I'm angry with Wal-Mart. (extra mild rant)

The BBQ Pit
1

Okay, I’m pissed at Wal-Mart for starting the trend that has made every town of significant enough size into a faceless, anonymous strip mall type setting with the same McStores. But not pissed enough about that to not shop there, because for some items, they have the best prices. I’m not shy - I find out which store has the cheapest price for the items I want/need, then when it’s time to buy them, I go there. But, I’m pissed at them for another reason, since about three o’clock this afternoon. Here’s why.

My Mom told me that Wal-Mart honors their competitors’ ads. This got me all excited!! That means [I was thinking] that not only can I get the groceries I usually get at Super Wal-Mart, I can also use the ad from the Aldi’s (about a block down from Wallyworld) to get super cheap produce and not have to go to Aldi’s! Score!! It’ll save me a trip!! (I thought.) So, I planned my trip with all stops geared towards savings. Ad in hand, I stocked my cart with the discounted (I thought) strawberries, bananas, and apples. In the produce section, I noted the huge sign that said “We Accept All Competitors Ads!!!” Great! Okay! …

So, I get all the way through the checkout line, hand the cashier my ad, and when she goes to give me my discounts, she looks at my ad and says…“Oh, we’ve been told by management that we honor all competitors’ ads… except Aldi’s and Big Lots.” Oh, really. That’s when I point out the big sign in the produce section. She has an explanation for that too. “Well, since we became a grocery store and department store, they are no longer considered our competitors.”

WTF!?!?!?

A lot of thoughts raced through my mind. Assertiveness is not one of my strong points, and besides, it was my last stop and I needed to get home within 15 minutes. I told the cashier I no longer wanted the items in question, paid for the rest of my things, and left. If I’d had more time, I might have asked for a manager and caused more trouble for the poor people behind me in line, but it just didn’t seem worth it. But… HOW can Aldi’s and Big Lots (both less than a mile away) NOT be competitors with Wal-Mart??? They both sell grocery and other items (electronics etc.) and are in the EXACT SAME NEIGHBORHOOD. WTF?

Now that I’ve had time to think about it, I may write a letter to the Corporate Office, which will do no good. Oh well. Like I told the cashier at WM, I’ll just go to Aldi’s tomorrow for fruit. But it pissed me off. :mad:

Told you it was mild!

2

Point out in your letter that obviously their reasoning in this was flawed, due to the fact that you didn’t purchase the items at Wal-Mart, you later went to Aldi’s and bought the items. :wink: Maybe that will get results?

3

Sorry, but that’s bullshit. I would have contacted a manager.

But then, I stopped shopping at Wal-Mart because of their eminent domain abuses.

4

Eh, if you didn’t want to create a scene I don’t know if you could’ve handled it better (giving the items in question back).

What irritates me about Wal-Mart (at least the one near me) is how they are so ill-prepared to check-out groceries. Their kiosks are too small, their clerks are lazy idiots (they won’t even move the bagged groceries to your cart), and their self-service lanes are a nightmare of bad design and even worse implementation. Had these people spent just 5 minutes at Kroger they probably could’ve clued in on a few facts.

5

I have stopped most of my Walmart shopping.

I asked them to give me an additonal card with my one true love’s name on it. They complied, but totally mispelled her name. (How, I do not know. When I ordered it, I spelled the name for the agent, and she read it back to me sorrectly!!) Between the time I ordered the card and the time I complained about the card with the wrong name, I moved in with my fiance.

Since I had just moved, and I was asking for an additional card, they froze my account! Some bullshit about California law. They said they had to have a photocopy of a drivers liscense or a utility bill with my new address on it. Becaue THEY screwed up the card.

I told them it would be a cold day in hell before I sent them anything of the kind, and they should close my account. I also told them I would be spending their money at Target from now on.

6

OK, cashiers at most supermarkets in the southwest make eleven bucks an hour on up, and they employ baggers.

When I worked at Wal-Mart, I made eight bucks an hour.

You expect the cashier to do the job of two people for the pay of less than one.

Also, you expect the cashier to hold up the line when, every time six bags are filled, she has to stop ringing, take the bags off the carosel, walk around the end of the counter and put them in the cart that you can’t even be bothered to push to the end of the lane. This takes time. Not a lot, maybe twenty seconds per trip, but on a busy Friday or Saturday evening when the lines are backed up out into the aisles because Wal-Mart is too cheap to hire enough staff to be able to handle the customer load, and ringing up orders large enough to bury the conveyor belt while the person buying the groceries is waiting for space to clear so they can put even more stuff on the line, you’re talking about making an already too-long wait for the person at the back of the line maybe another ten minutes longer, if everyone were to demand this kind of service.

Hey, guess what? That carosel brings those bags of groceries around to where you can easily reach them and, with very little effort, put them into your own fucking cart. You want full service? Go to a supermarket where they pay the cashiers a wage a human being can live on and pay full price for your food.

Asshole.

7

$3.1M civil penalty assessed against Mall-Wart

Go EPA!

8

Wahhh, You make me wanna cry. Next time you ask “why am I reduced to bagging groceries at Wal-Mart?” you might want to look at your attitude.

Regardless of your ineptitude of guiding your, a-hem, “career”, the fact still remains that the entire design of the checkout stations (again, at my local Wal-Mart - others are likely different) is ill-prepared to handle the volume of items commonly picked up by the average grocery shopper. There are no carousels (note the spelling), there are no conveyor belts, just a flat surface 3 feet long by 1 feet wide, with 1/4 of that space taken up by the scanner and attendant glass covering. The clerks don’t bag the groceries, they don’t load the groceries into the cart, all they do is scan the items. Now as to why you would think that this is worth more than $8/hour is the topic of another thread, but my use of the adjective “lazy” is spot on.

