Joann: The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Fabric Store
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 18 พ.ค. 2024
- Make sure you check out the Shave and Suds bundle through the link harrys.com/emmainthemoment and pick something up next time you’re at your favorite store. Let me know what you get!
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On March 18, 2024 popular craft retail chain Joann Fabrics filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. This video is an analysis of what I think led to this bankruptcy filing. By the end of April they announced that they would be emerging from bankruptcy but it's hard to say if their troubles are over.
Small update from Sam: " I actually only asked for 4 days off before i was retaliated against with two 11 hour shifts. I think this makes my statements even more reasonable at the hands of an awful company."
Thank you to @cheyennebarton and @mrsmoonheaven for their work as Bed, Bath, and Beyond and Trader Joe's respectively. And to @onethiirdcrochet and @crochetmezaddy for reading text for this!
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Sources:
Joann history:
www.cleveland.com/pdextra/201...
Joann bankruptcy:
NPR www.npr.org/2024/03/18/123916...
Bloomberg www.bloomberg.com/news/articl...
Ad week
www.adweek.com/brand-marketin...
www.iheart.com/content/2023-1...
www.beaconjournal.com/story/b...
www.thestreet.com/retailers/a...
Bankruptcy press release:
investors.joann.com/news-rele...
Chapter 11 bankruptcy overview:
www.uscourts.gov/services-for...
Number of stores:
www.scrapehero.com/location-r...
Bankruptcy SEC filing:
investors.joann.com/node/8686...
Joann Bankruptcy info page FAQs:
www.joannforward.com/customer...
Bankruptcy case info:
cases.ra.kroll.com/Joann/
Joann History:
media.corporate-ir.net/media_...
Bankruptcy update:
www.cleveland.com/news/2024/0...
www.globenewswire.com/news-re...
www.retaildive.com/news/joann...
Trader Joes:
www.newyorker.com/culture/cul...
Party City closures:
thehustle.co/party-city-heliu...
www.wsj.com/video/series/news...
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00:00 Intro
07:01 Harry's
08:05 How did this happen and what went wrong?
14:31 Is this all inevitable?
17:28 Who does this affect?
21:51 Conclusion
23:17 Update
Edited by Chad Barnard
Co-writer Nicholas Melvin
#joannfabric #joannbankruptcy
Thanks to Harry's for sponsoring! Make sure you check out the Shave and Suds bundle through the link harrys.com/emmainthemoment
i appreciate the chappell roan reference
IM GONNA KEEP ON DANCING DOWN AT THE MIDWESTERN FABRIC STORE
Just wanted to say that I really like your videos. I enjoy the deep dive into topics pertaining to fibre crafts and you portray a really balanced and well researched view of the subjects you make videos on.
Idk if you take suggestions about research topics, and this one might be a bit old and niche. But there is some interesting controversy around the company Truly Victorian that blew up in the historical sewing community in 2022. Truly Victorian used to be heavily used by historical sewists and were recommended to viewers a lot. But following the controversy, many sewists stopped suggesting it to viewers. I thought it might be something unique to talk about since aside from reddit posts, nobody has really done a deep dive into this issue. It'd be interesting to see if it's an isolated issue or if there are some previous concerns that "foreshadowed" this controversy.
Regardless if you choose to pick this up or not, I look forward to future videos. I love listening to them while crafting to working.
Target brags every year about hiring thousands for holiday help. All they do is take hours from tenured employees and give to the new hires. Sh they really aren't covering more hours at all,.
what is the name of the song at the end of the video? or the artist's name?
As a former Joann employee: i am laughing at their downfall. especially after they fired all their tenured employees for new hires. :)
Yeah, lots of businesses do that. Only want to pay entry level wages. They generally keep some poor sap on to pick up the slack for the newbies that don’t know anything.
I’ll never forget how they strung me along for months promising me I’d be full time but kept only giving me 2 4 hour shift a week 😞
I CAME HERE TO SAY THE SAME THINGGGG! The regional manager literally bullied our store manager( who had opened the store 13 years prior had record sales for the region, was literally the sweetest old man you never meet) until he quit, and all of us walked out the same day, and the regional manager said that it was a coup. After that, they literally had a bunch of people getting underpaid and brand new hires having to work too many hours.
i was a joann employee too when i was in high school and right after i put in my two weeks they switched everyone to part time and made them take a $0.50 pay cut from $12 to $11.50 per hour. one time my regional manager and store manager also laughed at a new hire over the comms minutes before they were about to do the interview and said “no i’m not going to hire her!” like none of the other staff could hear them. plus there were usually only 4 of us working at a time at the biggest store in our region. glad i quit when i did
Big same over here. My first job and probably the worst I've had to this day
The fact that there isn't a craft store with a Starbucks (though not my personal preference) or cafe collab is insane to me. Tell me crafters wouldn't spend a whole day shopping if they could get coffee then walk around the store, or get craft supplies and sit with a pastry and start their project all in one store? I feel like sometimes businesses do not get what their target audience wants.
This would be amazing! Cafe Craft and Chat. Or Sit Sip and Stitch.
Or even a craft store with a working area. As you said maybe a cafe with a lot of seats so you can work in peace with a snack. And if you need something you can get up and buy it
exactly, barnes and noble was smart. an in-store bakery/cafe would be genius
Cleo’s in Brooklyn is opening a cafe/yarn shop soon! I think they’re just finalizing details
The problem with any retail shop/store also having a coffee/food bar is that when you staff it you have staff it with baristas who are notorious (at least where I worked) for job hopping. Unreliable. This was at least the case for the small mom n pop shop I worked at. I’m sure some larger corporation would be able to mitigate that issue easier
I love how a business can just oopsie their way out of millions of dollars of debt but (gasp) what would happen if we disappeared student loan debt?!
THIS. One hurts the economy by leeching off of taxpayer funds and laying off tons of employees. One helps the economy by reducing cost of living burden and allowing people to have more money to spend and invest back into the economy..... Make it make sense.
👏👏👏👏👏
Apples and oranges.
Nice try.
@@jeepstergal4043 I bet you still believe in trickle-down economics, bootstrapping one's way out of poverty, and the meritocracy, too.
@@jeepstergal4043 It isn't. It really isn't.
Also doesn't help that they've let the stores fall into such disrepair. They look terrible, dirty, with whole empty areas. They do not inspire creativity. They are depressing!
yeah, the massive layoffs for employees definitely doesn't help. I don't know why they expect everything to be fine when they don't hire more employees to even out the workload
My Joann's are bright and clean and stocked. I have been to 5 in the last 2 or 3 months, and none of those issues are any of them.
One of the local joanns had such a massive leak in the the ceiling that they had to block off half the store but corporate still wouldn't let them close the doors. We were just shopping around the giant puddle!
