The Fired Alarm! ; After Department Store Is Evacuated, the Staff Gather Outside. Then They Are Told: It's No Drill You're All Out of a Job
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Summary
IT is rarely a pleasant task one that demands a caring tactful approach. So when bosses at a struggling department store were faced with the prospect of letting 140 staff go, it was a particularly heavy responsibility.
But rather than call each employee in one by one or sending an apologetic letter to each, they chose a different approach. They set off the fire alarm, assembled the workforce in the car park then read out a short statement informing them they no longer had a job to go to. Last night, the move by bosses at Robbs a landmark store in the Northumberland market town of Hexham for 189 years was condemned by the local Tory MP. Peter Atkinson said: 'I understand that the alarm was sounded to gather them all in the same place, where they were given notice of redundancy. 'It is a rather brutal way of doing things, especially when you consider that many of the staff have given many years of loyal service to the store.' Mr Atkinson added: 'It is the end of a long era. It takes away part of the history character of the town that's very sad.' The staff, unaware of what was about to come, had gathered in the car park on Wednesday morning expecting it to be nothing more than a fire drill. Instead they were told that there was some 'bad news'.See the full content of this document
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The Fired Alarm! ; After Department Store Is Evacuated, the Staff Gather Outside. Then They Are Told: It's No Drill You're All Out of a Job
Having fallen into difficult times with its parent company in administration a buyer not forthcoming, the store was to ...
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