Dorothy was the oldest, over 70. Ann almost that. Then Betty, the most eccentric person I’d met up to that point. Marge, mother of four, who was the kindest manager ever. And on down in age to me in college, all of us working at the JoAnn Fabrics store in Lakewood, Ohio where our hands constantly lifted, measured, smoothed oceans of fabric we unrolled to sail our scissors across.

I started working there at 18, newly married, attending college full time but still keeping up volunteer hours in my field plus my 25 to 30 hours a week work schedule. The store was on busy Detroit Avenue where shopkeepers helped each other out. Where a young Downs Syndrome man rode his bicycle to visit stores up and down the street, his friends the clerks. And where people of all sorts came to dream up projects of all sorts—puppet theater curtains, wedding dresses, a giant stuffed dragon, a sling to carry a crippled dog, stage props and costumes, elaborate quilts, holiday gifts, Halloween outfits, and the one lady who so loved a particular upholstery fabric that she spent hundreds buying enough yardage to staple to her wall.

We spent long hours on our feet, often skipping breaks during big sales to keep from abandoning coworkers to a crowd of customers. We calculated yardage and price on paper receipts, consulting a ragged chart to determine discount percentages until the math became automatic. It was a place made magic by the endless enthusiasm of crafting something new. As we worked we talked, singing of possibilities to customers, singing of our lives to one another. In spare moments we rerolled bolts and priced remnants and filed patterns in this place of women’s voices. When men came in we sang a jostling tune, calling out merry asides while they plotted unfamiliar projects. They, women-splained, laughed back.

Like many companies, there weren’t enough employee hours to keep products perfectly stocked, deliveries unpacked, paperwork done, sales targets met. But there were perks. At the time, employees could buy a pattern along with the fabric and necessary notions for half off if they were willing to let the store use the finished item as a display for a few weeks.  I remember Fiona’s gorgeous tailored work, tiny to fit her petite self and precisely made as designer clothes. I remember Marge’s baby quilts and Jean’s soft flowered tops. In my third year working there, one of my half-off projects was a lined wool blazer in dark heathered purple along with a patterned wool blend skirt. I made both to wear on job interviews for my upcoming graduation. Even at half off, the fabric was pricey for me. It hung as a store display while I waited for those interviews. My degree was in social work, a field which a new conservative administration was busy defunding. The grant I was offered to get a masters was defunded too. Not long after, my new husband helpfully did the laundry and shrunk the blazer I’d made to what seemed like a doll’s size, its lining hanging out like a cow’s prolapse. It didn’t matter, the jobs I applied for didn’t materialize.

I recently read that JoAnn Fabrics has declared bankruptcy. This Ohio-based company is closing all of its 800 stores. Any of us who sew find this strange since their stores are always busy. When there’s a big sale they are crowded with long lines where a “what are you making?” camaraderie develops among those holding stacks of material.

This once small Ohio chain grew through business practices standard in unchecked capitalism. It drove small fabric stores out of business, bought up smaller chains, competed heavily with art supply stores, and eventually dived deep into the craft market to compete there too. I was much less interested in what they carried after the majority of their ever-larger stores sold cheap holiday items, stinky candles, craft kits, and tacky imported décor but, still, could rely on them for any color of thread I needed and a huge array of fabrics to choose from.

The ambition that expanded the company also took it down, starting when it sold out to a private equity firm. Hedge funds and private equity are well-practiced in cannibalizing a company by loading it with debt, destroying its credit, and extracting value while paying themselves handsomely even as the business succumbs. A company’s purchase by private equity in a leveraged buyout is simply destruction for profit. We’ve seen this happen over and over. That’s what killed Sears, Kmart, Toys R Us, Red Lobster, TGI Fridays and many other longstanding companies. Private equity is rapidly acquiring healthcare concerns including dialysis centers, nursing homes, optometrist practices, dental practices, clinics, medical labs, urgent care centers, and entire hospital systems. They are buying up daycare centers, veterinary practices, and automotive service companies. They also own companies familiar to most of us including Neiman Marcus, Del Monte Foods, Dell, PetSmart, Staples, Hertz, Century 21 Real Estate, Coldwell Banker, Petco, Yankee Candle, David’s Bridal, Barnes and Noble, Beech-Nut, Evenflo, Snapple, Bob Evans, Sealy, and various dollar store chains. Private equity portfolio companies are about 10 times more likely to go bankrupt than non-private equity-owned companies. 

At the same time, the vulture capitalists are not held personally responsible for what they are doing to the workers or their pension funds, let alone to the people these companies exist to serve. Here’s an example from Plunder: Private Equity’s Plan to Pillage America by Brendan Ballou.

“Consider the pillaging of HCR ManorCare, once the second-largest nursing home chain in America. In 2007, a private equity firm, the Carlyle Group, bought ManorCare for a little over $6 billion, most of which was borrowed money that ManorCare, not Carlyle, would have to pay back. As the nursing home chain’s new owner, Carlyle sold nearly all of ManorCare’s real estate and quickly recovered the money it put into the purchase. But the move forced ManorCare to pay nearly half a billion dollars a year in rent to occupy buildings it once owned. Moreover, Carlyle extracted over $80 million in transaction and advisory fees that ManorCare paid for the privilege of being bought and sold by Carlyle. These payments made Carlyle’s founders billionaires many times over. But they drained ManorCare of the money it needed to operate and care for its residents. As a result of these financial machinations, ManorCare was forced to lay off hundreds of workers and institute various cost-cutting programs. Health code violations spiked. An unknowable number of residents suffered. …. Such cost cutting eviscerated the business and in 2018 the company filed for bankruptcy with over $7 billion in dept. Yet despite the bankruptcy, the deal was almost certainly profitable for Carlyle… That the business itself collapsed was, in a sense, immaterial to Carlyle.”

Ballou goes on to note that Carlyle avoided legal liability for its actions. Residents’ families who sued Carlyle for wrongful deaths had their cases dismissed, since as a private equity firm Carlyle didn’t technically “own” ManorCare. The three main private equity firms, together, are the third, fourth, and fifth largest employers in America after Walmart and Amazon.

I know I’ve strayed far enough, and return now to my tale of working at JoAnns. Even when our store was crowded, my coworkers and I made it a cheery place. Except those hours when regional managers invaded. These humorless middle management types in cheap polyester suits insisted we greet each customer with whatever slogan had been mandated by the main office, which we never did when they weren’t present. We saw no reason to recite some impersonal words rather than greeting regular customers by name and asking how work was going on the prom dress or shower curtain they’d been making last time we saw them.

While these men were there our merriment paused, our voices stilted as we did their bidding — move tables, hang new ceiling signs, change the fabric displays to whatever polka-dot or animal print theme was directed, carry deliveries left at the front door, grunting and sweating while they sat consulting clipboarded sheets from the main office and never, ever got up to help.

I was learning to speak up. Or, more accurately, I was freer to speak up because I didn’t need the job as badly as my coworkers. When these men called us girls no matter our ages, I started to sing back women! though they pretended not to hear. I wrote down their most outrageous quotes under cartoons I drew and posted them in the back room. They pretended not to notice.

One day I hung the arm of an unused mannequin over our sole employee toilet, the one they spattered with pee while facing a toilet tank topped with tampons and tissues. The arm held a gracefully draped fabric remnant on which I’d written put the seat down. They said nothing but put the seat down and when they left our laughter was music sewn into the space we took back.