If it seems like the cashier at Wal-Mart has no freaking clue what they're doing...

The BBQ Pit
1

It’s because they don’t.

I spent a pretty good sized chunk of my night tonight bailing out new cashiers who didn’t know how to do some of the most basic things.

I’m not talking about stuff that you’d only have to deal with once in a blue moon, like gift registry purchases or some such.

I’m talking things like doing a price override for an incorrectly priced item, or handling someone who wants to use two different kinds of tender, like paying for part of a purchase in cash and part on a credit card. Normal, everyday stuff.

See, the Wal-Mart where I work just hired a batch of new cashiers and threw them in on the registers with no training. Zero, zip. They did the computer-based learning then threw them to the wolves.

Don’t know what’s up here. A new hire at Wally World is supposed to spend three or four days paired up with an experienced cashier, watching them work, asking questions, then getting on the register and having their more experienced partner shadow them and talk them through the process of handling the assorted situations that may come up. For some reason, management saw fit to not give the current batch any hands-on training. One gal I talked to tonight had been thrown into the Blitz on Black Friday and left to sink or swim…

To make matters worse, the CSMs lately seem disinclined to respond to the messages on their little Palm Pilots or whatever those little computer thingies are that they carry around strapped to their wrists. So it’s up to the rest of us cashiers to respond to their little cries for help, all the while trying to juggle helping them out with dealing with our own customers.

I’ve been trying to be as helpful as I can. We were slow tonight, so I basically abandoned my register and shadowed one of the new kids so she wouldn’t be on her own if something happened, and tried my best to explain how to handle some of the more common problems she was likely to encounter.

I’m just disgusted with this. It’s cruel to fling a new cashier into the fray like that with no training. It would serve Wal-Mart right if a bunch of these people just bailed and walked out mid-shift when they got in over their heads and the CSMs wouldn’t come and help them out.

2

Time to look for a better job. :wink: One that fits your intellectual position in society more closely. Somebody that can write and read shouldn’t work at walmart. (expecially somebody as articulate as you are- you should be upper management or something)

Ok, so I am not much better, working at Hy-Vee (a supermarket for those that dont live in the midwest). Of course I am a student, if that is much of an excuse.

3

Intelligent people usually don’t last long at Wal-Mart.

In fact, I’m surprised you were hired. That little “personality test” they give you should have screened you out.

4

They give personality tests? Holy shit. Good thing I gave up on the customer service trade when I did. I could never do that kind of crap again.

I wasted five years working in supermarkets. By the time I made manager I was so bored and frustrated with the idiotic, mindless hell I did every day I started hating myself.

I’m glad there are people who are out there to do things like that, but I ain’t one of them, and I feel sorry for folks with real potential who have to McWork to to pay the bills.
Of course, with my luck I’ll be unemployed in a few months, so whatever.

5

It’s been a while since I was in retail, but IIRC, the test asks questions about what you’d do in certain situations, and things like whether stealing is "sometimes wrong,"or “always wrong”. There are also questions to screen out those who have apropensity to challenge authority, like whether you should obey a command even if you think the manager is wrong.

Just for shits and giggles, you ought to take it someday. For an intelligent person, it’s painfully obvious what answers they’re looking for.

6

There has to be one of those tests floating around the net. I’d love to see one myself.

7

I’ve taken it. I got called on the fact i would disobey a supervisor if he ordered me to do something illegal.

8

Really? Do tell.

9

I had to take the personality test. (The one where there’s a really stupid statement like: I used to have a problem getting to work on time, but not anymore, and you have to say whether you strongly agree, disagree etc.) I think I failed it because I had to spend like ten minutes explaining my answers.
Plus, on my first night, I had someone helping me for maybe twenty minutes before a CSM pulled her away to a different register.
P.S. It’s probably different at different Walmarts, but I warn my friends about shopping at Walmart on Monday night because that’s when they train new cashiers.

10

Surprised, really?

Read this article.

While it’s easy to understand that the world’s largest retailer will draw a significant measure of litigation, too many commonalities are observed in the actions before the court.

Given their treatment of employees and contractors, I refuse to contribute 5¢ to the continued operation of Mall-Wart.

11

Test Quizitor: So why would you not do what a supervisor said?
Our Hero: Because it would be illegal. I’d probably tell a higher up guy.
Test Quizitor: But you wouldn’t do what a supervisor told you to do. They do know best.
Our Hero: But it’s illegal.
Test Quzitor: Our managers wouldn’t tell you to do something illegal.
Our Hero: So what’s the point of the question?
Test Quizitor: So you would disobey orders, interesting. ::scribbles in notebook::

I also said that i didn’t care if my fellow employees were lawbreakers outside of work as long as it didn’t affect work performance, which got lots of scribbles. Then a week later i had to pee in a cup.

12

That’s screwed up, Tars. Screw’d up.