I do, however, apologize for the use of the word “idiot”. Perhaps “lummox” would’ve been more appropriate.

9

You shouldn’t be shopping at Wal-Mart anyway. People like you are involved in the screwing of Wal-Mart employees and the screwing of your own community to save a few dollars.

10

Yeah, that’s a brilliant rejoinder! "Hey, if nobody shops at Wal-Mart than their employees wouldn’t be so ‘screwed’! " Imagine how pleasant their workdays would be if not a single person entered the store! :smiley:

Color me impressed with your rhetorical abilities and leaps of logic. :thumbs up:

And… “people like you”? What sort of people are we like, those who are like me? Are there only certain types of people that should only shop at Wal-Mart? :dubious:

11

(LOL) By reading the headline of this topic alone bring back a halarious memory. I can remember once seeing this guy with a smiley face T-shirt on that had a red circle around it with a slash going through the middle. The Happy face had a bullet hole in the head, and on the top of the shirt it said ( I hate Wal-Mart) :smack: :smiley:

12

“You” are people who will support Wal-Mart and Wal-Mart policies to save “yourself” a few $$ at the expense of “your” community and at the expense of Wal-Mart employees.

“You” are the kind of person who says “they should be grateful to have a job” and fail to take into account their humanity or even the fact that the community must take up the slack for these “less than living wage” jobs.

In short, “you” are a callous, selfish, self-serving prick.

Hope I was able to clear that up for you. :slight_smile:

13

county - Your description of JohnT was in no way accurate - you forget to say that he’s a smug, condescending bastard.

In case you haven’t been paying attention, JohnT, the economy has kind of been going down the shitter lately. Lots of people with degrees and stellar qualifications and energy and talent and all the rest of it are struggling to find work and taking the first job that comes to hand just so they can pay the fucking rent. So fuck you for implying that every Wal-Mart cashier is a lazy, illiterate lummox. And fuck you for the “carosel”/“carousel” nitpick, you pedantic ass.

14

I’ve never heard anyone say they shop at WalMart because the cashiers are fast and efficient, or because the checkout stands are laid out in a nice way, or because the shopping experience there is pleasant and fun. The people I know that shop there do so for one reason: price. Someday a competitor will come along and imitate WalMart’s business model, offer low prices, AND offer a pleasant and fun shopping experience. That competitor will clean WalMart’s clock. But I probably won’t shop there, either.

To the OP: Yes, write a letter to corporate. CC the store manager and the district manager if you can find their names and addresses. Sounds like what they’re saying is “We accept all our competitor’s coupon except the ones we don’t want to.” That’s ridiculous.

15

Wal Mart sucks for all the obvious reasons, I never touch the stuff. I’d much rather pay the extra .06 in order to spite them out of getting their grubby hands on my money.

JohnT I just want to rehash your position so I can understand it better. On on hand, we are to look askance at those who insinuate that “only certain types of people” shop at Walmart, while at the same time, the clerks are “lazy idiots” who have been “reduced” to their “a-hem,‘career’”. OK, got it now.

PS the ergonomics of the clerks’ work stations is not the clerk’s fault. You are complaining about a carpenter who isn’t pounding nails very well because his boss gave him a hammer with no handle.

16

Heh. Makes me glad the nearest Wally world is twelve miles away and in a whole 'nother state.

Spent 20 minutes in one once, in Albuquerque. That’s time I’ll never get back. Horrible dirty confusing place. Can’t imagine buying produce there, of all things.

17

Right. Obviously someone who takes a job at Wal-Mart as a means of supporting themselves while they get an education so they can enter a professional field like massage therapy obviously has no clue on how to manage a career. Gotcha.

Oh, and my “attitude” got me an average tip of $8.00 in the student clinic when most of my co-students got $5.00, not to mention a graduation gift that a client shelled out $50.00 for because she was pissed off by my shitty attitude.

You’ll excuse me if spending the last nine months studying anatomy, physiology, kenesiology, and three different massage modalities has overloaded my brain to the point that I have forgotten to spell a word that I try not to use very often because it has very negative associations for me.

Like having to wait on assholes like you.

18

You know, I am a cashier at Blockbuster, hostess at Denny’s and desk clerk at the Super 8. Not once did it occur to me after graduating from college with honors, being unemployed for six months, taking on a host of jobs and consistantly being told I was excellent at customer service that I deserved this world of shitty work and worthless wages because of some personal fault of mine.

But mostly, I don’t think you get the point. WalMart chooses not to hire baggers. This isn’t the clerk’s fault. Walmart also chooses to have self-serve bagging so that the cashiers can concentrate on moving people through the line. This is also no the clerks’ choice or fault. It’s not “lazy” not to do something that isn’t your job and which your company has probably forbidden you from doing.

19

Hope you’re doing okay, evensven! Haven’t seen you around lately.

JohnT, you are being a jerk.

20

hmmm, the reason “I” can’t take the time to put move the bags from the carosel to the cart is because I am watcheing the prices that are being rung up. So many things at Wal-mairt are mismarked or mis entered in the computer or what ever, if it is not watched carefully you will be overcharged. There is usually at least one item evey time I shop. Secindly, if your store doesn’t hire a bagger then your eight dollars an hour “is” for scanning, and bagging and whatever is requred for customer service. If you don’t want to work for that money don’t work there. Work for the place that pays more. Obviously there are people willing and happy to work for that pay or they would have to pay more. .