I had no idea that those meetings were that horrible. I was shopping one day and I saw a group of employees standing around near the clothes department cheering. I knew it was a meeting and thought that was horrifying enough (I figured it was some “rah rah Wal-Mart” thing). I had no idea that there was actually a song.
I work part-time assisting in retail inventories. In our immediate geographical area, there is one manager who insist people perform some sort of clapping-cheering BS before beginning a job. I always cross my arms and turn my back when she starts her routine. She says I am not a team player; I say she is a power mad, petty tyrant who I refuse to empower by conforming to her sick demands. She isn’t my manager and my manager agrees that she is insane so I get away with it. I do expect her to have me killed, though.
I became mysteriously blind and deaf when my break time came.
I worked at the registers, which were, of course, understaffed. We actually had to threaten to sue to actually get breaks in the first place, because they didn’t want to close a register-- they had to find someone to take your place while you were gone. I have a sneaking suspicion that their retaliation was the way that they scrupulously timed every single break (though they somehow neglected to notice if someone hadn’t had one all day) was because of our threats. If you were a minute late returning, you would be “written up.”
It took at least two minutes at a brisk pace to travel the length of the store to the break room, especially if you had to dodge customers. That leaves a grand total of eleven minutes to consume the only fluid you have had in the last five hours, cram some food in, pee, and actually sit for a second, before having to race back.
Hell, no, I wasn’t stopping to answer a question. Firstly, it was unlikely I knew the answer, and would have to search for the item, or an employee in the area, and secondly, the Managment didn’t care if you’d lost your entire break trying to find Ping-Pong balls for a customer. It was tough luck, back to work for you.
Really, it was great training for stealth infiltration. I could probably work for the CIA. Transversing a store crowded with people who are desperately searching for anyone who looks like they work there takes a lot of skill and physical limberness. (You could be “written up” if they caught you ignoring a customer, even though it was supposed to be your break time and those precious moments wouldn’t be replaced.) Although it shames me to admit it now, I once even dove into a rack of clothing to avoid being spotted.
I really did feel bads for the customers, but five hours on your feet, standing in one place without a drink of water is more strenouous than it sounds. Once, I fainted while working at the register. After that, my doctor sent in a note that I was to be allowed to have a drink with me, and was supposed to have a sip at least every ten minutes. God how the managers hated that. They grumbled and bitched so much, you’d think my doctor had ordered them to stand there and fan me.
All right, they finally agreed, I could have a drink, but only if there were no customers around to see me. This puzzled me for a long time. Why would a customer be offended by seeing a cashier take a sip of fluid? Would it tarnish the image of the cashier being an automaton existing solely to ring up customers’ purchases? Would customers be bothered by the concept that the person taking their money was actually a human with ordinary human needs?
Of course, how it worked out in reality was that I didn’t drink as often as ordered. Very rare was the moment when there were no customers to see me shamefully ingesting liquids. I actually ducked below the counter a few times to take a drink, but always got the Evil Eye.
Needless to say, one of the finest moments of my teenage years was when I walked out the door for the last time. Freedom!!!
Now that I have a job where I’m actually respected, treated with courtesy and common decency, I wonder how I ever stood it for as long as I did.
Oh, God, the 10 foot rule… I worked as a cashier at walmart for about… well, almost 4 months. Thank god I moved away. It wasn’t that bad as far as a job goes… 10$(canadian) an hour, part time(I’m still in school)… not so flexible hours, but it wasn’t too bad.
BUT.
The csms? Horrible, snooty bastards. Oh, whats this? You fergot to fill in price change card because it was the day before christmas and you were in lines 8 people deep? Have a pink slip. You came back 30 seconds late from your break? Tsk tsk.
And I have a very hard job smiling at poeple I don’t know who take things, decide they don’t want them, and put them back wherever.
So You know how people always complain about the sales associates being jerks? Well, people can be very trying sometimes. Those were 4 very stressful months of my life.
Although, I didn’t mind the 10% discount card and the 400$ paychecks…
Unionize! Unionize! Unionize!
Wal-Mart has unfortunately gained a toehold in the UK, after it bought the Asda supermarket chain. I haven’t been in one (I won’t say “yet” as that would imply I might in the future) but they still scare me.
acrossthesea
Burn your vest and move to Overland Park. It’s Cheesecake Factory time!
$200-300 dollars a day in tips on average. That’s around $65,000 a year, not including your hourly wage! :eek:
Ohhh, don’t even get me started about that subject!
