Circuit City cans 3,400 employees, starts considering pawning the office furniture

Bleeding cash from every orifice, Circuit City starts laying about with the axe:

TWICE: Circuit City Replacing 3,400 Sales Assistants

Some translations:

"The No. 2 CE chain said it plans to replace the employees, who were paid “well above the market-based salary range for their roles,” with new hires who will be compensated at the current market range for those jobs. = We can't afford people who know how to do their jobs, so we'll take a chance on people who will work for less. We know that if you pay peanuts you get monkeys, but there you go.

"Circuit City says it expects “greater sales volatility” during the next six months due to the “significant nature” of these changes," = Because we're replacing our experienced monkeys with inexperienced monkeys our gross sales are about to get flushed down the toilet.

"The company has also hired Goldman Sachs to help it explore “strategic alternatives” for its InterTAN Canadian business, which could include the sale of the operation. Circuit City acquired the company in 2004 for $284 million." = We need overpaid investment bankers to point out the obvious fact that we paid too much for an underperforming retail banner, and need to dump it like a live hand grenade.

"We are taking a number of aggressive actions to improve our cost and expense structure, which will better position us for improved and sustainable returns in today’s marketplace. These actions represent the execution phase of the work initiated this winter to accelerate Circuit City’s transformation." = Nothing else has worked, so we're going to start firing people and rationing paper clips.

Death spiral? What do you think?

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