Well.. I heard from a buddy today that HHGregg is lowering his commission rates. For a company posting gains and supposedly doing so well.. growing and supposedly building new stores with cash and not credit (opening 15 stores this year)(company officers claim to be "virtually debtfree"), it seems a little nasty, trite, and cruel, in this econony, to be dropping the commission rates on their employees. "Leverage" is definitely the word. With job prospects drying up, I suppose they figure they can get away with it.. and they probably will. Starts in March from what I hear. Circuit City's demise began with screwing with their sales staff. (Actually, historically, quite a few companies in this industry have arrived at the "beginning of their ends" by screwing over of their respective sales staffs). All in all, HHGregg has dropped their employees commissions about 4 times in the last 5 years (definitely not keeping with inflation, oddly enough, the longer one stays at HHGregg, as a commissioned employee, the less pay one receives.) They claim to have the most professional and well trained sales staff in the country.. It's a shame they do not intend to pay commensurately. Ironically, the manditory 200 or so hours of training HHgregg requires their sales employees to attend are also unpaid hours (how would you like 5 unpaid workweeks a year). I guess, in the short term, it means better cashflow not to pay employees what they are worth, but eventually, I would think, and maybe soon, company management will hit a threshold whereby quality sales staff will begin to make career choices that do not include a future at HHGregg.

Anyway, long story short, I told him this might be better than just being fired. He said they already did that 4 weeks ago with about 400 people companywide. At least if he was fired, he says, he could accept being paid less somewhere else. He said this is worse, everytime he sells something, he'll be thinking about what it used to pay him.. and now what it actually pays him.. it's like being fired a little bit daily. I'm thinking maybe the company's bottom line isn't as rosy as they claim it to be??