@@beyondallmeasureour local Joann is the same! it's been blocked off for leaks for months, but for some reason they're painting the outside
I don't go to the local store because I honestly feel like I'm going to get shanked when I'm inside.
my dad was regional manager for the company- he experienced an EXTREMELY traumatizing situation in one of his stores involving the shmurder of one of his employees inside the store… he was offered zero counseling following the situation, and was then “laid off” aka fired TWO WEEKS afterwards. the downfall was a long time coming, thank god.
what the FUCK 😭😭 im so sorry your dad had to go through that
That is absolutely INSANE!
I hope your dad is okay. Fuck Joann’s.
that is so fucking insane oh my god, i’m so sorry for your dad and the employee’s family
Omg was that back in 2018? If it’s the murder I’m thinking of, I lived nearby!! Regardless, I’m sorry your father had to deal with that
Former employee: They spend so much money on seasonal kitsch, and what doesn't sell they just donate. They habitually cut hours to like, 10 per week for January-March. Our store was one of the highest earners in our district, despite being the smallest, and our shopping carts hadn't been replaced in like, almost 20 years. The year I left they, had cut our store's budget for professional floor cleaning completely (something we previously had only been able to afford once a year). It sucks because they're one of the only places you can find fabric to buy in person anymore, and at my store, between the various employees, you could find a comprehensive guide to any craft we sold products for. I genuinely enjoyed working there after leaving a really stressful job. It got me through a pretty rough time.
Seasonal kitsch that way too much money even with 40%-50% off
It sounds like it might've done better if you had ran the store yourselves
i would still shop there if their store wasn’t 50% quilting cotton 40% fleece and only 10% apparel fabrics
The Toledo, Ohio stores are like 80% fleece. It’s ridiculous. I quit going there when I need fabric. Waste of time.
I'm a current worker at joanns, and they keep telling us more apparel is coming, but it never does actually come. Then they discontinue our few good apparel peices.
And the apparel fabric is almost all polyester.
And the quilters cotton is such bad quality esp the prints that they can't be swapped in place of cotton shirting any more. ;o;
I gave up on joanns when the store I went to was stocked up on quilt cottons with novelty prints and not anything that actually looks nice. And of course had to dodge fleece and polyester in the other 80% of the fabrics. The home fabrics section was actually good but I don't need home fabrics that often. I started visiting local fabric stores instead. They're tremendously expensive but I haven't looked back because they stock beautiful, high quality fabrics that I actually want to use, and the employees are generally much happier and more helpful. (The fact that they're expensive means I don't go around buying up a huge stock of fabric I'm never going to use anyway, so in a way it works out better for me.)
Me crying in the club bc there’s genuinely no other fabric stores that carry apparel fabric within a 50 mile radius😭😭😭
This is my biggest concern, being both an employee and a customer
@@old_soul99I still support my local Joann’s frequently, the staff are always very kind so I’ll continue to do so even if it makes little impact in whether or not the store stays open😢
Same here 😭 like if I could buy from local shops I would but there literally aren’t any 😭
My only other craft store that has affordable prices is hobby lobby and I would rather not craft than have to always support them. Makes me sick 😅
I suppose the hope is that without them as a monopoly smaller stores can open again, but there's not guarantee of that
When I worked there I hated it. We were legally entitled to 1 break for any shift longer than 4 hours, but they would only have two people working at a time. This prevented us from taking breaks since policy said we had to have one person at the register and 1 at the fabric station at all times.
I once did an 8 hour shift without a lunch break so it ended up being closer to 8.5 hours, no time to sit down or eat because we could only have two people on shift for hours (and yes this was over the holidays with our forced longer hours).
That's against the law. especially, if you live in California. If you ever find yourself in this situation again, log everything and then sue them.
@@sarag1158 not from Cali but they did actually have us file it in the official records as unable to take a break so they literally know there is a record of it. I think signing that piece of paperwork also takes away my ability to sue though I don't actually know and would have to look into it
@@tylerv3463 you can't just sign away your legal rights, but companies bank on you not knowing that. Just because you sign something saying you're okay with not taking a break, doesn't mean you aren't still entitled to pursuing legal action. Wage theft is theft, full stop. I would def look into it if you think it's worth the energy.
Ohhhh that’s a lawsuit. I got a settlement from Bubba Gumps for not giving us breaks. You should look into it
"If you've shopped at a Joanns in the last 6 months or so, you may have noticed some signs of distress, like understaffed stores, understocked shelves, and massively long delays in online orders."
My local Joanns has ALWAYS been understaffed.
same! the staff was also always mean as hell at mine lmao
Ours has one employee. It has been that same one employee for a year
Doesnt help that people want apparel fabric but all they have is flannel for friendship blankets.
And their apparel fabric is mostly garbage polyester. 🙄
Fleece. The freaking fleece.
Coming here to say this and about the fleece. My mom and I quilt. Our local store keeps getting in Flannels and fleeces that are just going to sit there and rot on the shelf. I remember when I was a kid going in there and seeing so many beautiful brocade and cotton calico's. Flannel and fleece are a terrible to put under the long arm. You can't quilt it. Straight up. The only alternative is hobby lobby and most of their patterns aren't all that great either.
Those are cheaply made from petroleum, similar to plastic chemical ingredients. Unlike natural fabric like cotton and linen, these synthetic fabric are NOT breathable and are best for cold weather clothing.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyester
Fleece that is either available in Sports team in a city that is 500+ miles away from the store location or Hufflepuff
I swear the one near me has like half of an aisle devoted to Toronto Maple Leafs and Hufflepuff fleece
I’m in Virginia
I've been a joann's employee for an embarrassingly long time now (10ish years) and was one of the people who was demoted to part time after having been full time for years. My store is rather large, but we still are underpaid and understaffed (to give an idea, when I joined this store the employee list was twice as long as it is now). Joann expects all of us to be able to do two jobs at once; stock and also take care of the customers (whether at the registers or the cut table- and while, yes, stocking and at least being assigned to the cut table is doable, it's not efficient). I'm constantly commented by customers that there's no one on the sales floor to help them. We also had our electric cart for disabled or elderly customers stolen and the company has yet to replace it (it'll be a year this month). Personally, I have felt disrespected at the company since the demotion and it has recently gotten worse when I was asked to open my availability. At the time I had two days and one evening where I was unavailable. I opened it up to simply one day and an evening every other week being unavailable because I have built a personal life outside of joann, but apparently my part-time job requires me to be available 24/7. Been trying to find a new job but to no avail. To end this on a good note, I do think the joann brand brings in very creative and fun coworkers to be around and I love them all very much. And I do enjoy the work itself. I love working with the fabric and listening to what people are making: the notable ones recently was someone making tap shoe bags and a set of girls making an outfit to match a kpop band for a concert. It always gives me inspiration for my own projects.
I can't stand when companies will only shell out for part timers but expect them to put their lives on hold for the company for the entire week. The death of the set work schedule has been a huge blow to workers rights imo and I hope you find another place to work
I’d recommend paraprofessional library work. Like a library associate or library assistant. It’s similar. Great coworkers, knitting and sewing skills are often wanted for community groups. And government benefits. If interested, talk about serving community and loving people. It’s basically a customer service job so highlight that.
