Citizens Telephone Cooperative, Floyd County’s largest private employer and a company facing serious financial problems, went public this week, granting The Floyd Press an interview to discuss the company’s "challenges."
What General Manager Greg Sapp told the newspaper appears to be a lot of corporate hyperbole and double speak.
Press editor Wanda Combs asked Sapp about the reports on this web site about recent meetings with employees where the company threatened layoffs and cutbacks in service if revenues did not increase by July. Sapp refused to respond to those comments. Instead, he offered a company brochure overview that sounded a lot like the pabulum that is offered at the annual meeting each year.
Said Sapp:
For the past 20 years, the number of telephone customers rountinely grew from 5 to 7 percent. Over the past two years, we started losing over 1 percent of telephone customers. This year, at this point in time, we’ve averaging a 2 percent (loss). That’s a 7 to 9 percent swing in the negative. That really throws our traditional business model, stands it on its head. The difference between where we were then and now is a difference of $1.6 million dollars.
When asked about the threat of employee layoffs, Sapp again refused to discuss specifics but told the Press:
We have to continue to operate to look at the workforce, the size it is versus what we need to operate at that time. Historically the company goes out of their way to protect the interest of employees. The Cooperative is changing to reflect the changing market and economy so we can continue to provide the level of services customers demand at competitive prices and so that we can do that for a long time in the future. On any road to the future there’s always going to be a few bumps in the road.
"Bumps in the road" is usually corporate-speak for "hard times are here folks and some of you will lose your jobs."
Several Citizens employees have told us that at an earlier company meeting, the message from management was more direct.
"We were told that the person sitting next to us might not be with the company the next time we met," one employee said.
On Wednesday, the day before the Floyd Press article came out, the company held more meetings with employees and Sapp told pretty much the same story as the one he gave Press editor Wanda Combs. The topic of layoffs and cutbacks was not discussed.
"There was a definite change in tone," one employee said. "The threat is still hanging out there but it was more subtle this time around."
Sapp told the Press that former General Manager Gerald Gallimore laid out the "challenges" the company faced when he spoke at the last annual meeting at Floyd County High School. I attended that meeting. The picture that Gallimore painted was rosier than the one presented to employees. He talked of increasing competition and challenges but did not go into specifics and he also did not say anything about the possibility of layoffs or cutbacks in service.
Sapp blamed a drop in subscribers and long distance revenue for much of the company’s problems but interviews with Citizens employees who, for reasons that are easily understandable, ask not to be identified show other factors which have brought on the company’s current financial crisis, including:
- Construction of a "wireless broadband" data system in the New River Valley that promised to provide customers with laptop modems speeds up to 3 mbps. Suscribers have fallen far short of expectations and some reports say Citizens is trying to find a buyer for the system.
- IPTV, a cable-TV service delivered over the phone lines, has not met projections for county-wide deployment and does not yet offer high-definition TV reception at a time when more and more homes are getting HD TV receivers. Citizens lags a distant third in subscribers behind DirecTV and Dish Network — which offer HD services.
- Too much rapid expansion into areas outside Floyd County and costly ventures into service beyond Citizens’ core business. The company has purchased a number of ailing cable TV franchises in other counties and has expanded into some of the most economically devastated areas of Virginia.
Citizens is an aggressive, innovative telecommunications company that provides Floyd Countians with a level of telephone and Internet services that aren’t offered in many rural areas. I have praised those services on this web site many times. These services come at a price and Floyd Countians pay for them at a rate that is higher than many other areas.
But Citizens is, first and formost, a cooperative that should be more open and honest with the subscribers/members who — in effect — own the cooperative.
Says Sapp:
In no way does Citizens or its management conceal or hide anything. Citizens has challenges it must face in today’s environment. We must continue to look to enhance efficiency and productivity…to retain the right size workforce to match the size and scope of our business.
Take a second look at what Sapp said above. Read between the lines. Then ask yourself: Is this a company that is open and honest with its customer/owners?
Mr Thompson, after reading previous posts I find myself just asking two questions about the accusations.
One, how do you verify someones name or username on this site? There are some names I recognize but a lot that I do not. Some are just the first name even. So I was curious why you would accuse someone of using a fake name? Are you just removing the comments that you do not agree with and using that as a cop out?
Two, after reading various articles by others and posts by you, it seems that there were several occasions where you had ‘quoted’ imaginary sources and just to try and break the next big story. Is this what is occuring here again? One instance was in 1997, nearly 3 years after your ‘last drink’. Now, we all have did things for which we are not proud and most of us would fess up to them (especially when we realize word about us is beginning to spread), but to blame everything on alcohol, drugs, chocolate, etc is another cop out. That was 3 years after being sober. I of course could blame my slow typing skills on chocolate withdrawals. I could blame my procrastination of mowing the lawn today on Monte Alban or James Beam, both of which I haven’t met in almost 10 years myself. I think the person who was referring to your “jounalistic” approach you followed in the past wasnt to try and dig up dirt on you, but instead to show that you have fabricated multiple stories before and that perhaps this one could be as well.