Thea, you’re right - it’s cruel to do that to people, especially in retail, where the customers will rip you to shreds if you’re not doing a quick enough or good enough job (in their estimation). This is why training cashiers is incredibly essential, and it’s no longer the “hit a bunch of keys” dumb job it was in the past (if it ever was).

13

Epithemius, I’m kind of stuck here because in Vegas, it is very difficult to find a job where the employer is willing to work with you on your schedule. I’m going to school right now, and it would be next to impossible for me to find a job which would work around my class schedule and which would also not be damaging to my back (I have hideous back pain, being on the registers makes it worse, and they refuse to transfer me to another position.

Right now I’m wondering how long it’s going to be before I’m “coached” for not working my full shifts. I turned in a doctor’s note two weeks ago saying I’m not able to work more than six hours in a shift, but my manager continues to schedule me for eight hour shifts. I get to the podium and tell the CSMs I can only work six hours. I’ve talked to the scheduling manager about it, and she says, “I based it on your availability”. Well, I filled in my availability form months before I saw the doctor, and it takes three weeks minimum for a change of availability to be reflected in the compter-generated schedule. In the meantime, they’re scheduling me according to the old availability form, my health be damned.

Right now, I think the best thing that could happen is to be fired for “leaving early”. The umemployment folks in this state frown on employers firing employees when there’s a documented medical issue involved, and I could probably fairly easily plead a case that I should be able to confine my job search to employers that would schedule me around school, since I’m midway through a vocational program.

14

Thea I am shocked to find someone as intelligent as you working for such a large, soul-less money grubbing company.

Did you give the person that interviewed you one of your special reviews of the Left Behind series?
Tell me, are all the workers ( and customers) reanimated zombies or is it just my imagination?

Do what you gotta do and get out of there when you are done.

15

So does the Federal Government, that is why we have the ADA. IANAL, but it sounds like you have a situation where Walmart should be accomodating you. At the very least they ought to be engaged in an interactive process to find an accomodation that would work.

16

You know, the exact same thing happened to me.

I was only sixteen at the time, still in high school. They scheduled me to start work at 7 AM on school days. When I pointed out that the truancy officer might not take “I had to work” as an excuse, they pointed out the Sacred, Inviolate Availablity Form, which I had filled out *in the summer. * The fact that I had written “summer only” didn’t seem to matter. For weeks, it was a battle.

My doctor was looking into a health problem of mine, and sent me in with a note that I was to be given constant access to fluids. My manager was horrifed at the possibility that a customer might see me consume liquid. I never did get a reason why, but I was given stern orders not to drink whenever a customer might see me. (Which, as a cashier, was extraordinarily difficult.)

I suppose they were worried that if a customer saw me drink some water, it might give them the unsettling notion that the cashier might be a real human being, not just something that existed solely to ring up their purchases.

We actually had to * threaten to sue* in order to be allowed to take our breaks. One day, a girl working in the next register had had enough. She had been working seven hours straight without a break (a violation of the labor laws which were ironically posted in the break room, I might add.)

She finally called the manager over, told him her father was a lawyer, and that she, and every other under-eighteen cashier in the store had been documenting the fact that we were refused our breaks, and that Daddy was eager to prepare a lawsuit.

Of course, she told him sweetly, she didn’t want to sue, but she couldn’t lie to her father and tell him she was getting her breaks when she wasn’t.

We never had a problem again with that issue.

17

Management ceratinly sounds like ass holes.
The cashiers here are polite and competent.
Maybe they hire better where they came from.
:slight_smile:

18

They did that to us at Kmart-threw us out there to sink or swim.

My first night by myself I was an hour an a half late getting out and crying by the time I left because I had no freaking idea what I was doing.

shudder

I STILL have nightmares that I’m working there.

19

I’ve had numerous “sink or swim” jobs. Even in the professional job I have now, I was left more or less to sink or swim. Basically put in an office and told to figure it out. In an area I had no experience in.

Luckily, I had 8 years of customer service “sink or swim” situations under my belt, and managed to find someone to ask if I didn’t get something and just figure it out if I couldn’t find anyone.

Hell, when I was working customer service, I thought the “sink or swim” training method was the status quo. I actually kind of preferred that method to the “baby step, slowly wean them from the teat” method. It’s also a good way to figure out who can operate well under pressure and who will run crying from the building.

Of course, none of this changes the fact that Wal-Mart is an evil, soulless company that should burn in the depths of hell, as should those tools in management, from the stories posted here.

:mad:

20

Oh, and I had to take one of those personality tests when I got hired at Nordstroms.

They called me out when I answered that I wouldn’t care if my co-workers were doing anything illegal as long as it didn’t interfere with their job performance. (I believe they were referring to drug use). Also when I, like Tars, said I wouldn’t obey an order from a supervisor if it was something illegal.

Got hired anyway, after I managed to talk in a circular fashion pleasing to them.