@@natatatm And then they'll publicly encourage the claims of "But NOBODY wants to WORK anymooooore" when what they really mean is "Nobody wants to be eternally beholden to us for six two-hour shifts per week at minimum wage."
I encourage you to leave. And to NOT tell them when you start working your next job. Just do it. They did you so dirty cutting your hours and there is zero excuse for it. Please don’t people please.
I worked there 25 years ago, and I felt everything you said so hard. I hated the company but loved my coworkers. When everyone at my store quit, we held a celebratory dinner.
In October of last year I went into Joanns and noticed their cross stitch section was a mess: nothing on the shelves, everything on the filthy floor. I went in in December and EXACTLY THE SAME ITEMS were in exactly the same place. There were boxes piled up four high, ten deep in the back of the store, completely covering two sections (the upholstery fabric, and the no-longer-in-operation frame shop). So in early January I applied to work there. The very next morning I got a text setting up an interview for the following day. I got the job despite being a middle aged woman who had been out of the workforce for over three decades. I was offered $12:96/hr. There was no system of raises per year. The acting manager (there had been no manager in the store for many months) fought for me to get $13/hr.
It took four months for us to work through all the boxes in the store. Then we started working on the boxes in the storeroom...which was almost entirely filled with boxes except for a small narrow aisle it was difficult to get a flatbed down. The fire Marshall threw an absolute fit upon seeing how narrow that aisle was.
We're slowly slowly creeping ahead, but it's a glacial progress. And the store is still absolutely filthy. SO gross. And don't even get me started on the bathrooms - oh my gosh *so* bad.
My hours were reduced during the bankruptcy to 8 hours a week. I was down to 5 last week....but then Joanns got out of bankruptcy court and we were able to work more hours.
All to say that the workers on the ground are run ragged. There's too much to do for too few workers with too few hours with not nearly enough pay. We are tired, but we stay because we're dedicated.
Meanwhile those at the top are getting half a million dollars just for hanging around for six months.
Do you know how much I've earned in nearly six months? $3,500.
Those who care are getting paid a pittance. Those who don't care are making money hand over fist.
Oh yeah, and at one point in time there were two people working the store in the evening. TWO. One on the cutting counter, one on the register. Two women. In the evening. Talk about a safety issue!
@madiantin
I'm currently a keyholder at a Joann in a 1 million + populated city. Apparently we're one of the bigger stores in the country, but even I routinely close the store at night by myself with my recovery person.... two women. Night shifts are always just 4 women (a manager, cashier, cutting counter, and recovery). It wasn't like that before the pandemic..... It's not safe at all.... and we've been robbed before😢
Wow... I hope you're able to eventually take your hard won experience to a craft or fabric store that will really appreciate you. I'm so appreciative of the middle aged women who run the crafting world
Since I've started crocheting, Joann's has become my go to for yarn at a low price with decent quality, and many of my favorite yarns are from there. But it's so sad. I don't think I've ever seen more than 1 employee at a time at a store. I really hope they can get their stuff together
me too!! the michaels near me has an awful selection (and my abusive ex works there) and theres rlly no other game in town for me unless i drive one town over and go to hobby lobby which is pretty undesirable :(
and to add to this, i dont even live in a small town!! the population is over 100,000. i think theres just a shortage of yarn stores which is rlly sad :(
Knit Picks is great for good quality, affordable yarn.
I know!!! Joann's is pretty much the only game in town! I know that there are people super into getting indie yarn online. And that's great. But I just can't do it. I've got to go into the store and FEEL it. So my options are Michael's (which has an abysmal selection) and Joann's.
@@LadyOrpheusyes! When I was still doing crochet Michaels just had the worst selection, felt like they never restocked the ones that were clearly good/popular. Now that I sew, Joann’s is the only place in a 50 mile radius that carries apparel fabric, so I hope they don’t close stores😢😢
I applied and interviewed for Joann’s (for a part time management position, also by part time they mean full time without benefits) and they pay MUCH less than EVERY other management position in my area. I wanted to work where I was surrounded by people who like crafting but I wouldn’t have been able to pay my bills with just that job
At my location they pay most key holders 17 cents above minimum wage, it's ridiculous
There is something that I want to point out about Jo-Anne Fabrics. That is, this is the SECOND TIME, yes, you heard me right, the SECOND TIME, Joanne's actually filed for Bankruptcy. 20 years ago, back in 2004, when I first worked there. They filed for bankruptcy. I was laid off b/c I wasn't on the schedule for 6 weeks in a row. I worked there part-time and then I found out later on. That is the Department that I was working in, Floral Department. They got rid of it to save money.
we need a floral department person again me and a manager are the only two who genuinely work on that section
You did a video on the two (Joann and Hobby Lobby) now you need to the final one.
Michaels, Hobby Lobby, Joann, The Crafter’s Trifectra?
@@cutestuffs971 exactly
No please Michaels is all I have left
Is there not Fabricland in the States?
@@valerielevasseur8674 nope
I currently work for Joann and it is literally hell. I often work 8 hours without ANY breaks and only 1 other person on the floor with me. They don’t care for customers. They don’t care about employees. I understand that in some places that this may be the only place to get supplies, but if you can shop elsewhere please do so.
Current Joann's employee here. For the past several months, there have been two employees in the store the majority of the time. You wouldn't be surprised by the amount of shoplifters we get as a result.
Literally just went to my local Joann down the street today and saw that there was only one, ONE, employee on the floor. The store had been open for a few hours at the time and there were a bit more customers shopping than just me. But it looked like the employee basically ran the whole store by herself today. She was everywhere, working on cleaning up, restocking, and even going back to the register to ring up customers (mind you, this location is a bit big). So crazy!
yeah the other person was probably unloading the truck
Or didn't show up or they wouldn't give them hours to have another person on
@@3dTales Pretty sure if there aren't two people, the store isn't allowed to be open, so likely someone was handling truck (by themselves) or taking their break. Or the store just didn't care about that requirement, also entirely possible.
The timing on this video is incredible. I had an interaction at my Joann yesterday that is going to live in my head rent-free for awhile, and it honestly tracks that someone in Joann's c-suite is completely out of touch with the real world.
So anyway, I was shopping at my Joann and found some novelty yarn I liked in the clearance bin. Cool - total impulse buy but hey, what's $15 for 3 skeins of some fun yarn? I brought it up to the checkout and the 20-something gal working there couldn't get it to ring up. She radioed the manager-on-duty and was told she couldn't sell it to me because it was slated for disposal. Like, for real? I'm standing here, money in hand, and your corporate overlords would rather just throw it away? I could tell the poor cashier was worried I was going to raise a stink, so I just thanked her for her time, walked out, and spent my money at my local yarn store instead. Absolute nonsense.
Lol, i usually just tell them to give it to the customer for free. theres no point in just throwing it away!
@@nozucchini4624this is the way 🙌
When that happened we would just find another item of the same price and scan that instead, which probably wasn't great for inventory, but it was already a shambles anyway so who cared.
