the company in like 5 years, and other times they can't so they declare bankruptcy after selling everything of value. And then after bankruptcy, they may try to restructure again. While doing this, yup they loot the company.
Anyway, the situation sucks for Walgreens employees but the company was going to shit and they were probably going bankrupt without any big changes. This may or may not work in the long run.
You are right - no one would invest in private equity funds if all they did was bankrupt companies - not a sustainable model
Most here are just latching onto the rage bait and blaming PE for everything. Walgreens was in dire trouble before the buyout and this is a Hail Mary by Sycamore to see if they can turn it around
I'm in the US. IIRC Walgreens bought the Boots pharmacy chain in the UK. Half our US Walgreens don't even have pharmacies now, just liquor and junk merch. Same thing happening there?
When I started, the bulk of major / federal.
holidays we got time and a half or double pay, and we were closed Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years.
Around 2013 they took that away, but did so in a subtle throw away email randomly early in the year that most management missed.
Managers at store level only noticed the change when they had a higher allocation of budget for staffing the week of Easter when it was no longer calculating time and a half pay.
I can understand some stores but who the fuck needs Office Depot on a major holiday?? "Oh dang I forgot to pick up a ream of nice 8x12 paper for mom this year!"
I just remember when the news dropped about the end of time and a half, literally every employee then engaged in a fight to the death about asking off for 4th of July, Memorial Day, Labor Day, etc.
It created a volatile atmosphere amongst staff and all because corporate wanted to pinch pennies even more...
So back when I was a fresh faced MBA student, as part of private equity class they wheeled in one of the guys that was instrumental to the Debenhams buyout.
This is quite a notorious PE deal in the UK where they sold off the real estate and did a lease back, paid themselves lots of management fees, loaded the company up to the eyeballs with debt and use the proceeds to do a dividend recap, did a fire sale of older stock, let the stores get run down, replaced the (female) CEO who'd worked her way up from the shop floor with some dude with no fashion retail experience and a bunch of other dumb stuff that basically ruined the brand and bankrupted the business.
Dude still thought he was super smart. This is just one example of many similar cases (eg toys R us). These people are completely sociopathic.
Of course they did. When my previous company was acquired, I got to bring one of my employees over with me. We had an agreement that our jobs would be guaranteed for two years following the date of the acquisition. Two years almost to the day, and my boss calls me up to tell me that I am going to have to deliver the news to my single employee that they were being let go.
I decided to return the favor by immediately beginning my job search and then delivering them a zero-day notice on the day that I finally signed my offer letter and officially got a replacement position.
I wasn't aware Walgreens had been bought, but it makes sense. Every store now looks like Bradlees circa 1988. And this sounds like a stupid move. Pharmacies are notoriously difficult to make money from.
Wages for Walgreens workers are already ridiculously low, especially for pharmacy techs that work the prescription window, where things are so bad they've had to post signs asking the customers not to be abusive sh#theads. Private Equity's about to ruin another classic American brand name company.
Oh and they are closing Walgreens left and right. There are two in my city that closed in the last few months.
This is all standard procedure for private equity firms/venture capital these days. They run the business into the ground, close it, sometimes declare bankruptcy, sell all the assets, don't pay local fees (taxes etc) and go do it again with another company.
It's happened to SEVERAL long term busines chains lately.
And I would not be surprised if Jeff Bozozos is heavily invested in this PE.
I still don't understand how these people make money. They buy up a struggling business, ruin it and run it into the ground, and then file for bankruptcy. How do they make enough money to buy new companies? Why are they allowed to continue buying new companies when they just file for bankruptcy? Why are they allowed to abuse the bankruptcy courts like this?
The answer is debt. They buy a company, leverage it with all the debt, collect their bonuses, company goes bankrupt and the banks/investors lose it all from holding the bag.
The next big one is drivetime. Drivetime is privately owned by the same billionaire who owns carvana. Carvana just got included to the s and p 500 and their business model is to offload their loans by bundling them and selling to other finance companies. They don’t care if you make your first payment they just want you in a loan. The cars they can’t sell get bought by the owners private company, drive time. Drivetime is helping cook the books for carvana. The billionaire owner has been DUMPING his carvana stock because he knows the writing is on the wall and needs to exit. He will get private equity to take over drivetime first, to then be loaded with debt from carvana selling all the unsold inventory to drivetime, so carvana can keep its stock price up long enough to exit. Then, private equity will come for carvana.
If everyone collectively stopped going into debt then we can stop the cycle. Unionize. Demand higher wages, and hope the federal reserve keeps interest rates high (they won’t, especially come May when the new chair is appointed by trump).
Until then nothing will change and the workers and general public will continue to hold the bags so billionaires can get more billions.
No good ever comes from private equity. The place I worked was bought by a PE firm and it didn't take much time before long time employees ended up on the layoff list, products being cancelled and product development for most things offshored. I got axed in January after 20+ years working there.
The reason why we don't have boarding pay and deplane pay and sit pay is because there is 200,000,000 applicants every year for about 4,000 jobs. For a while I even worked at a regional airline, which pays even less. I made about $9/real hour or $19/Flight Hour. As long as there is 200,000,000 people wanting my job, there's little leverage to force capitalists to pay more.
Just the day before yesterday, I told my sister that PE bought Walgreen's so expect them to go under. This is the beginning. I also warmed everybody when Jersey Mike's was bought earlier this year.
If a place you like is bought by PE, go ASAP to get whatever it was you liked and be prepared for it to change and then finally go out of business.
I wish that these headlines would name the horrible people who are making these decisions because it is individuals who are choosing to fuck over everyone and not some sterilized "firm" that had no choice in the matter. Also, it should be obligatory to point out how they are connected to other wealthy individuals, particularly the pedophile world. Here's a bit of background on one of the founders of Sycamore Partners - Stefan Kaluzny:
"NEXT Model Management, Mnuchin and Wexner
NEXT Model Management was acquired by Golden Gate Capital. And if look at the list of Directors of NEXT Models in the UK, we can see that the two prominent figures are Stefan Kaluzny and David Dominik. Both of these men have a close relationship with Leslie Wexner.
