Remember this when you see the television ads or drive by the many going-out-of-business signs: Circuit City is one of those companies that became a real-life case study of how bad management destroys a business and drives it into the ground. In the incredibly competitive world of electronics retailing, Circuit City’s leadership-challenged management team—with tacit approval by its brain-dead board of directors—systematically made a series of shortsighted decisions that essentially killed the company.

Anyone who ever shopped at Circuit City can point to any number of compelling reasons for why the company failed, but for me, the biggest reason is the simplest: The company’s top management failed to manage its workforce well. They bungled People Management 101.

I was thinking of this while reading a blog post that was forwarded to me titled “Their Final Words as the Grunts of Circuit City.” It’s a sad and sobering chronicle of the final days of a formerly great company, written by the people on the ground—the floor workers—who are just trying to keep going as the company winds down to nothing.

This first-person worker-bee blog post captures so many different elements and experiences that it is hard to adequately list them all here. Many are contradictory, from the clear pride in what Circuit City had been to the bitterness at management for leaving the workers in the hands of unnamed and unseen “liquidators” who don’t care what happens to them. It also paints a terribly depressing portrait of human selfishness as customers browbeat the employees in their frenzied search for a rock-bottom bargain.

Here’s one snippet that captures this:

“We’ve had our share of customers come in yelling that they’ve been screwed over by us in some fashion. This may sound like rhetoric, but 30,000+ associates are about to lose their jobs—how do you think we feel? I’ve had customer say they are glad that we’re going out of business, all because we can’t return their XBox game that they bought, opened, and didn’t like. I’m sorry, but how does losing $30 on a game compare to someone that is about to lose their livelihood? I’m not looking to make this a topic of money, but some associates here live paycheck to paycheck, and the thought of not having a job is scary. Some associates here just bought a new house, a new car, just got married, or just had a child. Impending job loss is devastating to them. I’m seeing it first hand. The normally happy-go-lucky attitude of some people is just gone altogether. It’s sad. I’ve always joked that I hope Best Buy went under before us (somehow) or that when CompUSA went under that I saw it coming. Now … I regret saying those things. Watching your store, your second home, your second family, go away in front of you is depressing. …”

Yes, there is a lot of wistfulness and poignancy here, but there’s also a fair amount of denial and refusal to admit that Circuit City was terribly troubled and that the decisions of top management (notably former CEO Philip J. Schoonover) helped kill whatever competitive advantage the company had. For people working on the floor, it’s easier to blame the economy for the company’s demise than to understand or admit that maybe the big boys at corporate didn’t know what they were doing.

The final admonition from this Circuit City worker is something we should all keep in mind during these difficult days:

“Remember next time you walk in any other retailer/store that is closing—this company is made up of people, just like you and me. We’re just ordinary individuals trying to make our way in the world. It’s one thing to hate the company because of a bad experience, but a majority of us are good people, and it’s heartbreaking to see how some people just don’t care. I’m not asking anyone to pull a 180 on their views of the company. All I ask is that if you have negative, malicious thoughts, please keep them to yourselves. Life is going to be hard enough for some of us as is once we are gone, it doesn’t help to have someone scream in your face ‘I’m glad you’re going out of business.’

“This company gave me a lot, and I’m slowly seeing it fade away.”

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