B&N Announces 100 Job Cuts via Corpo-Speak

Per Publisher's Weekly, it looks like Barnes & Noble is dropping the axe on 100 positions from the corporate office in NYC.

In a statement on the cuts, CEO Steve Riggio said, "the downturn in retail sales mandate that we reduce corporate overhead costs as appropriate to our overall sales volume." In addition to the lay-offs, the company plans to open 20 fewer new stores than it did 2008.

At least we know one thing will continue to operate in its full capacity, unaffected by this troubled economic climate: vapid corpo-speak-laden statements from execs.

For anyone else trying to sugar-coat corporate bloodletting, give some of these a try:
- redundancies among FTEs led us to make necessary belt-tightening measures
- operationally, we were faced with significant personnell ballast that became inessential to our modified flightplan
- the current business climate requires that we ultimately streamline our workflow and make headcount reductions to reflect this

While we're on the subject (sort of), check out this hilarious article from The Onion: Manager Receives Mastery Of Pointless Managerial Jargon.

And conversely, for an example of some new-era, 2.0-exec candidness, check out a recent emotional and honest blog post from 1up.com editor Sam Kennedy, in which he laments the loss of half his staff during a painful-but-necessary acquisition.

Oh, and good luck out there, everyone. Keep your head up, your résumé updated, and your LinkedIn account bookmarked.