Retailers are making efforts to reopen stores as they search for unaccounted-for employees.
By MARK ALBRIGHT
Published August 18, 2004
Burdines-Macy's didn't wait for its 100 Port Charlotte employees to call in after Hurricane Charley roared through southwest Florida.
"We sent a team of security people out to track down every one of them: at home, in shelters, through the Red Cross," said Carey Watson, Burdines senior vice president of advertising. "We didn't care about them not working. We just wanted to be sure they were okay and learn what they needed to get back on their feet. About a dozen of them were really hard hit."
Burdines reopens its Port Charlotte store today for limited hours with the help of emergency generators. Never mind that the National Guard is using the parking lot as a relief staging area. Many weary employees told their bosses they wanted to get some normalcy back in their lives and the certainty of a paycheck.
It's a lesson the Miami-based department store chain learned after Hurricane Andrew ripped through several of its South Florida stores in 1992. Yet even with the extra detective work, the last few missing employees were located only late Monday, three days after Charley was long gone.
Finding employees after a disaster has proved a nettlesome problem for many retailers. As of Tuesday, Beall's Department Stores was still searching the Red Cross and shelters for about 10 missing workers. Kash n' Karry Food Stores was looking for about 20.
"We've still got a few employees we cannot account for that we now think just aren't coming back," said Al Steinberg, district manager for Dillard's, which still has one store closed in Port Charlotte and two others on limited hours in Winter Haven and Fort Myers because of power failures and curfews.
The reasons for the missing go far beyond the shock and disruption of dealing with destroyed homes and other emergencies. In many parts of Florida, the power has been out for days. There has been no phone service. Nobody's at the store to answer the phone anyway. Some employees may have just decided it's time to find another job.
"I've got employees who left the state to escape this storm that have told me they aren't coming back," said Becky Bragg, owner of Canoe Outpost in Arcadia.
Retailers track down missing employees for reasons other than work. CVS Corp. waited until Monday to order a housing inventory of all its Florida employees just to determine which ones needed help.
Several chains including CVS maintain hardship trust funds to pay for food, shelter and other employee needs after a disaster. At Publix Super Markets Inc., employees get financial help from Publix Charities, a nonprofit charity bankrolled by the chain's founding Jenkins family. Friends of Raymond James is a similar charity that expects to help Raymond James Financial employees who faced severe losses. The company said at least two employees lost their homes.
At Beall's Inc., the company has put up $100,000 so far to ensure employees don't miss a paycheck. The Bradenton chain, which faces a $2-million loss beyond what business interruption insurance will pay, is asking employees to contribute unused sick leave and accumulated vacation days to help raise more cash for assistance to employees in the most need.
"One of our biggest problems is finding jobs for people whose stores will be closed for some time that want to work," said Conrad Szymanski, president of Beall's Department Stores, which has four department stores and four outlet stores closed. "We're working out transfers where we can."
Unaccounted-for employees are just one dimension of the chaotic turmoil that has become daily life for employers trying to serve customers while getting business back in order.
Kash n' Karry, which has been donating food, bread and water to customers in the parking lots of some stores closed by Charley, opened three more stores Tuesday. In Wachula, the grocer donated a 750-kilowatt generator that had been keeping its food cold to help power the city's hobbled wastewater treatment system.
Five Wal-Marts in Florida are operating on generator power.
About 35 of the 620 Walgreens in Florida were still closed Tuesday. While many stores in storm-struck areas relied on generators, some store managers didn't wait. A handful of Walgreens drugstores in Kissimmee and Port Charlotte opened without electricity for cash customers willing to wait.
"Customers waited at the door for one of our associates to walk them through the store one at a time with a flashlight," said Michael Polzin, spokesman for the chain.
Things were just as frantic at Eckerd drugstores, where new owners at CVS encountered their first hurricane since taking over 700 Eckerds. Pharmacists frequently ran stores alone when they were the only employee once the storm passed. For a while Saturday, Eckerd was the only retailer open in downtown Punta Gorda. A Fort Myers pharmacist was repeatedly turned away from the bridge to Sanibel Island until police let him through to open the island's only Eckerd on Tuesday.
"It was trial by fire," spokesman Todd Andrews said. "We still have a half-dozen stores without power where the pharmacist is operating out of a cash drawer."
Retailers are juggling their staffing. Some have been shipping in workers from the Tampa Bay area to help with the cleanup and relieve cashiers and store managers who have been working long hours for days.
"Store managers treat their stores as their family, so you really have to persuade them to leave and get some rest when they should," said Shelley Broader, president of Kash n' Karry.