Dave:
You raise some good points. Let me try to answer them.
1–We use two steps for verification. First, we check the email address. If the email bounces back (which happens with about a third of the comments submitted here), we don’t clear it for posting. If it does not bounce, I tend to allow the post but also ask the poster for additional information that allows us to clear that poster without a problem in the future. In your case, your email address did not bounce although I did find it interesting that you posted from a Citizens Telephone Internet account but used a free email service for your email address. As a general rule we take a second look at posters who use a free email account that allows them to create new identifies and use different names. In the case of the poster whose comments I did not allow, he used the name of one of the two sources that burned us in the past. That was a dead giveway.
2–I did not blame all of my mistakes on my alcoholism but used it as an example to explain that I have made many mistakes in my life and that is is not that hard to dig up "dirt on me." The problems that an alcoholic faces does not end when he or she stops drinking. We still must deal with the personality traits that became routine when we were drinking and constantly fight a condition called being a "dry drunk." I celebrate 14 years of sobriety on June 6 but that does not mean the problems that I created as a drunk went away on June 6, 1994. Dealing with the beast is an long, arduous process. The 12 steps to recovery is ongoing and one that recovering alcoholics like myself must face one day at a time and with the realization that we must continue to deal with the consequences of our actons for the rest of our lives.
As I also stated:
That ego is what led, more than anything else, to the problems at Capitol Hill Blue. As I said in the apology to our readers;
It was my ego that got me into trouble. Not the drinking. I left AA for a while because I had stopped drinking, had no desire to drink, and throught I did not need the help of a support group any longer. That was stupid. I was still a "dry drunk" with all the ego and anger management problems. As I said in that apology written on Capitol Hill Blue in 2006:
I still am an active participant in AA. I will be for the rest of my life. I also work with fellow alcoholics to try and help them deal with the beast. I serve as Floyd County’s representative on the New River Valley Alcohol Safety Action Program advisory board.
I can understand your skepticism over the story, given the past. But I have reported what Citizens’ employees have told me and offered my views of the situation based on what they said. I did not go with the story when the first Citizens employee contacted me but talked to others that I knew who worked at the company. When they confirmed what I was told, I decided to print their story. I tried to obtain a comment from management but my phone calls were not returned. But others who work at Citizens have come forward and have told the same story along with others details. No representative of the management of Citizens has denied a single issue reported on this web site. In fact, Greg Sapp refused to discuss the specifics of what I reported when asked to do so by The Floyd Press. It has been my experience that silence comes from those who cannot deny what was reported.
If and when any member of the management team of Citizens chooses to talk to me, I will report their side of the story. If they can document any error in what was reported here, i will print a correction and apology. The employees who came to me said they felt the public needed to know about the situation at Citizens. They chose to discuss specifics. Management did not. That was their choice, not mine.
I stand behind what I wrote and I do so openly and under my own name. With that in mind, let me ask you:
Why don’t you?
Why did you choose to post here without using your full name and with a free email service that masks your identity?
Mr. Thompson, I do not know you but as an employee of Citizens I can confirm that what you have reported about the company is true. As you requested, I provided you with my name and address so that you could verify that I am who I say I am and that I do work for Citizens. I cannot use my name here because I would lose my job.
Citizens has changed since I first went to work there. It went from being a family to just another large company that put profits ahead of employees. We were told that unless we work harder to produce more revenue by July there would be layoffs. We were also told that unless even more revenue was produced by October there would be evern more layoffs.
Sales staff are being taken off salary and put on commission. Support staff is being told they might go back to sales and will also be on commission. We now must pay for benefits that the company once paid for which means even more reductions in our take home pay.
Thank you for bringing this to the public’s attention. If we tell anyone we get fired. I am sorry that you have been threatened for telling the truth but we thank you for standing up for us.
Dave, you accuse Doug of being dishonest yet you do so without the courage to use your name. That is reason enough to discount your suppositions. I used to live in Floyd County and have friends who still live there and work for Citizens and they tell me that everything Doug has posted here is true and say he has only scratched the surface of the problems at the cooperative. I commend Doug for being willing to discuss his failings openly. I condemn you for being a coward who does not have the courage to even use his full name when he attacks the integrity of others. Tell me Dave, are you a shill for the management of Citizens or just another drive-by poster who likes to hide and throw bombs at others with far more guts than you?