Dominik was the founding partner of Golden Gate Capital and Kaluzny was the Managing Partner, until he left to set up his own finance outfit called Sycamore Partners. In 2007 Golden gate Capital became business partners with Wexner, acquiring a majority share in Wexner's retail chain Express for $548 million. Kaluzny with Managing Partner at the time and he sat on the Board of Express with Wexner.
In 2011 Sycamore Partners became the majority owner of Mast Global Fashions, a third-party sourcing business that is responsible for sourcing almost all of Wexner's retail textiles. Wexner's The Limited still kept a 49% stake in the company. In their dealings with Wexner, Sycamore is represented by the law firm Kirkland &Ellis, who had their own deep links with Epstein, including Alexander Acosta and Bill Barr.
Then in 2017, Kaluzny's new private equity firm Sycamore Partners acquired the intellectual property of Limited Stores LLC for a reported $25.75 million after the former Columbus-based L Brands spinout declared bankruptcy and closed its 250 stores at the start of 2017. The Limited was Leslie Wexner's original retail brand started by himself and his parents in 1964. And in 2020 Kaluzny's Sycamore Partners agreed to purchase a majority share in Wexner's Victoria's Secret for $525 million. The Covid-19 pandemic however put the deal on ice.
In addition, Kaluzny's Sycamore Partners other major investment was in Talbots retail chain. They installed Michael Weiss as CEO, who was one of Les Wexner's most loyal and long-time sidekicks.
Clearly Kaluzny and Domink (Sycamore Partners and Golden Gate Capital) are closely connected and intertwined with the business of Leselie Wexner. Kaluzny is also a Harvard Business school graduate. So it's certainly interesting they acquired NEXT Model Management. Kaluzny ended up dating and then marrying a Ford model Alex Elliott. They live just 2 miles from Epstein's former residence at Palm Beach."
Private equity is vulture capitalism at peak monstrosity. They only have one goal - extract as much wealth as possible while running the business as lean as possible. It benefits no one but the equity suits. It is a toxic waste that harms society.
Wild that the company spent around $15 billion on stock buybacks circa 2017-18, only to be bought out for 2/3rds that seven years later. I feel bad for my former coworkers, but WBA is getting everything it deserves.
Twice in the past 8 years the company I was working for at the time was acquired by Private Equity. The first time I stuck around for maybe two months and watched them hack and slash anything they could purely in the name of profit, and then nope'd out. A few years later another company I was working at was aacquired by PE. I immediately stated my intention to leave as soon as the transition happened. My management understood, but the new leadership in place couldnt understand why I'd leave 'with such a great new opportunity about to start'. One year later 90% of my team had left.
This is standard practice of private equity firms.
They probably took out a loan in Walgreens name to pay out bonuses to themselves. Will strip the company for parts, then file for bankruptcy within 2 years.
It's wild how far removed from the lives they ruin these people are... the workers being fucked will literally never even lay eyes on the people doing it.
I have this feeling if the results of those actions weren't so far removed from the people doing it, they wouldn't be able to do so nearly as easily and if they can... well then we should treat them like the monsters they've revealed themselves to be.
Someone who works at Walgreens here, neither the OP's post title nor the article are entirely true. It's semi-clickbait outrage.
Holiday pay was not outright taken away, not entirely. The policy changed. Previously, all employees received "holiday pay" equal to their average daily hours (which for me was only 5.4 hours) despite working almost entirely 7, 8, and 9 hour shifts for weeks on end. You received this small bonus as long as you worked the day of the holiday, or if you didn't work the Holiday at least didn't call off the day before or after.
People who didn't have to work the Holiday or scheduled PTO to skip it got the bonus anyway and those forced to work received no extra compensation.
The policy has changed so that you only receive holiday pay for actually working the holiday, and not only that, you get paid double time for working them. I made $33/hr to work Christmas and will get it again for new years day.
Opinions about the change are conflicted amongst associates, with those who are either forced to work holidays or those who volunteer for it being better compensated while those who got to stay home are upset they're losing the extra pay.
Regardless of your feelings on this, no, "paid vacation" was not taken from the employees nor was holiday pay axed entirely. It was just shifted to be given to those who actually work the Holiday like most other companies.
I do think they could still stand to give it to all employees that being said. Axe those inflated C-suite salaries.
The one thing I actually like about Walgreens near me is the photo printing. Between a wedding and framed photos this year I've used them a bunch. It would suck to lose that (I know there are other options online but it's damn easy to just walk in and grab them)
Not long ago, there were three drug stores within a short bike ride of my home.
The closest, a right aid, went out of business not long ago & all my prescriptions transferred to Walgreens. If Walgreens goes dark, I'm stuck with a CVS across the street from it that looks like it hasn't been vacuumed in 20 years.
This does not bode well for our country in general.
We have enough money to buy this whole company but not enough to keep running it the way it's been run for the last few years. You know, the things that have made it profitable enough to entice us to buy it in the first place? all gone!
They all want to maximize their investment in as little time as possible while fucking over their employees they don't care if they have 98% turnaround as long as they X10 they investment. Wish enough people would put their issues away so we could all join and fight the owners together. But far too many would quickly turn their back on they drowning coworkers of it means an extra 2 cents/ hour in they pay 😮💨
This is because private equity in the US gets away with a lot of shit. Same Sycamore Partners bought Rona from Lowes a few years ago, but the Unionized staff in Quebec still have all their negotiated benefits. It also helps that the Quebec part of the network accounts for a massive chunk of the business.
Private Equity should be illegal.
Worked at an elevated hotel that was pretty nice.
In my 1.5 years there we went through 3 private equity firm owners. Each one making worse changes than the last. I quit when the 3rd firm made shit so bad the ENTIRE kitchen staff walked out.
The second firm fired a GM they recruited from across the country because he didn’t get the place out of a $2M hole in one year
Let me guess….it was the PE firm that caused the $2m hole to begin with.
Could be, but a lot of the time PE buys struggling firms.