The store I worked in was a participant in the philosophy which dictates that though you may put an item on sale, you should never change it in the computers. I have a dark suspicion that it’s because most customers will shrug off the few-cents difference to avoid a lenghty price check procedure. But most customers want the twenty five cents off on Charmin-- that’s why they bought that product, rather than the Other Brand.
Lo, and behold: the short-staffed nature of the store affects price checks! The customer, and those behind him/her in line could expect at least a five minute wait, during which time the customer, having nothing else to do, would stand and glare at me. I don’t know about you, but about thirty seconds of silent glowering is all I can take before I have to take some action. “Grocery, call 211!” I’d call over the intercom, getting increasingly strident in my cries as time passed.
You see, they had this nifty little procedure. Whenever an item scanned incorrectly, we would have to call for a price check, and then write down the intitials of the person who confirmed the price in our “register log” before being able to change the price on the register. The purpose of the register log still is a mystery to me. Ostenisbly, they were supposed to be turned into the people in charge of changing the register’s computer every evening, so “mistakes” could be fixed in the system. However, I never saw an item get fixed, no matter how many times I wrote it down. Week-long sales on a certain item were hell: even if I knew we were selling the product at a certain price, I still had to call for the price check. Failure to do so could result in a “write up”.
I remember one time that a bar of soap rang up incorrectly. I called for (no exaggeration) ten minutes to have someone in Health and Beauty call me, but to no avail. In desperation, I called to the manager who was wandering by my register. I explained the problem and asked if the manager could possibly check for me. The manager looked at me like I was retarded. “Just give it to them!”
She handed the customers the soap. “I’m so sorry this happened,” she said, giving me dirty looks. “You shouldn’t have had to wait like that.” After they left, she walked away without giving me a second look. I was flabberghasted. This from the woman who posted large signs in the break room, which, with many underlinings and exclaimation points, that every changed price must be recorded in the log book. No exceptions!!! Had I given away that bar of soap, I would doubtless have been fired on the spot.
So, so true! The way my store is set up (I haven’t been in enough to know if they’re all constructed similarly) the land of lawn & garden borders on the much smaller lands of toys and pets. While my department has about 25 people working in it, toys has 3 and pets has I think 2. Now while in toys people can usually serve themselves (unless they need a bike, and the bikes are way up and someone has to get them down), in pets customers need someone to help them get fish from the fish tanks.
Like I said there are only 2 people in all of toys. They don’t both work constantly. So often, noone is in pets. Customers will approach my register, back in the boondocks of lawn & garden, and ask me to page someone to pets. So I page, “A customer needs assistance by the fishtanks in pets.”
Ten or fifteen minutes later, the customer comes back complaining because noone ever showed up. Wow, I think, this is as bad as paging a CSM! Eventually what happens is that one of our lawn & garden guys has to come in from the parking lot (or “corral”, as they call the part they have the trees and furniture in) and go fishing.
As I said, we don’t get training in OUR departments, let alone someone else’s. This is why customers will later complain to me that “So-and-so from lawn and garden used his HANDS to get my fish and the fish died!” And us lawn & garden people are fairly distinctive looking because we wear GREEN vests instead of blue. This is not apparent to customers though, who ask me what aisle the toothpicks are in and get angry when I say I have no idea.
At least two of my coworkers are operating machinery (forklifts and this thing called the scissor lift that you drive around on and it raises you up to reach high shelves and the ceiling) that they were never certified on, which could be a total lawsuit if these people got injured. There was just no time to certify them. Oh, and all walmart training comes from these things called CBLs that are just short little training videos you watch on a computer and answer questions about. So far all of mine have been about hazardous chemicals and being nice to customers. Not one had anything to do with what chemicals kill weeds the best, what kind of oil one should use in a lawn mower, or why this one patio swing looks lopsided…all of which are questions I am actually confronted with and have no idea how to answer.
Yeah, walmart. It’s a sitcom.
Then there was the time I got to spend an hour operating a piece of electrical equipment while standing in a puddle of water.
I was on register, and somebody’s gallon bottle of water took a header off the conveyor and landed cap-down on the floor beside me. The cap snapped of. Glug, glug, glug. There were too many customers in line for me to be able to shut down my register and move, so I paged maintainance to clean up a wet spill. And paged, and paged, and paged…
An hour later, things had quieted down enough that I could move. I did the best I could with paper towels, but there just weren’t enough of them. I don’t think maintainance ever did come and mop up. The water just eventually evaporated.
