While shoppers grapple with turkey hangovers on Thanksgiving, JCPenney will still be dealing with a headache of its own.
The flailing department store is coming up short as it scrambles to hire 35,000 holiday workers to staff stores that were emptied by former CEO Ron Johnson, who fired tens of thousands of employees as part of a botched turnaround bid last year, sources told The Post.
One result, insiders say, is that some Penney employees learned they were required to work early-morning shifts on Black Friday after signing up for late-night shifts on Thanksgiving — an unprecedented instance of management requiring double shifts.
Looking to catch up with rivals like Macy’s, Kohl’s and Target, Penney is opening its doors at 8 p.m. Thanksgiving. Last year, Johnson waited until 6 a.m. Friday to kick off the weekend.
With so few workers, insiders say the few that are manning the floors are panicked about setting up product displays and keeping stores clean.
“Sure I will work three days out of the four days I have off for break and work all day and night,” Twitter user Taylor Yezek griped in a Nov. 20 posting.
Penney officials didn’t respond to requests for comment.
As reported by The Post last week, insiders said Penney has seen a spike in shoplifting since Johnson initiated massive store layoffs, despite CEO Mike Ullman blaming the problem on security-tag software issues.
“They were hoping they could lure people back after Johnson left, but people have been scared away,” one Penney source told The Post. “They only pay minimum wage in a lot of cases, and you’ve got to work a lot harder than you do at Walmart.”
Workers at Walmart this weekend are staging nationwide protests about working conditions, including complaints that they are overstressed because of systematic understaffing.