What's funny is, really, 2million is a drop in the bucket.
And being a hotel, that 2mil could simply be the difference between some needed renovations or maintenance and a decline in stays and not be a real issue.
The problem, really, is PE often has no patience and wants results, and their money, right now, which is fine when you're talking micro factors but you can't just handwave away macro factors that are out of a firms control.
3 PE firms in nearly as many years sounds like PE with more money than understanding of their markets and goals and how those align with their acquisitions.
You hit the nail on the head.
The first two firms were ones that specialized in refurbishing and reselling office buildings.
The $2M hole was due to massive delayed renovations right after Covid.
Owners of the third firm left behind a note at lunch that I found while clearing their table. Literally naming people who “sucked” and who were gonna be fired. Somehow that note got to every person on the list 😶👀
Hell yeah, brother
Hotels especially failing hotels are not a spot to try to make quick money. Recovering a failing hotel is a long term process, I've done it. It starts at the employee level, at every level of the operation. You need good housekeepers to clean rooms properly, maintenance to properly fix things, management to check those rooms and fixes, and front desk to make sure guests are happy and most importantly to farm reviews. Thing with hotels is once you have bad reviews, you have to drop prices, lower prices means the quality of your guests will also go down, meaning you have to rely on those housekeepers and maintenance people more, then it's up to the front desk staff even more to farm good reviews. If you can get good reviews and go from say 3.5 stars on Google up to 3.8, you can charge another $10 per night and get a bit better guests. Those better guests don't trash the rooms, so housekeeping can do better work in the rooms because the rooms aren't as bad. So then you have people happier with their stay and able to get 5 star reviews easier. Once you get to 4 stars you can charge another $10-15 per night. If you get to 4.2+, you can either raise prices a bit more, or you can start coasting because you're in the green again because you're selling more rooms at the right price. Depending on the PE company if you're able to refranchise to another brand and start fresh on reviews, that can be a quick turn around, but if you're not refranchising you might be fighting against hundreds or thousands of bad reviews, making it take an incredible amount of reviews to move the needle. If you have a front desk person not asking for reviews, forget about it. If you have housekeeping not doing their job right, forget about it. Same with maintenance. If your general manager isn't willing to go into all the rooms and double check the cleaning and fix small misses, you're not going to see a change. It's a really hard task, takes months of consistent hard work, but if the pay is right and upper management is supporting it can happen.
I grew up in and around the hospitality industry and worked in it for 6-7 years across 10+ properties and brands. The biggest thing they all seem to do and it never works is go out and find their dream GM or head of maintenance guy and massively over pay that one single employee and expect them to fix everything for them. Hotels have a ton of staff and choosing to spend 80% or more of payroll on 2 or 3 staff members then bitch about no one caring, lack of effort, we need to be a team, etc its just hilarious to me. Watched that exact scenario play out at 4 different hotels.
Yep, I experienced that at two properties, and once with a brand where I was the 'dream GM' they hired! Upper management just doesn't seem to understand that yes while you can overpay one person and get some good results, hotels are an entire ecosystem and you can't expect one person to fix all the underlying issues no matter how much you pay them. You can't heap money at a GM and expect them to check and fix 100+ rooms every day, but you can distribute that pay to the housekeepers and they'll check those 100+ rooms to make it so the GM IS able to check and fix those rooms because now instead of 4-5 small fixes in each room there's only 1-2 if any small fixes in them. The corporate heads just don't understand how the business works it seems.
They do theyre just purely driven by greed and higher profits at all costs. One staff member is one insurance policy if they spread that salary across 5 staff members it cost more because insurance policies. Godbless America. I got out because the last 3 I worked at post covid got had gotten used to incredibly low payroll costs from short staff during covid. Well post covid business started picking back up but they all seemed to want to retain those low payroll costs and not hire more staff just triple the covid staffs workload for no extra money. Fuck that. Last one i worked at was a 350 room with 3 pools and a event center hotel an I was one of 3 maintenance men for the entire place lol. They wanted hourly pool tests so my days were spent just walking back and forth across the place testing all 3 pools hourly. And you can be sure no one was doing PM's.
Yea unfortunately it just makes no sense because when things aren't done properly, the sales dry up, meaning less money to be had. Running things properly may cost more, but it means more consistent profits in the long run. But short sighted is the name of the game!
Really the problem is when they are publicly traded. They have to put the shareholders first even above running the company properly because otherwise the shareholders will vote the C levels out. That turns it into a race to the bottom.
I spent a lot of years working in hotels and I agree. Reputation is more important in the hospitality industry than most other businesses. Once you have a bad reputation, it's near impossible to shake it. And it's certainly not fast, cheap or easy to do.
Probably, with a leveraged buyout
Totally. The use leveraged buys and dump the debt on the business. Then they collect their spoils at the cost of the business.
2m in a year...talk about overblown expectations.
The cocaine fueled building explosion of the eighties and ninties filled with organized crime and back door deals set their expectations too high.....or gm was a fall guy to appease the shareholders with either blood or money, and the money came up short.
Either way, cocaine is one hell of a drug.
Yeah for a fucking hotel of all things that's wild. It's an industry entirely built on the whims of other industries. Was he supposed to set up a few ten day movie festivals in town?
The company I work for was just sold for around $1 billion US.
When the (now former) owner was going through the process he refused to even consider any bids from PE firms. Wouldn’t even let them see any financials or anything. Just said no.
He’s a Wall Street guy so I asked him why he didn’t want those firms to bid. He said he didn’t want to do business with people who would tear down what he helped build.
Fifteen years ago my Dads boss decided to sell his business after building it up for 60+ years. He also refused to sell to anyone who wouldn’t continue the business and keep the employees. Took a sizeable cut to the overall sale price to make it happen (not that he didn’t walk away with many tens of millions), but it was important to him that it wasn’t just dismantled for profit. Today that business has almost tripled in expansion size. I guess that purchase worked out for them.
A bloke in N.Z built a plastic container business over 40 years and sold it for 600 million. Part of the deal was it had to still be manufactured in NZ for 20 years so that people kept their jobs, I'm sure that would have cost him money.
