Every once in a while you hear something from the corporate world that just makes you stop and say… "What were they thinking?!"  SignOnSanDiego.com is running just a such a story about Circuit City:

Circuit City said yesterday that it had fired 3,400 of its highest-paid sales staff and will replace them with lower-paid workers, a risky strategy to cut costs that goes beyond the layoffs, buyouts and hiring freezes commonly used by struggling companies.

So let me get this straight.  Someone up there in the ranks of Circuit City thinks it's a good idea to get rid of the companies best-paid employees and replace them with newbies?  In theory the best-paid sales people would be… well… the best.  Right?

I'm still scratching my head about this one.

In what twisted reality does a sales staff of newly-hired, untrained, inexperienced people turn out the same work as a seasoned, well-paid staff?  They say it's to cut costs.  But did they think about the impact a company full of new people would have on sales?  And to add insult to injury, the people who got fired can re-apply for lower-paying jobs in 10 weeks.

Huh?  Say what?

What Circuit City apparently doesn't realize is that you get what you pay for.  In a perfect world people work because they want to.  But we don't live anywhere near that perfect world.  In this world - the real one - people work because they have to.  And if you pay them lousy wages you're going to get lousy work out of them.  Most people (there are, of course, exceptions) only do what they have to do to get by.  If someone has worked hard, proven themselves, and earned a few more dollars a hour… you don't fire them in return.

Has Circuit City ever heard of "reputation management"?  Do they not think other people will look at this and have the same reaction I'm having?  Do you think good sales people are going to go running to Circuit City to find jobs now?  Not if they're smart!  Because Circuit City's approach seems to be to reward lousy employees with a job and fire the ones who do a good job.

Before any business - offline or online - makes a big move like this, they should completely and throughly look at how that move might be perceived by the public.  Maybe it will save the company a $150 million this year.  But what will the long-term impact be?  What will the impact be to the company's image?

George Whalin of Retail Management Consultants doesn't get the logic behind this move:

"If you've been there three or four years, you get your salary up if you're any good,” he said. “So they're saying, 'We'll get rid of the most knowledgeable people who have been around the longest and hire people who haven't a clue.' It doesn't make sense to me.”

Nor I, George.  Nor I.