I'm a crochet teacher and a professional artist, so I should be in Joann's target demographic. And yet, I really hate the store. It is always disorganized, there are never enough employees around (obviously even more so after the PE takeover), and their app is absolute garbage. I download it when I am about to go the store to get the coupons and then delete it as soon as I have finished at the cashier. About 15 years ago, I even taught classes there but that was honestly the beginning of the end for me.
Here's an idea for a rebrand: Make the store a destination. Have classroom space at every store. Have a cafe or at least a coffee stand. Crafters love to get together and when they feel welcome, they will buy a lot. Then, hire back all your tenured employees because they have knowledge, and that knowledge can both help a beginning crafter become a more dedicated one as well as result in a larger initial sale. The bottom line is not where it's at. Especially when supplies can be easily bought online, the in-store experience should become the chain's focus. Because right now, going to a Joann is about as pleasant as a root canal.
They used to have a classroom space in most stores... Until they changed them into clearance sections :(
Hey I am a crochet teacher too! Just had to say hi!~
A few friends and I would reserve the local Joann's class space for a stitch group. Every single time we were there, we had customers ask us for help finding items. We are excellent shoppers and would happily help strangers spend their money. 😆 When the customers eventually discovered we weren't employees, they were always embarrassed, but we loved it. This all came to an end when Joann's had to start using their class space for storage.
In a semi-perfect world…
As a former employee who happily spent my entire shift just organizing things when I had the chance: I rarely ever had the chance, nobody else in the store even seemed to try, and by the time I made a round through the aisles customers (or my coworkers) would have ruined where I started again. It's straight up impossible when they refuse to staff enough people.
When I was a kid in the 90s, I remember my local Joann's being a place my grandma loved and so we went there a lot. It was a smaller-ish store, but it was always packed with employees and crafting stuff and (I think most importantly) they offered a lot of classes for sewing and knitting and general crafting stuff and had crafter meet-ups. The store itself felt really active and was this place people wanted to go to and you could LEARN how to use the supplies they sold - so people paid a bit to take a class, then just turned the corner and bought the supplies, then signed up for a crafter meeting with people to learn more patterns, share stuff they made, etc. It seemed to really work well. Honestly, the people at the top KNOW exponential growth isn't a thing - they are basically just running pump and dump schemes on the stores and businesses they buy up and exiting before it goes tits up. The failure of the businesses is part of the scheme, they know it's gonna happen, overinflating them to a point of unsustainability is intentional because then they can just drop the stock at that peak and leave everyone else holding the bag. I think the only hope is maybe that smaller groups of individuals can come together and build little places like what existed before. Probably, all these big stores with these huge buildings are going to completely go under and Amazon will buy up these massive buildings no one can afford and turn them into piss-pay distribution centers that eventually get taken over by robots boxing orders until society completely collapses in on itself. It's like a 50/50.
Chappel Roan in the thumbnail absolutely had me concerned it was related lmao, glad for the up front clarification. Her music is just too good.
Ik I'm totally obsessed
As an ex Joann’s worker,,,, yep it all tracks
When I worked at Joanns, I had never felt more under appreciated. Literally every other retail job, even michaels, I felt more appreciated.
from all the comments from current and former employees, joanns seems to run similarly to dollar general stores, severely understaffed, underappreciated and overworked employees and extremely shady business practices
Does anyone remember AC Moore? I miss it! Had a good selection of yarn and fabric for good prices. I’m stuck with Michael’s or Hobby Lobby for any crafting supplies. And I won’t go to Hobby Lobby.
I was thinking the same 😭 As a kid, I would always buy one of those little fuzzy bears per visit… I miss that place
How about Hancock Fabrics?
Loved AC Moore. We had this regional place called Rag Shop. Their store in the 80s is what my local Joann looks like now: small, dark, cramped weird. I've never seen the big Joann stores, and I have always lived in major metropolitan areas!
Aw yeah, that used to be my go-to.
Loved ac moore
I worked at joanns right at the beginning of the pandemic and it was awful. My local government was requiring non essential businesses to close their stores to help prevent spread, and joanns kept fighting with the government to let them stay open cuz... crafting is somehow essential. The police had to shut us down. We were still filling online orders, and people would scream and bang on the doors demanding to be let inside. I had someone spit at me cuz I wouldn't let them in. Plus, corporate wouldn't allow us to turn on the air conditioning since customers weren't inside the building. In the Florida summer. And when we were allowed to reopen with restrictions, my management started skirting around the restrictions to make more money. I'm glad I left.
That sounds like a nightmare!
crafting is essential. in the aspect that we all can look back and see how much crafting kept people from going insane.
@cathythoman also, I believe they were trying to make the argument that people were making masks at first when real medical ones were restricted to medical personnel, so there was that. I remember when they opened up they kept running out of elastic 😄
I didn't mind the essential worker part; honestly lockdown was the most I've ever enjoyed a job, because no customers could come in and we got so much done we hadn't been able to. But I also worked at a small store that didn't have thousands of orders piling up or people trying to harass us. The rest of that is disgusting.
For me, I got tired of all the polyester and generic junk. The good news is more business for independent Etsy stores coz that’s where I buy all my supplies now.
I understand your frustration but in the end shopping districts will be deserted and there will be chronic unemployment. Physical stores employ more people. It’s nice to support small online businesses but in the long term online shopping will doom many places.
Just FYI, Etsy is increasingly overrun with dropshipped garbage and crappy AI generated crafting patterns that don't actually work.
@@Sleipnirseightyeah, I find it better to put the effort into finding the websites of stores I want to support (way less fees for sellers too.)
@@Sleipnirseight yeah the downside of brick and mortar dying is that drop shipping is going crazy online /srs. like i just had a TERRIBLE experience with etsy and as more stores drop off and mail delivery becomes more bogged down (at least in the US) online shopping isn't gonna be that great for long :/
I used to be a pretty frequent shopper at Joann's but started noticing that their prices would be twice what other stores were selling for, only for them to be miraculously 40 percent off or more during a sale that never seemed to end. The good coupons were during massive sales that were only good for regularly priced items, good luck finding those. When they started downsizing the store size, the one nearest me moved over two doors in a strip mall. Their aisles became impossible for two people to pass through comfortably and everything was very claustrophobic.
They have a particular vanilla candle I love to death, but a small pillar is like 20 bucks now. F that, I'll just rarely light the ones I have.
That's the case with every store that offers coupons or has constant sales: If they can afford to sell things at 40% off all the time, they're overcharging by more than that for the regular price. I'm not sure why so many people seemed surprised by this. It is possible to get good deals, but comparison shopping is important.
My favorites were the Place & Time seasonal items that would come in for absolutely outrageous prices, like $40 for a plastic decorative pumpkin, and be on sale for 40% off as soon as they came in, and end up 70-80% off halfway through the season; if I ever saw something I liked, I just waited. Not that I wanted them much, because the quality was hilariously bad. Trying to sell something with chips and uneven lettering that probably cost $5 to manufacture for luxury prices. Sure, uh-huh.
