I, for one, am not sorry to see Bed Bath and Beyond go under. When they opened their store here, I was one of the temps hired to do the grunt work. There were around 10 of us. The manager in charge was a young ex-Marine who felt like the job needed to be run like the Marine Corps, in other words constant pressure, no relaxing, no breaks, run, run, run and no respect for the employees. It became obvious that they had hired him because he would crack the whip and liked doing it. 

Standard minimum wage at that time in Summit County was generally understood to be $10 because of the expense of living there. The manager got the temp agency to lower pay to $9 an hour, which was starvation wages. There was not a lot of other work at the time, so we put up with it.

It was a toxic work environment. Make a mistake and the managers are on you like a badger. The traveling employees were miserable under his command and regarded us temps as slaves. One day it got to be too much, and l walked out, which I had never done on a job in Summit County before. 

I wrote to corporate about the situation and told them I didn’t want any more of their mailings in my post office box. It took a couple complaints, but they finally complied. I never so much as ever entered one of their stores anywhere and never bought anything from them. I let people know what they were like behind the scenes.

I wonder how much of their downfall is due to callous treatment of people like this.