I recently quit my job at Wal-Mart and I know Ray Walker’s pain. Add to the not being able to get a CSM to help if there’s a problem at the register knowing that if a bottle of liquid falls over and breaks (not an uncommon occurrance, the checkstand setup is extremely pooly designed) on the cashier’s side of the register, if it’s too busy for the cashier to be able to shut down and move to another register, that cashier may end up standing in a puddle for an hour or more, paging maintainance, and paging, and paging, while operating the piece of electrical equipment that is the cash register.
I know this attitude well. I have fond memories of being loaned to the women’s clothing department, spending a half hour straightening up a display of t-shirts, only to have a customer who had been in the department watching me do it (while totally trashing the racks, btw), then totally destroy the display in about a minute and a half. Is it really that hard to fold up a shirt and place it back on the pile you took it from? I have always done this when I’m shopping, even before I ever worked in retail. These same people complain about how the store is such a mess,when they are the ones who trashed the joint in the first place. I don’t expect the customers to re-file the clothing by size and style, but could they at least hang it on the same rack they took it from when they decide they don’t want it, instead of just throwing it over a rack of completely different items halfway across the department? It’s a very simple concept my mother taught me- put things back where you got them.
Wal-Mart customers seem to have a real knack for trashing a store, especially a a SuperCenter, where opportunities exist to abandon perishable food items on racks of clothing. They wreck a store so fast, even if the place was fully staffed, the employees could never keep up with the mess, and given that Wal-Mart deliberately short-staffs its stores to save money and keep those always low prices always, the people who work there are fighting a losing battle.
Last week, I was at a Sav-On, digging through their picked-over display of cheap sweats, vainly searching for a pair of sweat pants in my size. By the time I gave up, the display looked like a tornado had hit it. I spent a half hour re-folding the assorted sweatshirts and pants I had just unfolded. I didn’t exactly put the display back together, but I did leave it so that the staff would have a much easier time straightening it back up.
Well, first, Wal-Mart sucks. Second, why should you give a shit if a bunch of people will put 89 cents ahead of all the really bad shit Wal-Mart does. Go out behind the building and screw around. Let them get their own carts and let them haul their own “stuff” out to their cars. You are not being paid by the cart. Put in the hours and do as little as possible, every shift. You will be doing America a favor in the long run.
You know, this keeps getting brought up. The only time I have ever seen this where I live was–I guess it’s now been at least a decade ago–the now defunct Price Club, where you had to put in a quarter for the carts. But, the amusing part is, I don’t think you had to put a quarter in for the pallets.
Ug. I hate it when people think, “it’s their job, let them do it.”
I think I have a chain worked out in my head. I thought about it while I did dishes.
Okay, so you have a store that cuts costs where ever it can.
Thus, the store is often understaffed.
Customers come through and wreak havock.
Since the store is understaffed, the person(s) in that department can’t tidy at the rate of destruction.
Since the store doesn’t allow employees to have overtime, the employee has to leave at the end of the shift, leaving the department a mess.
Sometimes there’s even a shift gap of workers.
So the next shift comes into a destroyed department.
There is no hope.
Anyway, when I worked 3rd shift retail, our job was to stock, since there were fewer customers. I had 2 people in my department (myself and another girl). We put out about 75% of the stock at night. Happily, people who shopped at that store seemed to be fairly neat, so I didn’t have to tidy much. But I can’t imagine stocking AND cleaning an entire department. Is this how 3rd shift Wal-Mart works?
I don’t understand why anyone would shop at a filthy store and wait in 30 minute lines just to save $10 a week on groceries. I wouldn’t. I go to the further Meijer because the close one is about 10-15 years old and dirty.
Where I live (NJ) there’s a chain of “surplus”/discount stores named “ALDI” and at the one I’ve been to, you have to put a quarter in to separate your cart from the others. You then get your quarter back when you return the cart to its herd.
It must be a really cheapo place (only been to one once) because they don’t provide bags, either, which is also very unusual in the USA.
I’ve seen it in the UK. That was a while ago - I haven’t lived there for 7 years, so I don’t know if they still do it. It was a lot more than a quarter, though - it was 50p or £1, IIRC.
Now there’s some good career advice. Not only work somewhere that you are unhappy, but do such a poor job at it that you would get terminated and have to deal with that job history while finding a new one.