The wild part is *some people bought them at full price* and those people are why they do that pricing method. Utterly baffling behavior.
From a current employee, working for Joann Fabrics is so frustrating because I love the people I work with and my customers, many of which i know by name. But it's not sustainable. They never give us half the hours we need. When I was hired it was during the pandemic when we were only doing online pick up orders and even then we had twice or thrice the people we have now. I'm lucky if I have a cut counter and register person but usually it's just me and one other person. We don't have enough hours to cover breaks or to help people with their crafting projects past a quick yes or no question. Even going to the bathroom is stressful because then I have one person on the floor and lines at both counters when I come back. To top it all off, they lapsed my health insurance without any notice. I found out literally the day after when I went into hospital for covid. Joann corporation does not care about people. It's so sad to see because the people at Joann are wonderful. They're creative and passionate about their craft and we all deserve so much more than this.
i've been to multiple stores where there are long lines of people and only two (or even one!) employees to ring them up. i feel bad, because there aren't many craft stores around me- at least in my case there's michael's, but fabric crafts in particular seem to be limited to joann- and the employees are always being overworked. i love crafts and working at a craft store seems great in theory but everyone who works there always seems so exhausted that it makes me want to not shop there, just so that i'm not adding to the workload. it's obvious the company has taken something the employees are passionate about- crafting and craft supplies- and have turned it into a nightmare for everyone.
One glimmer of hope: my Michael's store started selling fabric recently!
I was a key holder and we worked in one of those massive grocery store stores. Even 2 years ago we were being cut to 1 front, 1 cutting, 1 manager and the managers aka "key holders" had to do everything from paperwork to covering breaks to stocking to shelving resets to getting things from locked places to go backs to returns to pulling online orders to handling higher up visits who were mad you weren't "being more productive" to handling offloading trucks to retrieving carts from the parking lot to cleaning the store/bathrooms to everything before opening and after closing plus more. I loved interacting with customers about their creative projects and helping with suggestions or finding just that right things but their staffing made it impossible to do that as time went on without sacrificing your employees who were working their asses off or pissing off higher ups (who rarely came in and actually assisted). It was frustrating. When I told them I was leaving they asked me not to and offered me a raise. I asked how much of one and it was 0.50. 50 cents. I was leaving bc I was a full time manager who could not pay bills bc of their pay structure. And our part time key holder? They had been working full time so long it wasn't until by a chance Convo with another employee that I found out they were technically part time so... Yeah. They'd been doing that for over a year to them.
The big bug in the vid- house centipede. Completely harmless, amazing predators to rid other unwanted bugs, and still super icky:D
I gasped out loud in public when I saw it because I also get the ick real bad when I see them.
@@ruths_youth one time, my sister was sleeping. She felt something on her face and groggily wiped it off. Next morning, there was a few random legs beside her pillow. She has a big ick over house centipedes, so it was a good horror filled laugh!
@@ruths_youth omg my fam just laughed at me when i told them this but i think you would understand, one time i was chillin in my backyard sitting next to the house and i felt something drop on my shoulder. A FUCKIN CENTIPEDE DROPPED OFF THE ROOF AND LANDED ON ME the way my heart stopped for several seconds before plunging into my stomach lmao. it’s extra frustrating to know that logically it was completely fine like they’re not dangerous at all and i know this, but my body would not believe my brain 😂
yea sorry to house centipedes but literally one of the worst designs of bugs. unfortunate because theyre so useful :I
I was in my local Joann store yesterday, but the store I was at still had Christmas stuff on clearance. It's *May*. They buy too much seasonal stuff and then have to sell it on clearance. That's got to hurt their bottom line a lot.
I'm mostly in there to buy sewing supplies or stationery and not whatever junk they have for the season. I actually don't know who buys the stuff.
Mine still has their Halloween/fall stuff
As a former employee that lost their job two weeks ago due to closing? Only old grannies and church people buy the decorations, and ONLY after they've gone on clearance.
We just got the message today to get rid of the Christmas stuff starting Monday. We're pretty dang excited to get rid of it.
And by "get rid of it" I mean "throw it away" because apparently Joanns prefers doing that to donating it or whatever. =(
We still have about 75% of our Christmas fabric -- they were still sending us new bolts in JANUARY. We have an upcoming HALLOWEEN display (which is supposedly going to be more eclipse themed but still that was a MONTH AGO). We still have Christmas kitsch. And Valentine's and St. Patrick's and Easter, of course. Not to mention how much non-seasonal stuff is constantly going to clearance. But at least all clearance is currently an additional 25% off! Because that's how you make money!
@@madiantin oh this sparks my inner dumpster diver!
I'm a current team member of Joann, and it has been ROUGH. I agree with everything stated here, the holidays were so rough with only three people working at a time. It's gotten... better... ish, but we still are super short on hours and coverage. The store I work at is one of the top performers in my state, so we *should* be fine in the coming months/years, but one store in our district is getting closed down. I think the stores that are closing were planned a while before the bankruptcy talk, but it still sucks to see.
Thank you, also, for the update at the end. From my understanding, Joann isn't planning any closures or layoffs in the coming weeks, but I'm worried about the months and years to come if things don't get better overall. With the low coverage, we've been having to move product around so that we can keep it more secure due to theft and defacement. Whatever we can't move has locks on it or is in the lockers, so customers have to come to us to get things they want. And who the hell wants to shop that way?
I do love what I do, and I want to help customers with their projects and ideas. Being under such strain has really made me quite depressed. Luckily, I'm usually assigned to stocking and replenishment, but that's only one day of the week, and when I'm on the register, I can't do a damn thing besides point people in the right direction (which I suck at because I'm a visual person, I remember where just about everything is, but I don't remember aisle numbers).
Customers, please be patient with us workers. We're tired, yall.
best wishes to you from a fellow retail worker
What's crazy is for those of us applying EVERYWHERE for a job, every business appears to be short-staffed, yet no businesses are hiring. These businesses are _intentionally_ understaffing their stores.
Babe wake up, new Emma in the moment craft drama vid just dropped
When my hometown got a JoAnn, the smaller local fabric shop shut down. It’s been the only fabric store in my hometown for almost 20 years, and I’m sad for all the people there that there probably won’t be a fabric store for all the crafting girlies/aunties anymore.
Wow, that really sucks. Same thing in my area…. There isn’t a small privately owned fabric store for miles.
QUESTION FOR JOANN EMPLOYEES: HOW CAN WE CONSUMERS SUPPORT YOU?
If we see a store that is horribly understaffed, is it helpful for us to contact mgmt and tell them they need to schedule more employees during any given shift? Are there other/better ways we can help?
I'm not sure how much contacting management actually does but it can't hurt and multitude of voices saying the same things has got to at least be heard even if they do not listen. I do know as a Joann employee that just knowing our regulars support and care about us as people helps me get through the day. Obviously this doesn't fix the systemic issues but I think we're gonna have to wait and see how the new ownership changes things.
