J.C. Penney's California commuters another sign of a sick company

Plano, Texas, just outside of Dallas, is where the retailer has its headquarters, but it's not where several of the top executives are living full time. CEO Ron Johnson, along with executive VPs Ben Fay and Laurie Miller, commute from Northern California, while Chief Creative Officer Michael Fisher and senior design executive Nick Wooster fly from NY, Bloomberg reports. J.C. Penney has three private jets, although it's not clear from the story whether these executives use company planes or fly commercially. It's probably a combination. In any event, Penney pays for all the commutes. This can't be a morale booster to the lower-level folks who live in the Plano area (they're called DOPEs, short for "dumb old Penney employees"), and while it's hardly the main reason the company is in terrible financial shape (sales last year fell 25 percent), it speaks to a kind of arrogance that infects corporate America. If anyone should be living near the main offices, it's the CEO. A spokeswoman explains away the arrangement by saying that these executives must travel extensively. Right - the real explanation is that these folks just don't care about the way it looks. From Bloomberg:

"For a company that's in turmoil, you really do have to have the senior leaders of a company, if for no other reason than showing face time, show that they're committed, accessible, aware of what's going on there," Howard Gross, managing director of the retail and fashion practice at executive search firm Boyden in New York, said in a telephone interview. "To have them not be there on a regular basis I think sends a very, very bad message."

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The J.C. Penney executives who live in California often spend Fridays working in an office there after departing Texas on Thursdays, the people said. J.C. Penney, with about 1,100 locations, has offices in Texas, California and New York, [said spokeswoman Kristin Hays]. Remaining in California was part of Johnson's agreement to lead J.C. Penney. He and his wife have school-age children and they decided it didn't make sense to "uproot the family given his travel schedule," Hays said.