I used to work at Wal-Mart and I feel this all too well. It’s like management only hires people so they have someone to take the fall while they change the rules right in front of our faces.
They spend hours drilling the correct procedures into our heads, only to come along and change the procedure for one customer, which makes the associates look bad. With Lissa’s example, the least they could have done would be to explain, something like, “We don’t usually do this, but we’re so busy right now that we’re just going to give you the bar of soap. I’m sorry you had to wait.” Then they could have thanked you for checking with them.
But I had so many CSM’s make me look like an idiot for no reason, yelling at me in front of customers and such because I didn’t take my break on time. At the Wal-Mart where I worked, the person who gets back from break at the time you’re supposed to go is supposed to come tell you when they’re back, so you can go. One day nobody told me, and I finally asked an hour later, “Hey, can I take my break soon?” and I got chewed out in front of customers. I also got yelled at a lot because I asked for 15 hours a week, every week, because I was in school… and they’d repeatedly give me things like 24 hours, and when I’d tell them my schedule was wrong they’d get mad at me for not telling them sooner that THEY messed up. I usually just got my schedules as they came out, which was usually about 5 days in advance, even though if you asked someone they’d tell you the schedule had been posted for two weeks, which was of course a work of fiction.
CSM: “I can’t believe you, rinni! Why didn’t you let us know that we made a stupid, obvious, glaring mistake on your schedule sooner? Don’t you know this is all your fault for not noticing that we’re complete morons?”
Me: “Gee I’m sorry, I didn’t know you had no idea how to make a schedule. But thanks for letting me know that I have to watch out for your idiocy so that you can clean up your stupid messes sooner!”
acrossthesea, I know how you feel. Ugh. Sometimes when the registers were slow they’d send me to zone in hardware, and people would ask me where stuff was, and I know nothing about hardware, so I’d be like… “Damned if I know!” and they’d be like, “Bastard!” (Well, not in those exact words, but… :D)
I don’t blame the customers for asking or anything, as that’s what customers are supposed to do, but when I calmly explain that this isn’t my usual department and that I’ll find someone else who could help them better, don’t get pissed at ME when I don’t find someone within 5 minutes. I’m trying to help, I didn’t staff the store and it is in no way my fault that no one is around.
If it’s a slow day, it’s easy work, but it’s crappy when it’s busy and you can’t find anyone you need and customers are getting high-strung. My first day on the registers was Grading Day, you can just imagine how nice that was. Fortunately customers were pretty understanding if I told them I was new. 
Sorry I got off on a huuuge tangent there, heheh. Also I have the habit of talking like I still work there despite the fact that I was laid off on Christmas Eve of 2003!
Ahhh, the joys of working at Wal*Mart. I’ll start by saying I lasted less than four months. I put in my 2 week notice the day I got my first review. Had I stayed, I would have been making a whopping $6.76/hr after that raise. I would have been rolling in cash! :rolleyes:
I worked in the jewelery department. Lucky for me, I know everything there is to know about jewelery (well, I know a fair amount anyway), I have a great deal of interest in gems and such, otherwise I would have been completely lost. I was left alone, completely alone, on my second day. It’s a good thing I’ve worked a cash register or two in my day, so it wasn’t too hard to learn (I had to call various members of the shoe dept. a few times to help me), but I was so mad I don’t think I ever got “over” it. And the first time I had to close, they didn’t even assign someone to work with me. :rolleyes:
Their training program is a complete waste of time. CBL? Please. That’s the most retarded thing I have ever heard. It’s retail, for (why, oh why didn’t you post this in the pit?!) sake!!
So anyway, my major problem with Wal*Mart’s jewelery department is that their gem quality is freakin’ laughable. Their diamonds are the most pathetic things I have ever seen. They like to toot their own horn because they have a few IGI certified diamonds. What they don’t tell the consumer is that these are the poorest quality diamonds (J in color, I2 in clarity = not good) the IGI would ever certify. The ones that aren’t certified are even worse.
AND PEOPLE ACTUALLY BUY THEM!!! I wanted to tear my eyes out and scream everytime I sold a diamond ring. It was terrible. 1/13 ctw, are you kidding me? And you’re going to charge $100 for that?? They have very few colored gems that aren’t synthetic/lab created, but they won’t let you tell a customer that unless they ask. Basically, my job was to SMILE! and rip people off every single day. For $6.50/hr, except on Sundays. For some reason, they give you an extra buck an hour on Sundays. Unless you want to wear blue jeans (which are not allowed any other day; you can wear any color (even, like, ORANGE) except blue). If you wear blue jeans on Sunday, you don’t get that extra buck. 