Im not sure contacting management actually does anything, but what helps the most (to me) is just shopping for yourself and not asking us to lead you around the store pointing out everything you need for you, which many of our customers expect despite us being extremely understaffed 😅that and being patient about lines, understanding if something is buried in the backroom and we say we cant get to it or were out of stock, etc. Working at joann has made me always expect the absolute worst from people because i brace myself for every customer to have a tantrum if the coupon they want to use doesnt apply to their purchase
Do the survey on the receipt, tell them how great a job the employees are doing, and then rail into the company itself with all the reasons why they need more people to run a store. Politely, of course.
We had to ask people to do this when our heater broke in the middle of winter because they wouldn't listen to US saying that people literally couldn't shop there because it was too damn cold and we had to wear our winter coats just to do our jobs. We eventually got a bunch of space heaters.
There's no guarantee it'll help, but they listen to customer feedback slightly more than their actual employees.
I will shout it from the rooftops, I was a team lead working almost full time at Joann and made less per hour than my brother as a cart pusher at Walmart. A LOT LESS. I had a year left towards my degree and it was the best option for my school schedule (plus the employee discount)
I was actually at JoAnn's TODAY and I could feel the bankruptcy in the air. Not a single set of knitting needles. It was honestly the most desperate the place has felt in a hot minute.
Our local Joann just closed our mall store after 10 years there. Being a small crochet business, they were my major supplier of caron colorama, lion brand, and other various things. Their closure has devastated the local quilting/ fabric crafting community as they were the last local fabric store. Please let them get their shit together because if I gotta start driving 4 hours to the nearest capitol because they close the other nearby stores (1.5 hours away currently) I'm gonna be angry
The one I worked at up until they closed two weeks ago was in a similar stance to my community. People would drive 2 hours just to come to ours to get fabric and we had many established quilters in out community who used our fabric. And all of that was taken away and devastated multiple small towns by just closing our location.
"Why don't you get another job" is how you know someone is WAYYY out of touch with how hard it is to get a job and make steady, liveable wage these days.
man I couldn't even get unemployment because I didn't earn enough money from working there that year
Imagine seeing a change in the situation during completely unprecedented circumstances and going "this is definitely how it will be forever from now on!"
Lol exactly. How can anyone be that stupid??? You'd think people with experience running businesses would know that. Maybe they did know it wasn't sustainable and for whatever reason went ahead anyway? Maybe it was some cash-grab strategy? That's the only way it makes sense
Tech companies did the exact same thing and now everyone seems surprised they are laying people off right and left.
It's insane how many companies did that. Probably a bunch of smart people at the middle and bottom were screaming it wasn't going to last but the people at the top were blinded by sparkly numbers.
idk if i wanna watch this cos just learning they were filing for bankruptcy bummed me out. i just started to get into the amigurumi trend and they have a store specific brand of yarn that i've been using bc it has the most colors and a decent quality + cheap and we have no other stores around us that offer the amount of yarn they do (or fabric.. sadly our store looks like they've already gotten rid of huge amounts of fabric..) and i don't want to shop amazon and the likes for craft supplies... i actually LIKE going to physical stores and browsing what's available. i don't want to eshop for my hobbies and not know the texture or quality of things before i purchase them..
what's the yarn you've been using?
Not all of them are closing. Mine is still open.
Much love to all Joann employees ❤
It's Disgusting how scheduling is done and then you have customers who take it out on the employees.
JoANN employee here! I agree that the scheduling is a problem. Deal is, my store has good management. There are plenty of employees at my store with 3+ years of experience, and plenty of people enter and leave my store’s employment cycle. They paid me the lowest check I’ve had in my career last week and I’ve gotten a lot of shifts from them lately. I recently landed a waitressing job, which is going to help me make ends meet, though JoANNs should hopefully get their stuff together soon. I love this store, my coworkers are nice, but JoANNs needs to focus on fabrics and yarn. I remember how berserk people went over big twist posh!
I've been perusing the comments and a lot of the issues the people are complaining about sounds like shitty managers, less so the actual company itself. Not to say JoAnn isn't fucking up but MOST employee issues are usually do to bad managers.
@@SamDracula_ I am fortunate to have strong management at my company. Most of my complaints have to do with minimal hours and how little money I earn despite being there for a year now
Now it all makes sense... I went to Joann during this past holiday season, and stood in line to check out for well over half an hour. Despite having a line so long that it snaked down the center aisle of the store, they only had 2 checkers on duty in the middle of a Saturday in December. I felt awful for them... And also extremely grateful that I don't work in retail anymore 😵💫
Slight correction to your intro:
SOME michaels now carry fabric. I have a local one that got renovated and has some fabrics.
Possibly because of the Joann bankruptcy since the patterns of the fabric look very much like the ones I've seen there (that aren't available in person at other Chain stores)
Okay. That’s what confused me.
I applied to work for them in 2019 and they offered me 7.25 an hour. When I said I would need to be making at least 10 to Make things work the manager told me they weren’t even making that much and they had been there at least 8 years,
They offered… federal minimum wage? In 2019?! No wonder this is happening
Right after “who invited Jo” cut to TH-cam advert for . . . JoAnn!
The algorithm can be quite entertaining at times.
I work at small company that has products in Joanns. They owed so much money that we put there orders on hold until they paid some of them. We also have to let go the joanns department. Thankfully joanns is ordering again and we were able to bring people back
The bug you found is a house centipede! They eat real pests like cockroaches, so they can be beneficial housemates. Thank you for not killing it.
BRO, I swear Fruit of the Loom had a cornucopia for longer than just their April First joke. I remember as a kid seeing it on some but not all of their underwear. I SWEAR.
I’m with you! I feel like it was on all the packages for a while
@@citrinedreaming And the little logo on the underwear.
Former employee: skills and knowledge came second and that made me hate being there. One of the reasons i just walk around the store is because i like helping people with crafting questions and that was discouraged. I ended on bad terms for sure.
as a woman who loves both crafts and other women that title and thumbnail did so much for me
Emma you are spot on. I tried to remain loyal to Joanne for my knitting supplies but lack of stock and non competitive pricing makes it impossible. I switched to knit picks about 10yrs ago.
2:33 this rebrand actually worked, at least in me 😅 I was a teenager at the time, but up until after the rebrand, I exclusively got craft supplies from Michaels snd Walmart. I didnt know until ... 2021? That Joanns sold anything but fabric snd sewing materials. To be fair, all the Joanns in my city have their old signage still that says fabric store. It wasn't until i was looking for a specific kind of button and also a puzzle organizer that I finally went into a Joanns and discovered a world of beauty. Now it's on my 'I need supervision in this store' list where it's accompanied by Michaels and once-upon-a-time had Hastings on it too
when I tell you I SCREAMED when chey appeared 🙌
The John Oliver of crafting
$13/hr to basically run a Joann's? I got $14/hr as an actual part-timer when I was running a pet supplies shop smaller than the fabric section. And I could sit down in the office playing on my phone or reading until somebody came in. Can't imagine being on my feet running an entire store for that little.