I used to own a duplex, and had a cousin renting one side. When I decided to sell it, I refused offers that wanted him out. Walked away from 15k but he still lives in the home he's lived in for the last 10 years
Thank you. 🫶 I had to move my household twice in 3 years because both times my rental was sold. For the first one I had a year to find another place, so I found a nice 3 bedroom house I could afford to rent only a few minutes from my job. The owners assured me they had no plans to sell. When my lease was up they only wanted to renew for 6 months, which I thought was sus, and then when the 6 months was up they dropped the bomb.
Being a renter is so precarious and unstable. 😢
That's cool but the new owners will sell to PE
In the future, yes. But between now and then it made a hell of a difference to everyone working there.
Hardly surprising, PE dont buy to build a company up, they dont buy to improve, rather they buy to squeeze more money out of the company and to strip any capital out, once its a empty husk they either sell it on or declare it bankrupt for the tax write off
Private equity are purely about destroying to make money, not creating or growing
The only reason we dont call them vulture funds is because they don't even wait for the company to be in trouble before they sweep in, they destroy healthy companys as well
If your company is taken over by PE, ignore everything they say and promise and start looking for a new job immediately
I don’t get why PE makes so much. All they do is just tear shit down to the bare bones
Private Equity executives should be the ones being deported to CECOT.
My vote for whomever makes this their presidential policy platform.
Yeet the rich
Workers should own all institutions that are driven by labor—so all of them.
Hell yeah
Most relevant username ever
The problem is that labor, as a resource, is easily obtainable and highly subsidized for them. Many expenses related to having an employee is pre-tax or subsidized in a way, except for wages.
We are financial assets more than production assets.
Plus, we are expected to handle our finances like a business. But not like any business, a business with surplus revenue. One that sees more advantage in managing assets and finances instead of the day to day operations.
Do the menial work, but be savvy with every penny earned. Before you even take a penny, participate in as many employer sponsored benefits as possible. Healthcare insurance will lower the taxable income. Contribute the max to the 401(k). And then whatever left over, instead of spending that, invest it so that the dollar earned today is worth more than a dollar plus inflation next year.
The solution is simple to them. Just invest instead of spend. Like the successful people/businesses do. Why worry about work when you can turn that pittance from work into an asset.
Only so much of their wealth is really supported by the increase in consumer debt, which their employees own.
They need to resolve the issues with employer sponsored benefits.
Our current administration is run like a private equity firm
Private Equity are cancer and politicians are complicit in the destruction.
It should be but that would mean benefitting us regular folk and there’s no chance in doing that.
I understand the sense of inevitability, but it's manufactured by those who need us to believe it, and it can be unmade. Industrial capitalism is a recent phenomenon in human history, and neoliberalism is only like 50 years old. These are not laws of nature.
Mark Fisher. Capitalist Realism - Is There No Alternative?](https://share.libbyapp.com/title/9304425)
Optimism is a choice. Defeatism guarantees defeat.
Okay so what do we do? Give us the blueprint.
More socialism. A lot more.
Plenty of countries out there rocking the socialism that we could draw from.
That's why they spend so much money and time on the propaganda to turn socialism into a boogyman word. The answer is right there, but too many don't understand what it is and have learned to fear it.
Recently I've had a bit of luck using made-up phrases like "neighbor-family" and "local cultural network" to sway rabidly anti-socialist individuals into embracing totally-not-socialist solutions.
By framing society-scale problems as things affecting their immediate family, then expanding it cautiously outward to embrace neighbors and neighbors-of-neighbors, they seem to miraculously discover along the way that the government should be behaving in this manner towards all of us.
The only difference between "far left socialists" and the average American is that while the socialist aims to help all those who need it, the Average Joe helps his brother from facing homelessness, reluctantly aids his old neighbor, sympathetically refuses to help the guy down the block, and is outright furious about helping the guy one city over.
Stripped of sociopolitical context and cultural "trigger words", most people agree on these sort of solutions/approaches without hesitation. It's odd. And a bit sad.
Looks a lot like turn of the century Russia solutions are being made inevitable
Yeah, it's the main driving force with everything getting worse, in my opinion.
And they have discovered the profit in misery. They are buying rest homes and vets. Deaths are up and people can't afford pet care. One common PE trick at rest homes is to send people to the ER for any minor problem.
Yeah and so should a lot of other things.
Turns out laws are there to keep the poors in line.
Private equity is a scourge
Makes me feel better about stealing so much from Walgreens 😂
Ah yes, good ole vulture capitalism. I don't know how to squeeze more money out of this particular cash cow, so I'm gonna sell it to the butchers.
Caring about employees? Providing valuable service to a community? Pivoting for long term stability?
Nah. Feed it to the fattest fucking pig you can find today.
They never really recovered from the Theranos deal.
Loot the value from a long-established brand and run with the money. It's what they always do. They don't contribute to the economy, then consolidate wealth for the few.
Vulture Capitalism
That's unfair, vultures serve an important ecological function.
Yeah vultures eat what no one else wants. And in the process make things better for everyone else.
It's just capitalism.
That's standard operating procedure for them; it's the only reason they exist.
Surprising who? Spoiler alert - next up are the layoffs leading up to the closing of all the Walgreens.
Private equity/leveraged buyouts killed Joane's, Toys r Us, Sears, Party City...
And Shopko. And this hits small town America hardest. We lost our Shopko a few years ago and Walgreens (and a severely overpriced grocery store) is all we have left. If Walgreens closes, I’ll be facing a minimum 45 minute drive for just about everything I need. In winter during bad weather, I’ll just be shit outta luck.
Relief is on the way for you. God willing, we’ll get rid of that unprofitable USPS and we’ll let free market capitalism decide if delivering things to your house makes sense or not. Prescription drugs, letters from CMS, Amazon packages…god willing, you’ll soon have to drive 45 minutes to pick up any of that!
Have you even said thank you, yet?
