REUTERS/Lucas Jackson
His Q4 2012 was probably the worst quarterly performance ever in the history of major retail: same-store sales were down 32 percent, to $3.8 billion.
By late February, the stock was down 46 percent on the year. It jumped more than 10 percent today on the news of Johnson's departure.
There are rumors of impending mass layoffs at the chain. (And with a sales decline like that, how could there not be layoffs?)
Johnson, the former retail boss at Apple, only became CEO of the department store chain in November 2011. But this week we learned retail insiders were taking bets on when he would leave, and private equity groups were plotting takeover strategies.
Here's how it got so bad, so fast.