Aaaah I'm so excited I have a 5 hour road trip and this is perfect for kicking it off!!!
Recently quit after 6 months bc when I told my manager I couldn’t come in bc of a family emergency, he LAUGHED in my face. Our store was in disarray too. Not surprised they filed
ooh this is so well researched and well explained!! on one hand i hate how big craft stores have gobbled up smaller shops, but even if joann did actually go under, that alone wouldn't fix that problem. i hope they can do better by their employees, but not optimistic...
The only change here is that Joann restructured its debt by eliminating its equity shares (it’s been delisted from NASDAQ). So somehow, selling / trading the debt will make Joann’s creditors and investors more money. However, the stores are remaining open and for now no layoffs. In the long term though, if Joanne execs can’t find a way to increase the company’s value, the creditors and investors will prioritize their own profit over improving the customer experience.
As someone who worked at a company that was obviously teetering on failure but hasn’t actually sunk yet, there’s a sense of “if I stick it out, I might get some job growth”. As people leave, you get more responsibilities. And if the company gets back on its feet and starts hiring, suddenly you’re a senior employee with great experience!
Of course in my case, one day we were all called into a meeting, told we were unemployed effective immediately, and because the company filed for bankruptcy they didn’t have to pay us severance, or pay out unused PTO.
As a (mainly) sock knitter and former employee, I rarely bought yarn there. The sock yarn selection was abysmal, most yarn was acrylic (nothing wrong with that), we didn't have a general manager after my first week, and didn't have a decent team to unload the truck every week. When I started, there were 7 of us on the truck team, and a month later there were 2 of us, so no wonder we had empty shelves. When I left 7 months later, I think we had 4 on the truck team. I liked the people I worked with, but the management structure was terrible. I had briefly considered transferring stores when I moved from Nebraska to Mississippi in 2022, but our JoAnn closed last month.
Yeah if you want anything thinner than a worsted yarn they don’t have good selection (specifically wools or wool blends)
Main reason I don’t buy yarn there
the joanns i used to work at would frequently just be staffed with myself and a manager. I'd have to wait hours until another person clocked in to get a lunch break. often we'd get close to finished stocking a new shipment and the we'd get told that actually upper management wanted a whole category of fabric moved to another side of the store
great video!! this editing style is super cool too- i remember dreaming of going to a Joann's store growing up (i'm outside of the US)- to see it all fall down like this and failing their employees is so disheartening, may the craft community stick together forever
I made a Joanns run today, it was bizarre. One store looked like a wasteland with hardly anything or anyone in the store, the other store was business as usual tons of product, only 3 employees though…
So glad you spoke on private equity. They are also helping to drive the housing crisis by buying up homes to flip as Airbnbs all over the US, even in small cities and rural areas.
Ok so I’m a Joann’s employee! They filed for chapter 11, they’re “restructuring” the company AKA cutting employee hours and pay! Our new manager makes less than one of our cashiers. For reference, as a Cashier (hired last October, right after corporate came in and cut pay) and I make $8.50/hr in SC. The other cashier makes $10/hr and I think the new assistant manager probably makes $9/hr. And they can’t understand why we keep losing new hires 🤦🏻🤦🏻🤦🏻
I work at Joann’s as a way to get out of the house AND for the employee discount (my FT job is fully remote).
For context, my grandson makes almost double what I do at Joann’s working at Target.
Good thing I’m not there for the money!!!
Omg, the random house centipede appearance was great!!
I wish they would scale back and focus on the new concept stores that have community spaces. I had one near me before I moved and it was so cool. The layout was nice and easy to navigate, there was a bunch of crafting machines you could rent time on like glowforge or quilting machines, and big open spaces that you could come and work on projects
Worked joann for one summer, 2020. it was fine and even fun, so much work because of the craft craze. Returned next summer after being away at college. Showed up to first day and there was only a single other employee working in the middle of the day. Concerned, I asked her how many hours she was given a week. She was working 1-2 days a week. Found my new job the same day. Sad to see the state the store is in now
I worked at Joanns for about 3 months (Dec 23-Feb 24) recently and we were told by our store manager (who, mind you, had to be there 6 days a week) that Joanns was "not going under" (which was told to her from corporate). When they mailed me the paperwork about the bankruptcy not even a month after I quit I had to laugh. We were paid $9/hr and had maybe 3 people on staff at a time if we were lucky so this is the furthest thing from a surprise to me.
Watching this entire video to reach the end and hear “I got topped by Joann” was exactly what I needed tonight, thank you Emma 🤣❤️
On holiday from the UK I visited two stores. Joann the size of an aircraft hanger, filthy floors, empty shelves, dark as overhead lights were not working and three staff. Michael’s the polar opposite, vibrant, huge choices and five manned tills.
As a current Joann employee, yeah it is that bad. We're a mid-size store (about half of what used to be the city's Kmart location, think small grocery store or like. large chain pharmacy) and when you said that Florida store could get three employees at a time I felt jealous. Outside of weekends we rarely have as many as three people, it's often just the MOD and someone else. We do not open the front registers on weekdays unless there is a Rush or the cut bar register fails on us (which is does with surprising and annoying frequency). We have to have people come in to put away freight when they aren't scheduled just so the district manager doesn't get mad at our store manager. Our assistant manager has been at various other stores in the region that were liquidating or had everyone but the SM quit -- this has been since mid-November and I only just saw him back in town *yesterday*.
Not only do they not give us the man hours to put shit away, they keep sending us boxes full of shit we barely sell. At the height of tie blanket season we were getting six bolts of the SAME fleece at a time. Where do they want us to put this? In what space?? Because our AM's been out of town I'm now the only one who likes to do POGs (the department layouts), and the hours they expect us to get these done in is laughable. Unfinished wood was sent out last week and they wanted us to use about 9.5 hours. For a 40' department. With all 10 sections categorized as "extensive changes." And which used to only have 8 sections, so I had to figure out two extra sections. And without the proper fixtures to house dowels and planks. 12 hours is a *conservative estimate* for what I put into that, it's probably more like 15-20 (at least 17, looking at my paystubs) and I still have to go back and redo dowels now that another fixture I could use was freed up. I am being paid $9.19 an hour.
But hey, at least I have a permanent 30% off discount.
wow that is awful :( have u started looking for another job ?
@@v.anessa1451 I am actually planning a move to hopefully work at a different, local fabric store (that actually has a starting wage of like $15). Gonna stay on the joann payroll as long as I can (even if it's working one shift a week) just to keep the discount lmao
I always love your reinactments of the business things. I choose to believe they are true to life, *maybe* with a bit less professional business jargon but otherwise accurate. 🤣
As a former employee, this makes perfect sense. We were the largest store in the state, so we got all the extea stock for the others dumped on us. You know, rather than stocking our store? Our overstock, out of stock issue was ridiculous
Edit: this was back from 2018-19 btw
How odd! I got a Joanne ad during this vid. There was a wonderful Joann a block away from my house until this spring. It closed and reopened a few miles away. I miss it! I wish there was less cheap fake flower stuff and more good fabrics and better yarn.