With digital money, they’ll probably just decide I don’t need those things and freeze my account anyway! Thanks for helping me save!! 🫶🏻
And you'd better be wearing a suit when you do!
Buddy already lost his corporate job with them. Luckily they had just hired him so he ended up with a ton of severance. Gotta love PE
Soon, it will strip away their jobs and neighborhoods of their Walgreens.
I feel badly for the affected workers, but our neighborhood won't miss much if our Walgreens closes. Their pharmacy closed over a year ago, so those jobs are already gone. What remains is little more than a glorified liquor store with overpriced OTC meds, toiletries, and seasonal junk.
Walgreens is a shell of its former self.
Left the company in 2019, and it felt like it was dead even then. A far cry from the way things were when I joined in 2006. Corporate idiots kept expanding for years when any reasonable person could see that Amazon, online pharmacies, and 90 day mail-order pharmacies were going to kill brick-and-mortar business.
I used to be a floater pharmacy tech for them in my area and the contrast between a busy store and a slow store was stark, you could tell which locations were going to close because their pharmacy would be dead for hours on a Saturday, then other stores would have endless lines in store and drive thru. I liked working the slower stores because it was less stressful. Ended up going to a grocery store pharmacy after 2 years because I was offered a full time position with better pay. I don’t work retail anymore and I don’t miss it, but I appreciate that Walgreens at the time helped me get my certification and into a new line of work.
Yep. Literally only reason I goto walgreens is shaving supplies and makeup and thats just because I hate dealing with walmart
Same shit with sears, “the internet will never beat us”.
What's the point of a Walgreens without the pharmacy? That's what I go there for 99% of the time.
Hell, they're already stripping neighborhoods of homes. Blackstone by themselves own over 500,000 homes.
Im old but I remember when Queens NY was going from well kept neighborhood to danger zone slums. Now to rent, lat alone buy will cost you 30x what a family of 4 lived off mostly comfortable, with a few vacations on.
In the 90s and 00s, a joke around Chicago was: how do you know your neighborhood is about to be gentrified? They just opened a Walgreens and Starbucks on the corner
Private equity screwing people over? Surely not…
Funny because as a worker you can just make sure to fuck them over for double the amount.
Businesses don't understand that they need their workers and if their employees
If you're A supervisor and you just lost your Christmas pay? Maybe don't spend the extra effort to investigate potential theft from one of your employees. They are paying you to do your job, not for that extra brain power you keep in reserve. Save it for your friends and family.
You save a dollar of money fucking me over, I'll make sure you lose two in a legal and ethical way.
Know the business is short staff and needs someone to come in for a shift? Don't offer to take the shift.
Just remember the minute they can replace you with an automated process they will, so loyalty means nothing.
Right on! These capitalist vultures fear the spread of information about the power of their working class. WE MADE YOU. And we can also break you.
100%, its time to make shitty practices by shitty owners really, REALLY, unprofitable. If they want to take away every perk and dignity, its going to cost them their business. Death by 1000 papercuts.
Companies are incapable of caring for you. Your sacrifice means nothing.
Sounds good on paper but without any union representation around there will always be scabs who rat folks out or lick boots or squabble for scraps.
Yeah I've learned as soon as private equity buys your company it is time to start looking for another job.
It doesn't matter who in upper management is your friend or what you run there is some stranger at another company who could fire you the next day.
Probably a one time thing
In fairness, Walgreens as a corporation wasn't much better than private equity by the time this deal occurred. Been a shitty place to work for over a decade really.
Walgreens seems like a big get for PE. In a lot of cities, it’s the only store around. This really sucks for those people.
They know there will be people desperate enough to take the jobs that people quit after such an insult. Forced quitting.
You misspelled capitalism.
i was out enjoying the unseasonably warm weather and saw the local one open. Seems like it was open most of the day. Fucking brutal. I'm sure the PE firm will use the loses associated with being open as a means to cut healthcare or other stuff included ing raises.
We were open yesterday but don't worry they also have cut hours to the bone so we were understaffed while handling all those customers who made sure to say gosh you're the only place open!
How can you make a Walgreens even more understaffed? Every time I go in there, finding one of only maybe two employees working to check you out has taken 15 minutes or longer. If there’s any sort of line or if I have a question for an employee it will take a minimum of an hour before I am able to leave the store. I avoid Walgreens like the plague
Walgreens has always been open on Christmas, many memories of going on a liquor run before and/or during the family party
Not here, work at a hospital and for the last 3-4 years we found out the hard way because nothing open so difficult to d/c patients with no pharms open
If your company is bought out(ESPECIALLY by a PEF), start preparing your resume.
Abolish capitalism.
My husbands company was bought out by PE. First thing they did was take away his portal to portal, exponentially lowering his qualify of life by requiring him to be in his work vehicle 3 extra hours per day in traffic.
I didn't know what that meant and imagined your husband worked at Aperture Science and GLaDOS no longer allowed him to make portals to get to and from work.
Turns out "portal to portal" is a legal definition for the time an employee must spend on work "integral and indispensable" to an employee's principal activities.
My wife works as a key holder at Walgreens. She worked all day yesterday with only one other person. She said she was slammed all day. Fucking disgusting.
CVS is the same way. Corporate has been cutting hours and most stores only have 2 people sometimes 1. Doesn’t help when everything is locked up, and somehow the associates are expected to work freight, unlock lockboxes and be a cashier.
So Walgreens will be dead in about 5 years then
I would be surprised if they make it that far. Every one in my city seems to have their pharmacy staff, and two other workers around the store. One to check customers out, the other to bounce around from their photo, cosmetics, and opening up lock boxes for customers.
Mine aren't much better, and they only have 1 pharmacy in my area that's 24 hours.
Maybe 2.
They’re gonna strip Walgreens for parts. Private equity doesn’t make any company better
Yup. They just try to recoup a fractional profit on their investment, regardless of how it destorys the company.
Or they buy a popular restaraunt chain and gradually degrade the quality/quantity of the food while keeping the prices the same or even raising them. Happened to Red Lobster, Panera Bread, Jimmy John's, and it's about to happen to Jersey Mikes as well.