Speaking as an ex- cashier of 5 years at good ole wally world… Believe it or not the only thing I miss about working there is the freinds I made and the customers I waited on, and I only mean the good one’s. It was a good feeling having your customers come looking for your line to be waited on, since they knew they would be well taken care of. I believe everyone at one point in their life should have to work in retail. Then try working at a Wally world. Ours was always under staffed for reasons of payroll. Seems we were always over the limit and the customers paid for it. There are so many things I could b#tch about, but there is no reason it’ll never change. You’ll will stand in line for days. There will never be enough buggies inside the store. There will never be a CSM when you need one. And to find a memeber of management, that will never happen since they are hiding in the office with there thumb up there…Well you know…
And why exactly is that? Bad because the mom and pop hardware store or grocery store couldn’t compete? What’s good for the consumer is not always what’s good for the mom & pop business. Maybe Wally world is able to offer the community consumer not only cheaper prices but a better selection than mom & pop ever could. I fail to see why this is bad for communities or America.
I don’t know, maybe our community is just lucky. We have a fairly new store that is well maintained and staffed.
It is a cheapo place. We have them in Kansas City too. I heard that they are run by a German company. It is sort of like a close-out grocery store. They don’t have a set inventory, it changes depending on what they get in.
Well County, not everyone gets to start off at the top of the ladder. Some people have to work their way up. Even if a job at Wally World is not your chosen profession and you’re only working there while going to school or whatever, your work ethic and professionalism still mean a lot and having a good reference from even a part time position can be very helpful not matter what.
I’ve been in the HR/employment business for over 20 years and can assure you that employers do check references (even for part time positions).
I’d say that the above quote certainly illustrates why that store in particular, if not the entire chain, is bad for the community it is in. (Do report this to the proper authorities when you can, don’t just leave open sewage to pollute the place please.)
Yah sure your Wally world is ok now while there is competition. The problem is that as soon as they drive the mom and pop out of business, along with their family supporting jobs, they will cut staff. After a while they will finish driving out the local grocery store and the local hardware store and pet store and record store and furniture store, and gas station, and auto mechanic along with the jobs they provide, as well as the choice of jobs they provide. Eventualy the only employer is Wal-mart. With no other jobs but the low paying wal-mart jobs people can afford to buy less and less so the Wal-mart starts losing profit. They cut jobs then eventualy when the cycle is done they decide that they cant make enough money in that comunity and close the wal-mart. They build a great big super Wal-mart in the middle of 5 or 6 comunities they have sucked dry, providing only a handful of the former employees jobs at the same wage, with a 40 minute comute to it. This leaves a comunity deprived of the stores and suport services they once had as well as the jobs.
I do not have an answer to the cycle. Wal-mart is well within their rights to do whatever they want in a free market economy. It is why there are anti monopoly laws on the books, but I dont think that laws are the answer. Maybe boycotting is. That strikes me as a way a free market can respond to unacceptable behavior, the problem is that most of the people caught in the cycle are left with nowhere to shop or work than Wal-mart.
Some employers check references, some don’t - a blanket statement that they do “even for part time positions” kinda hurts your credibility.
In any event the guy hasn’t been fired and if he were to be fired (For whatever reason) well, the standard procedure is to simply omit that from the resume, especially a “part-time job.”
And, a reference from Wally World is, IMO, worth less than being able to say that an individual wouldn’t work for an organization like that. This being America and all, well, piss-ant, low $$$ jobs that have no benefits are just not that hard to come by today.
Also, Wal-Mart basically acts as a sponge to suck wealth out of a city. If you shop at a mom and pop store, then mom and pop will spend their profits in the community at, say, a local auto shop. The auto shop owners and employees then spend the money at another shop in the community… the wealth is, by and large kept in the local community, where it can support businesses which provide jobs and wages to local workers.
Wal-Mart’s profits do not stay in the community where the store is situated. They go to Bentonville. Additionally, since Wally World’s underpaid employees do a lot of their own shopping at Wal-Mart to take advantage of their employee discounts, a fair-sized chunk of the pittance they pay their employees goes straight back into the tills they had been running only an hour earlier, and back into the belly of the Bentonville Beast.
Also, the businesses that shut down bacause they “can’t compete with Wal-Mart” frequently draw traffic into areas where other businesses that don’t compete with Wal-Mart are. A customer may buy clothing at a small clothing shop, pick up some toilet tissue and buy some cosmetics and hair spray at a nearby drug store (these businesses would compete with Wal-Mart), then stop for lunch at a cute little diner just across the street. When the businesses that can’t compete with Wal-Mart close down, that customer traffic is lost to local restaurants and maybe some specialty shops that wouldn’t be “competing” with Wal-Mart, and they end up closing down, too.
There was a time, several years ago, when a Wal-Mart coming to a small town was a good thing for that town. It almost seems like it was when Sam stopped running things that everything went to hell. Actually, it is more the fact that they have become too damn big and can do whatever they please. I refuse to shop there, but my wife sneaks in visits every so often.
A termination from a part time job at Wal-Mart wouldn’t make it to any resume that I wrote.