Babe, wake up. Emma in the moment posted & they’re dripped tf out.
What song is at the end of the video? I really like it but i don't see a link or anything listed. :(
My local Joanns has been consistently losing fabric and notions stock, cleared out the entire Singer/Husqvarna area, still has Christmas decorations out, and rarely even has someone at the cutting table. It's been really sad watching the store fall into disrepair especially after shopping there regularly since 2019.
getting a Michael’s ad during this video is wild
It really sucks. I’m an employee there and I really love my job. I love what I do, I love the people I work with. But the people at the top just refuse to understand that you cannot bring business in if you don’t schedule people. This is not a new idea. We’ve lost so many customers because they just simply don’t want to have to wait in long lines, or shop in a store where everything is thrown around and we can’t clean it up. We don’t have people working in the different departments for things like questions or cleaning the areas up. It’s very easy to blame the ex-shareholders, and I’m sure they had a lot to do with it, but if this has been going on for longer, idk. It’s a shame.
I worked at a Joann's as a seasonal temp for like 2 months and they committed so many labor law violations. I've been chomping at the bit for them to go down.
Friend of mine actually works at a Delaware Joann’s and hearing bad news always gets me so concerned for her job
My Michaels has started carrying a TON of fabric! It's had quilting cotton for a long time now, but a couple months ago they got in a bunch of apparel fabric! Cotton and bamboo jersey, denim, DBP, rayon, cosplay fabrics...
This video was amazing, so well done!! Props to your editor Chad, great editing!! Also, whats the capitalism song used at the end?? Such a bop!!!
Same! I can't find it anywhere!
@@yvaincallipso84 i think it's ai generated...
Nooooo! Joann! Well now i have to find a different store😕
they’re not closing! …. yet
@@emmainthemoment Yeah i commented this like 2 mns into the video lol
@@emmainthemoment 🤞please, please, please, please, please 🤞 pray to the yarn and fabric goddesses that they get rid of dead weight c suite and can float the boat again
I was one of the full-time employees ousted last July, and yeah, things were getting bad there even before that happened. The hours we were given for the week of Black Friday in 2022 were less than the hours we would get in a week in the off season of 2021. Our prep time to get everything ready before the store opened was cut from 3 hours to a half an hour. I regularly didn't get my state-mandated breaks, and I'm still trying to figure out if there's a way I can take legal action for that.
As a joann's employee, none of this is a surprise. I estimated a year ago that they had a year before closing smaller stores and shifting to primarily online orders. Edit: Got to the end of the video and I genuinely think I know "Sam", at least through a degree or two. That or Joann just does this to that many people. Knew a keyholder who put in for time off for a cruise that was already booked and they were just told no you have to come in, they quit. Also knew many keyholders who left after the full-time cut. Joann is still going downhill unless they have made INCREDIBLE changes to corporate culture during the bankruptcy. The cheapness of corporate is ridiculous. You mentioned safety concerns? Well our store was told we could only have ONE PERSON in the store until opening and only 2 in the store after closing. To save hours. And we only make minimum wage anyways.
The whole quitting and getting a new job thing is something I relate to. At the beginning of the year I was having so much physical pain (my whole body ached, my back, all my joints) that I quit my job because I couldn’t do it anymore. And a large cause of the pain (other than chronic illness) was the job itself, because they didnt listen to what I told them worked for me. Ihad told them I was in pain, and that i would like to move around more, and they said i would be doing cash less often soon, but they turned around and exclusively had me on cash, and told other employees they could do freight right while I was standing there, perfectly able and silently begging to be told I could do it. The store i worked for has a lot of BS policies too, and it was another reason I left (no water bottles at cash. So it would have been on them if I fainted because I get dizzy if I cant have a sufficient amount of water, and other things i didnt agree with. ITS A DAMN DOLLAR STORE)
That was January. Now it’s May and I still don’t have a job. I’m not in that level of pain anymore, and ive been applying to places week after week and I have only gotten 4 interviews this whole time, last one was in March.
I'm in a similar boat. I highly recommend checking out banking. If you have strong customer service skills, you can easily get a job as a personal banker, even with no direct experience (all you need is an ability to stay calm, be friendly and helpful, and knowledgeable on products and promotions).
Also, make sure you learn how to negotiate salary with HR once you have a job offer. It sounds intimidating, but it's easy and you can get at least a few dollars more per hour. There are some great content creators who teach how to ace interviews and contract negotiation.
no!!! im not even from the us but omg
I worked at Joann from October 2021 to March 2022 and we were so understaffed constantly it was insane. if you think having only three ppl working is bad how about having only two, me and the manager, with the manager doing manager things in the office and me being literally the ONLY employee available to customers. we constantly had boxes of products that needed to be put on the shelves just sitting in the aisles bc there was no one available to actually stock things. one time I was the only one out in the store and there were like three ppl at the cut counter and a few others at the cash register waiting to check out and I've never felt more stressed in my life. except maybe the couple times where the wifi went out so we couldn't ring ppl up at the cash register so we just told them to put their stuff on hold and come back for it later. I had so many anxiety attacks while working there and I will never work retail ever again. my coworkers were great though :)
24:17 All is calm in Joann land sounds like "there is no war in Ba Sing Se"
I admire those “stay until the end” employees and I’m disgusted that the company places no value or appreciation on them. I live in a city of 400K and JoAnn is the only fabric store in town (except HL, and they carry mostly crafting fabrics, not something I’d like to make a dress out of). Maybe it’s a dying industry like buggy whips and ice men? God I hope not.
I love your videos, even on such a bleak topic. Your humor and editing are top notch!!
I hope not too. I just started sewing clothes and it makes me so happy
I don't think it's a dying hobby or industry necessarily. There is a lot more public discourse criticizing fast fashion, and since the quarantine years a lot more people have gotten into crafting hobbies. I have seen a lot of it amongst youth. I think the issue is the business models of these big box stores. I am hopeful we'll see a return to smaller, locally-owned craft stores. Consumers WANT local, ethical, sustainable products and supplies, but I don't know how financially feasible they are with today's economy/legislation that favors large corporations. There is a growing disconnect between what consumers and workers want, versus what the govt and their corporate buddies are pushing on us.
One of the main problems for Joann is that crafting your own clothes used to be the affordable option. Now it's simply not. Even just material costs vastly out prices your basic clothing options. Not to mention it's a skill which must be grown, and Joann has stopped their classes and schools don't require home ec so these skills are something people have to find other means to learn. That takes extra time, money, and effort that not everyone can/will/want to have.
@@PeriVinkle Very true. For me I've found the benefit of sewing my own clothes to be the better fit. Plus I am more likely to care well for the clothes that I poured my love into like that!
@@Sleipnirseight I hope you're right, as venture capitalism seems hellbent on destroying itself one big box chain at a time. Maybe small shops can grow out of the wreckage, especially if they lean into being "third spaces" where people can go to be part of something--a class or crafting group or something. That would also be something Schmamizon can't provide.