Rest in Pieces, Joann's.
Great, they can join the empty CVS in my neighborhood. Love all the empty storefronts.
what i've never gotten is, how do they make money by buying a company only to put it out of business.
It’s all about tax write offs. It’s a whole shell game.
As long as we let them, private equity will continue to loot and pillage the United Stated of America.
Americans are totally being robbed by their wealthiest and based on how Republican always vote it looks like they’re just going to meekly sit there and let them. All while saying “more please!”
Private equity needs to be outlawed
Never buying anything from Walgreens again.
I’d also add CVS to that list
My division just got bought by private equity. Transition period ends 1/1/26. Can't wait for the fun new policies and games to begin.
This is exactly what happened when my veterinary clinic was bought out. Wages and benefits were decimated. Half the nurses were fired outright - but only the ones with experience (and the highest salaries).
As if pre-private equity wasn’t bad enough. How good could their benefits have been before, and now they’re stripped of whatever little they had. Absolutely criminal.
The first thing Sycamore Partners did after acquiring Staples was take a $1 billion dividend and give it to themselves. This is legalized piracy for the billionaire class.
I’m not trying to be snarky, but what is the point of private equity buying all these business if the inevitable conclusion is they will be shut down in 12-18 months? Why even bother? Is it just to stip the assets like a thief in the night?
Yes, you nailed it.... it's not competitive capitalism that's for sure....
More like parasites. They strip a business of value until there is nothing left. Common thieves rarely go that far.
Pretty much just that, it's extreme short term gains by trying to optimize everything to make more money for the investors.
But again it's short term and the people in charge typically have zero experience in whatever companies they are buying out, and also have zero care as long as it brings in money for the investors.
Unfortunately the practices are so short sighted, that even if they aren't trying to asset strip the company they are basically going to ruin it because it makes things untenable for employees and if they sell a service usually the customers also. And it gets even worse if it gets sold off to a new pe firm because then they are going to make the practices even more lean from the previous one.
But hey, when we live in a society that only cares about profits quarter to quarter and not long term what does it matter if those at the top get a little richer now as the detriment to everyone else
Yes, it is to take everything that’s potentially valuable and leave before the company implodes.
You usually only hear about ones that get shut down within a year, but that's not always the case. It's sometimes a last resort for companies, like Walgreens. Sometimes they're able to turn things around through aggressive cost-cutting and restructuring in which case they sell the company in like 5 years, and other times they can't so they declare bankruptcy after selling everything of value. And then after bankruptcy, they may try to restructure again. While doing this, yup they loot the company.
Anyway, the situation sucks for Walgreens employees but the company was going to shit and they were probably going bankrupt without any big changes. This may or may not work in the long run.
You are right - no one would invest in private equity funds if all they did was bankrupt companies - not a sustainable model
Most here are just latching onto the rage bait and blaming PE for everything. Walgreens was in dire trouble before the buyout and this is a Hail Mary by Sycamore to see if they can turn it around
I'm in the US. IIRC Walgreens bought the Boots pharmacy chain in the UK. Half our US Walgreens don't even have pharmacies now, just liquor and junk merch. Same thing happening there?
Private equity needs to dealt with the same brutality it unleashes on the workforce.
Pro tip - if your company gets bought by private equity, you must start looking for another job immediately.
I used to work big box retail, Office Depot.
When I started, the bulk of major / federal. holidays we got time and a half or double pay, and we were closed Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years.
Around 2013 they took that away, but did so in a subtle throw away email randomly early in the year that most management missed.
Managers at store level only noticed the change when they had a higher allocation of budget for staffing the week of Easter when it was no longer calculating time and a half pay.
I can understand some stores but who the fuck needs Office Depot on a major holiday?? "Oh dang I forgot to pick up a ream of nice 8x12 paper for mom this year!"
Who knows...
I just remember when the news dropped about the end of time and a half, literally every employee then engaged in a fight to the death about asking off for 4th of July, Memorial Day, Labor Day, etc.
It created a volatile atmosphere amongst staff and all because corporate wanted to pinch pennies even more...
That’s what private equity does: make everything worse and fuck off with the profits.
So back when I was a fresh faced MBA student, as part of private equity class they wheeled in one of the guys that was instrumental to the Debenhams buyout.
This is quite a notorious PE deal in the UK where they sold off the real estate and did a lease back, paid themselves lots of management fees, loaded the company up to the eyeballs with debt and use the proceeds to do a dividend recap, did a fire sale of older stock, let the stores get run down, replaced the (female) CEO who'd worked her way up from the shop floor with some dude with no fashion retail experience and a bunch of other dumb stuff that basically ruined the brand and bankrupted the business.
Dude still thought he was super smart. This is just one example of many similar cases (eg toys R us). These people are completely sociopathic.
Of course they did. When my previous company was acquired, I got to bring one of my employees over with me. We had an agreement that our jobs would be guaranteed for two years following the date of the acquisition. Two years almost to the day, and my boss calls me up to tell me that I am going to have to deliver the news to my single employee that they were being let go.
I decided to return the favor by immediately beginning my job search and then delivering them a zero-day notice on the day that I finally signed my offer letter and officially got a replacement position.
They're just doing what's legal to make as much money as possible.
The question is: why is this legal? The US is a joke.
The greatest nation in the world!
I wasn't aware Walgreens had been bought, but it makes sense. Every store now looks like Bradlees circa 1988. And this sounds like a stupid move. Pharmacies are notoriously difficult to make money from.
They’re not buying it because it’s a profitable business, they’re buying it because it’s profitable to sell it off for parts.
Wages for Walgreens workers are already ridiculously low, especially for pharmacy techs that work the prescription window, where things are so bad they've had to post signs asking the customers not to be abusive sh#theads. Private Equity's about to ruin another classic American brand name company.
Oh and they are closing Walgreens left and right. There are two in my city that closed in the last few months.
This is all standard procedure for private equity firms/venture capital these days. They run the business into the ground, close it, sometimes declare bankruptcy, sell all the assets, don't pay local fees (taxes etc) and go do it again with another company.
