Macy’s announced they will be shutting the doors on 125 stores as well as cutting 2,000 corporate jobs, all in the name of growth.
When I first heard this news I couldn’t help but think of Thanos from The Avengers. If you’re unaware of who Thanos is, you’ve possibly been living under a rock like Patrick from Spongebob.
Thanos was the Big Bad over the last 10 years in the MCU (Marvel Comic Universe) and he had a somewhat altruistic reasoning behind his master “evil” plan. He wanted to eliminate one half of the universe, in hopes of saving the other half. He felt the universe was becoming over-populated and saw that this was the only option.
This is harsh. But many sided with Thanos. There’s even a whole subreddit dedicated to why people believe Thanos was a necessary evil.
We’ve seen companies do this in the past, cut workers to make a profit yet it never gets easier. Who are they worried about making a profit for?
Well, the investors of course and in most cases the CEOs, as well as other top-level execs, make out like bandits, while low-level workers who are let go struggle to make ends meet.
In business, everything you do is to make a profit. As a company with investors, it is your number one goal, typically above all else. No matter what PR we see, diversity and inclusion initiatives or feel-good commercials ( I’m looking at you Google), their top priority is to make more money for themselves and investors.
Who’s right? Who’s wrong? I’ll leave that up to you the reader to decide. One thing is for certain though, we’ve created this “Big Bad” by allowing corporations to do this time and time again. It’s a practice that is tied to Capitalism for better or worse and until we do something to change ourselves, this system will never change.
In the end, it seems Thanos has indeed won. At least for now.
