750 word feature story

Today at Mills Fleet Farm is a ghost town. Even though it was a Sunday so there was a brand new sale starting. At this time last year every Sunday was a mob seen you couldn’t even move in the store. You were constantly trying to keep up with the demand of the sale products. Throughout the day you had to deal with your fair share of angry customers, because Fleet Farm would always sell out of the products within an hour. But now we are having a hard time finding a spot in the back to place all the access merchandise. After black Friday during the week the employees probably outnumbered the customers two to one. So then our manager sent out a letter saying they were going to be laying people off and cutting the part timers hours big time. “We had to get rid of some part timers because we were not bringing in enough revenue in order to support them. We also had to raise our standards as an employer on our part time employees, in order to let some people go.” Fleet Farm store Manager Bernie said. This just further proves the loss of business over the Bush terms due to the poor economic plans. “Yeah I don’t think anyone could have run our country any further economically into the ground.” James S said. I even went to fleet farm and asked some of the employees how they felt about job security. “I am so afraid of doing something wrong like being late or making a mistake on paper work because Fleet Farm has been releasing people like mad. So I have been looking for other jobs just in case so that I have something to fall back on.” Said a part time employee at Fleet Farm. You can even look at the electronics business of Circuit City who had to close their doors completely on March 9, 2009. The loss of jobs just from that business is insane, and it puts more pressure on the people who already have jobs at a retail stores. It makes it tougher to keep a job because there is always someone who is willing to take your job and probably do it for cheaper because they need the money. Even my sister said “I have noticed the amount of jobs that have been lost by college students up at St.Cloud.” It just amazing how many high school and college kids are losing their jobs, because adults are losing their jobs and are willing to settle for a part time job that a normal teenager would hold. So all I can say is that I hope Obama’s stimulus package really works and starts to turn this country around. Even though I have been able to make good friends with my managers at Fleet Farm. I still worry about getting fired, for example when I decided I was only going to work weekends because I was falling behind in my school work because I was working 40 hours a week. I thought they would fire me but then the economy crashed and they started to only work part timers on the weekends. But before I turned it in I had a talk with my parents about the fact that I might get fired for trying to change my availability. Over the last four months at Fleet Farm I have seen a fair share of the part timers go in sporting goods alone. Out of the ten part timers that worked before the economic down turn, now there are only four of us. And it looks like a couple more of us are riding on the edge of being fired. This job loss at Fleet Farm I know has affected the surrounding area because a lot of the people fired owned apartments in the Twin Cities. Plus Fleet Farm was there only source of income to pay for their apartments. And whenever I saw them after that they didn’t have a job, because retail was so bad and they were still in school. So it’s not like they could go and work a full time job. Now what people don’t realize is that the more people that keep losing their jobs in retail stores around the country. All its doing is making it harder to stand out from the crowd of people applying for jobs. In order to get hired at a retail store, because they can keep raising their standards, so in the end it’s just a downward spiral and we really need something to jump start the economy.