It's happened to SEVERAL long term busines chains lately.
And I would not be surprised if Jeff Bozozos is heavily invested in this PE.
It'd be cool if the USA had actual workers rights like Europeans do.
What we need is to unionize them!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sycamore_Partners
Staples. Nine West. Pure Fishing (Garcia, Berkleu, Uglu Stik, Shakespeare, and others). Hot Topic. Talbots.
Legal mafia doing legal mafia shit again.
I still don't understand how these people make money. They buy up a struggling business, ruin it and run it into the ground, and then file for bankruptcy. How do they make enough money to buy new companies? Why are they allowed to continue buying new companies when they just file for bankruptcy? Why are they allowed to abuse the bankruptcy courts like this?
The answer is debt. They buy a company, leverage it with all the debt, collect their bonuses, company goes bankrupt and the banks/investors lose it all from holding the bag.
The next big one is drivetime. Drivetime is privately owned by the same billionaire who owns carvana. Carvana just got included to the s and p 500 and their business model is to offload their loans by bundling them and selling to other finance companies. They don’t care if you make your first payment they just want you in a loan. The cars they can’t sell get bought by the owners private company, drive time. Drivetime is helping cook the books for carvana. The billionaire owner has been DUMPING his carvana stock because he knows the writing is on the wall and needs to exit. He will get private equity to take over drivetime first, to then be loaded with debt from carvana selling all the unsold inventory to drivetime, so carvana can keep its stock price up long enough to exit. Then, private equity will come for carvana.
If everyone collectively stopped going into debt then we can stop the cycle. Unionize. Demand higher wages, and hope the federal reserve keeps interest rates high (they won’t, especially come May when the new chair is appointed by trump).
Until then nothing will change and the workers and general public will continue to hold the bags so billionaires can get more billions.
No good ever comes from private equity. The place I worked was bought by a PE firm and it didn't take much time before long time employees ended up on the layoff list, products being cancelled and product development for most things offshored. I got axed in January after 20+ years working there.
This is not news, it's an example of standard opperating procedure for "private equity" groups.
gr8, so now shopping at Walgreens (and Walgreen's-owned Duane Reade in NYC) will be an even crappier experience
When you have no more revenue streams, the only way to increase profits is to cut costs.
More, more, more. Capitalism is a hungry hippo that is exceptional at finding marbles to eat.
I am a low paid flight attendant.
The reason why we don't have boarding pay and deplane pay and sit pay is because there is 200,000,000 applicants every year for about 4,000 jobs. For a while I even worked at a regional airline, which pays even less. I made about $9/real hour or $19/Flight Hour. As long as there is 200,000,000 people wanting my job, there's little leverage to force capitalists to pay more.
PE buys companies, strips them for parts and attempts to sell at a profit.
Answer is unions, thats the playbook against pure economic driven culture.
Just the day before yesterday, I told my sister that PE bought Walgreen's so expect them to go under. This is the beginning. I also warmed everybody when Jersey Mike's was bought earlier this year.
If a place you like is bought by PE, go ASAP to get whatever it was you liked and be prepared for it to change and then finally go out of business.
FUCK PRIVATE EQUITY
PRIVATE EQUITY KILLS AMERICANS
Unions
The answer has always been Unions
When you go to a store and the workers look miserable, don't help you, and do the bare minimum, you know it's a problem from the top.
Private equity is destroying America. GameStop is the only company to escape its clutches.
We need to go back to the days where there was a 90% tax on The Rich.
What are the names behind “Sycamore Partners”…?
I wish that these headlines would name the horrible people who are making these decisions because it is individuals who are choosing to fuck over everyone and not some sterilized "firm" that had no choice in the matter. Also, it should be obligatory to point out how they are connected to other wealthy individuals, particularly the pedophile world. Here's a bit of background on one of the founders of Sycamore Partners - Stefan Kaluzny:
"NEXT Model Management, Mnuchin and Wexner
NEXT Model Management was acquired by Golden Gate Capital. And if look at the list of Directors of NEXT Models in the UK, we can see that the two prominent figures are Stefan Kaluzny and David Dominik. Both of these men have a close relationship with Leslie Wexner.
Dominik was the founding partner of Golden Gate Capital and Kaluzny was the Managing Partner, until he left to set up his own finance outfit called Sycamore Partners. In 2007 Golden gate Capital became business partners with Wexner, acquiring a majority share in Wexner's retail chain Express for $548 million. Kaluzny with Managing Partner at the time and he sat on the Board of Express with Wexner.
In 2011 Sycamore Partners became the majority owner of Mast Global Fashions, a third-party sourcing business that is responsible for sourcing almost all of Wexner's retail textiles. Wexner's The Limited still kept a 49% stake in the company. In their dealings with Wexner, Sycamore is represented by the law firm Kirkland &Ellis, who had their own deep links with Epstein, including Alexander Acosta and Bill Barr.
Then in 2017, Kaluzny's new private equity firm Sycamore Partners acquired the intellectual property of Limited Stores LLC for a reported $25.75 million after the former Columbus-based L Brands spinout declared bankruptcy and closed its 250 stores at the start of 2017. The Limited was Leslie Wexner's original retail brand started by himself and his parents in 1964. And in 2020 Kaluzny's Sycamore Partners agreed to purchase a majority share in Wexner's Victoria's Secret for $525 million. The Covid-19 pandemic however put the deal on ice.
In addition, Kaluzny's Sycamore Partners other major investment was in Talbots retail chain. They installed Michael Weiss as CEO, who was one of Les Wexner's most loyal and long-time sidekicks.
Clearly Kaluzny and Domink (Sycamore Partners and Golden Gate Capital) are closely connected and intertwined with the business of Leselie Wexner. Kaluzny is also a Harvard Business school graduate. So it's certainly interesting they acquired NEXT Model Management. Kaluzny ended up dating and then marrying a Ford model Alex Elliott. They live just 2 miles from Epstein's former residence at Palm Beach."
