PENSACOLA, Fla. – Nearly 50 employees at Big Lots and Party City Pensacola locations are struggling to find new jobs before the holidays.

WEAR News spoke with one employee who said he received virtually no notice. And now he remains in limbo.

Major retailers Party City and Big Lots gave employees less than 24 hours notice that their businesses would be closing. This happened five days before Christmas.

Party City is closing all of its stores after 40 years of operation.

Nearly 20 employees at the Pensacola location were informed Friday that this would be their last day of work.

Big Lots employees received a similar text message from their CEO. The notification also came on Thursday.

“Our CEO reached out to all of us and sent us an email,” says Big Lots employee Brent Smith. “My boss also sent us all an email. That’s how we were notified.”

In September, Big Lots announced its plan to sell its assets to private equity firm Nexus Capital Management.

On Thursday of the same day, Smith received a notice. The company said the sale was unlikely to go through.

“There is no official date for the store to close,” Smith said. “But we just started putting out the signs and things like that today.”

Smith has now worked full-time at Big Lots for seven years. At Christmas, he and his almost 30 employees have no choice but to plan for the future.

“Yes, it is a terrible time. It’s like Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, a kick in the butt,” Smith says. “Yeah, I don’t have any plans at the moment. I’m just looking around. Hopefully we’ll find something here soon… My wife was sick so I was trying to deal with it. It’s been a really crazy year… A crazy few months.”

To the CEO of Big Lots, Smith delivers the following message.

“Good luck. Because we need happiness too,” says Smith. “Not a hard feeling, but still kind of a kick in the butt for about that amount of time because it’s going to hurt everyone.”

The final submission date for the Big Lots in Oak Village in Pensacola has not yet been announced.

Big Lots blamed the bankruptcy on several economic factors, including high inflation and high interest rates, which caused customers to change their purchasing behavior.

Party City blames this on growing competition from online retailers such as Amazon and Walmart.