With the pandemic resulting in so much change to how, when and where we work, and the stress and burnout so many are reporting, I thought I’d document this event from decades ago.

I was in my early 20s.  My boss, Greg, a Division Manager, was in his early 30s.  We worked for Wards Company which eventually became Circuit City.  But back then the company’s main business was as a licensed department, selling TVs and appliances inside large department stores such as GEX and Zody’s.

It was an exciting time.  The company was growing and experimenting with new retail concepts.  Management was young and we were making good money.  I was 21 years old when I was made manager of my first store in Albuquerque New Mexico.

However, I had no sooner moved there from Virginia when we started hearing that our landlord department store, GEX, was going bankrupt.   Wards Company’s fortunes and success were tied directly to those of GEX.  If their business and foot traffic was down, so was ours.  I had been in Albuquerque mere weeks when GEX announced their first round of immediate store closings.  Mine was not on the list.  This was in October as we were preparing for our all-important Christmas selling season.  Then the second round was announced.  These stores were to use the Christmas rush to liquidate, then close shortly after the new year.  Mine was not on that list either.  The Albuquerque store was not high volume, but it was one of the more profitable stores.  Our management told us to be optimistic.  GEX may make enough during the holidays to turn things around.

But GEX didn’t turn things around and the post-holiday sales were dismal.  Assuming the worst, that my store would soon close and I’d be unemployed in an unfamiliar city, my home for just six months, had me focused on my own plans and problems.  I didn’t think about the fact that mine was the only remaining store in my boss’s division of 12 stores.

I was the company’s youngest store manager.  Greg was the company’s youngest division manager.  Greg was married with a toddler son.  He lived in Atlanta.  I didn’t know him well as we had only worked together those few months since I arrived in Albuquerque.

In February, I learned that all of the remaining stores would be closing.  Mine would close in just a few weeks.  We had no gameplan by which to close a store.  I was told my boss would call soon to plan his visit to help me close things down.

It wasn’t my boss who called.  It was his boss, Arnold. And he didn’t call to talk about store closings.  He told me Greg had committed suicide.  I couldn’t understand.  I did not realize a job could be so important, that a job could be such a part of your identity that its loss meant you had nothing left.  But there it was.  Greg was dead.

I shared the news with my employees, most of whom knew Greg longer than I did.

I waited a couple of days to tell them that the store would be closing and they would be out of a job.

Arnold did visit.  By that time we had liquidated nearly everything that couldn’t be easily shipped to some of Wards Company’s remaining businesses.  Arnold told me I had a job in California if I wanted it.  So after overseeing the loading of the trucks with the remaining merchandise, I watched my household furniture and belongings get packed in with the refrigerators.

My team said our emotional goodbyes.   There was sort of a pact that no matter how bad things might get, we wouldn’t follow Greg.