Taken from: https://www.reddit.com/r/Epstein/comments/vue2n8/model_agencies_and_the_world_of_epstein/
I didn’t think shopping at Walgreens could get any worse. I stand corrected.
Private equity is vulture capitalism at peak monstrosity. They only have one goal - extract as much wealth as possible while running the business as lean as possible. It benefits no one but the equity suits. It is a toxic waste that harms society.
One of the few 'good guys' that was left. Will they go after Costco, Arizona Ice Tea, or who next?
Can confirm since I work there. I’ve been working overtime just to make up for the lost days.
Also the headline isn’t completely true, we still have paid vacation days, for now.
Private equity should be illegal!!!!!!!
Wild that the company spent around $15 billion on stock buybacks circa 2017-18, only to be bought out for 2/3rds that seven years later. I feel bad for my former coworkers, but WBA is getting everything it deserves.
Twice in the past 8 years the company I was working for at the time was acquired by Private Equity. The first time I stuck around for maybe two months and watched them hack and slash anything they could purely in the name of profit, and then nope'd out. A few years later another company I was working at was aacquired by PE. I immediately stated my intention to leave as soon as the transition happened. My management understood, but the new leadership in place couldnt understand why I'd leave 'with such a great new opportunity about to start'. One year later 90% of my team had left.
They're contributing to the medical deserts, because my local pharmacy hours have been severely cut.
This is standard practice of private equity firms.
They probably took out a loan in Walgreens name to pay out bonuses to themselves. Will strip the company for parts, then file for bankruptcy within 2 years.
private equity... making everything better /s
These are the kind of assholes that killed Sears. Sears could have been Amazon but venture capitalists ripped out every penny and killed it.
This is why you unionize. The new owners would be bound by the old union contract and be required to negotiate these kinds of changes.
Private equity are the hyenas of the business world
It's wild how far removed from the lives they ruin these people are... the workers being fucked will literally never even lay eyes on the people doing it.
I have this feeling if the results of those actions weren't so far removed from the people doing it, they wouldn't be able to do so nearly as easily and if they can... well then we should treat them like the monsters they've revealed themselves to be.
This country really needs to internalize the lessons taught in “A Bug’s Life”.
Someone who works at Walgreens here, neither the OP's post title nor the article are entirely true. It's semi-clickbait outrage.
Holiday pay was not outright taken away, not entirely. The policy changed. Previously, all employees received "holiday pay" equal to their average daily hours (which for me was only 5.4 hours) despite working almost entirely 7, 8, and 9 hour shifts for weeks on end. You received this small bonus as long as you worked the day of the holiday, or if you didn't work the Holiday at least didn't call off the day before or after.
People who didn't have to work the Holiday or scheduled PTO to skip it got the bonus anyway and those forced to work received no extra compensation.
The policy has changed so that you only receive holiday pay for actually working the holiday, and not only that, you get paid double time for working them. I made $33/hr to work Christmas and will get it again for new years day.
Opinions about the change are conflicted amongst associates, with those who are either forced to work holidays or those who volunteer for it being better compensated while those who got to stay home are upset they're losing the extra pay.
Regardless of your feelings on this, no, "paid vacation" was not taken from the employees nor was holiday pay axed entirely. It was just shifted to be given to those who actually work the Holiday like most other companies.
I do think they could still stand to give it to all employees that being said. Axe those inflated C-suite salaries.
Eat the rich
Now I know why so many are just closed and vacant.
They missed spelled suckmore
I mean, I'd feel worse if they weren't allowed to refuse medications to people based on religious grounds
Vulture capitalism. More benefits to take away before declaring bankruptcy.
The one thing I actually like about Walgreens near me is the photo printing. Between a wedding and framed photos this year I've used them a bunch. It would suck to lose that (I know there are other options online but it's damn easy to just walk in and grab them)
It's ironic because Walgreens was open on Christmas day.
Not long ago, there were three drug stores within a short bike ride of my home.
The closest, a right aid, went out of business not long ago & all my prescriptions transferred to Walgreens. If Walgreens goes dark, I'm stuck with a CVS across the street from it that looks like it hasn't been vacuumed in 20 years.
This does not bode well for our country in general.
Fuck these vultures.
lol these people are demented.
interestingly, all the Walgreens in my area have close already so l can’t even boycott them
How long until it’s bankrupt and Sycamore is the only creditor that gets paid anything?
Why doesn't anyone complain about the original owners of Walgreen who sold their company and employees out to PE in the first place?
They were the ones that walked away with $10b. Oh wait that's because those were public shareholders who happily approved the deal.
I'm surprised Walgreens wasn't already long owned by PE
Hopefully this leads to a worker shortage and bankruptcy. But I know I’m huffing copium
Went to a Walgreens literally about 20 minutes ago.
One cashier, long line of customers, and it was gross and depressing inside.
Once their clientele die off very soon, it’s gonna be bye bye Walgreens. Maybe even sooner.
Anyone got any leads/tips for people trying to get out of Walgreens over this crap?
We have enough money to buy this whole company but not enough to keep running it the way it's been run for the last few years. You know, the things that have made it profitable enough to entice us to buy it in the first place? all gone!
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They all want to maximize their investment in as little time as possible while fucking over their employees they don't care if they have 98% turnaround as long as they X10 they investment. Wish enough people would put their issues away so we could all join and fight the owners together. But far too many would quickly turn their back on they drowning coworkers of it means an extra 2 cents/ hour in they pay 😮💨
It seems to me that if Walgreen employees got together and simply said “no”, they could probably shift things back the right direction.
The power of American Christian Capitalism™️😎🇺🇸🦅🛢️💰🔫✝️ truly knows no bounds! /s
Private equity is a cancer on this country.
This is because private equity in the US gets away with a lot of shit. Same Sycamore Partners bought Rona from Lowes a few years ago, but the Unionized staff in Quebec still have all their negotiated benefits. It also helps that the Quebec part of the network accounts for a massive chunk of the business.
Private equity is corporate cancer.
A company sold to private equity is just bankruptcy liquidation with extra steps