'feel every word'?
'withering on the vine' would seem to be more appropriate.

I worked for the big W till last year. Our then new regional manager 'managed' to lose 80% of his store managers in the first year. Did alarm bells ring at HO? Not that we saw. They probably thought he was clearing out dead wood. He sent messages to thank booksellers about commitment, not about commitment to customer service or quality or bookselling or even making the store a great place, which it was then - it was always 'commitment to waterstones'. First brand loyalty, the rest - apres moi le deluge as they say. Move on according to the market, fine. To think W could compete with Asda or Tesco or even the famous hub with Gardners or Bertrams - mad. Perhaps little w should give away a bag of potaoes with each book? I hear they are now into 'related products' and food. They'll have to teach booksellers to scrape the tomato ketchup and the melted cheese off the books taken to the cafés, read, then left. Surely, that will require yet one more manager at head office. Trebles all round for them then -as usual.

Waterstones has been poorly run for years. If it is to survive it needs to scale back to only about 150 branches in affluent areas, with a preference for larger branches.

[Thanks, it's not fair to single out individuals, so edited the comment - Philip Jones]

@Good Trading. No it probably boils dow to whatever the Regional Manager and Area Manager elites want to do to save their skins while everyone else goes down the pan. This is the company who introduced the "perfect rota" and made people redundant and lose hours because ... other companies were doing the same. Will someone hurry up and take it over or close the whole lot down :)

sacking people - whilst spending money on new uniforms that assume our customers are too scared to ask us for help?. devaluing W's bookreading customers isn't the smartest move really is it now.

Please do grow up ... People have lost jobs they loved , have young families and are struggling to pay mortgages and again the blog reverts back to T Shirts ! Please please put it in perpective and show a little respect .

The more I think about it, I actually really do not like my job anymore.
Don't worry, though, because I'm looking for work elsewhere.
However, ten years worth of experience in the book trade really does not translate well to any other bloody occupation.
The comnpany is STILL spending far too much on in-store promotional material, posters, etc. The Hub never delivers on time. Managers still do not walk the shopfloor unless they have something from head office to action.
I feel sorry for people who have lost their jobs but those of us in work should admit that the future is looking grim; we've all had customers browse our books and then tell us they'll get them "online because it is cheaper".
As someone else said, the cheap prices offered online and in supermarkets will result in less choice but the majority of general customers just won't notice.

At last - HO walking the plank instead of just the poor branch staff - for a change. I don't wish to tar all HO members with the same brush - some were very good and competent - but I echo comments here that over the last 10 years, senior W staff have burnt cash on marketing/promotional projects that could have been far better spent, for example on recreating W as something more than just a firm trading blows with the supermarkets. Shop staff/managers were pushed around, ignored, put in straitjackets while the egos abounded above them. Too many W marketing execs/HO staff were getting too used to receiving too much money in their wage slips each month for worrying about Summer Reading POS (lollipops and trains - thanks for that) & forcing shops to devote FOS bays to Michael Schumacher photobooks. As an ex-store management level employee, all I can say is: with more booksellers on the shopfloor earning decent wages we'd have successfully developed in-shop added value in the form of customer service (actually having time to do it PROPERLY), tailored central offers far more to local customers & had time to develop staff).Instead it got paranoid,punitive and to be honest, pretty boring.