I was lucky enough to have never experienced being forced to work off the clock and stuff. Breaks were a problem because the people in the shoe dept. (who were responsible for covering for me) were (WHY ISN’T THIS IN THE PIT!), so that became an issue sometimes, but I was never denied a break outright by management or anything.
Wow, that got long. I can’t believe I have so many issues with WalMart after so much time has passed… Well, 5 months or so anyway. Oh well. Short version? Working at WalMart totally sucks.
Moral of the story? Don’t buy your bling in “Wal*Mart’s Fine Jewelery Department”, m’kay? The sad thing is, I do. I’m forced to; it’s the only place I have near me that sells body jewelery (nose rings, to be specific). They suck, too. The sparklies in them fall out. But they’re like $5 for three of them, so whatever. 
Still sucks though.
A few notes since I didn’t read the thread before posting:
I have never, ever heard of the Wal*Mart chant. Thank god.
The Asbestos Mango - Best Post EVER. I’m cracking up. Wanna have my babies?
CSMs are the Devil. They reign in hell on their days off. I’m not sure they can tell the difference.
Zoning outside your “home department” totally sucks. I feel like I’m so overusing that phrase because THIS ISN’T IN THE PIT.
“BOB” and “LISA” can fucking rot in hell. Even if this isn’t the pit.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
Even talking to a Union rep can get you fired on the spot. You are supposed to ignore them as if they’re horribly diseased and contact management as soon as possible at which time the Union rep will be violently killed and disposed of properly. A full orientation day is devoted to talking about Unions and why they’re “bad” and what we should do if we’re ever approached in the store.
Don’t you think a least a few people thought of that by now? Wal*Mart would be completely screwed if Unions got involved and they know it.
I was mostly being tongue-in-cheek.
But, it has been a dream of mine lately to go into a Walmart, load a cart full of stuff, then as I’m walking toward the checkout, find a group of associates, and yell “Who wants to join a union? Sign up right here! Better wages, benefits, respect…”
Would I get kicked out? Before or after paying for the cart full of stuff?
Happy
A very good friend of mine works part-time for Wal-mart. About three months ago, as she was leaving to go home, she slipped/tripped/whatever and fell in the parking lot, fracturing her left elbow. As a part-timer, I don’t think she had any benefits anyway, but the store manager told her very plainly that since she was “off the clock” WallyWorld was in no way responsible or liable for her injury—he wouldn’t so much as call an ambulance for her, lest that make them appear responsible in some way. She asked if an employee could be deputized to drive her home and that request was basically laughed at. She had to drive herself home, since no one was at her house who could come pick her up. She has had surgery to correct the injury; now has a metal plate in her elbow; is still having physical therapy; has constant pain in the elbow and her “manager” at WallyWorld is calling her daily, wanting to know when her doctor is going to release her so she can return to work. She says not one of the “managers” has ever asked how she is doing or how her arm is progressing as that would imply some responsibility on their part. I didn’t like the place before; now I despise them.
Your friend should get a lawyer.
If I, as a private citizen, fell and injured myself in the store, they would be liable. Your friend is no different. She may not be entitled to Workman’s Comp (I don’t know the rules about this) but, then again, she may since it happned at the end of her shift: clock be damned-- that doesn’t change anything. They’re not magically protected simply because she clocked out before it happened. If nothing else, she’s simply a private citizen who was injured on their property.
Even if Workman’s Comp won’t cover her, she can still sue. She didn’t sign away her rights by becoming an employee. And even if she did sign a waiver, a good lawyer can get around that easily. Some of the “waivers” people sign aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on.
Not only would I sue the store, I would sue that manager personally. What an evil thing to do-- force an injured girl to drive herself home. What if she had had a car accident because she blacked out from the pain, or because she didn’t have complete control of the car?
In my opinion, and remember IANAL, your friend is entitled to at LEAST having her medical bills paid, if not some pain-and-suffering. In my state, the property owner is liable for any injuries thereon, pretty much no-matter-what.
Have her call a lawyer. Most won’t charge her anything out of pocket, but will take a portion of the settlement. And most likely, they will settle. This one’s pretty cut and dried.
However, she may want to look at getting another job if she does so. I’ve heard some pretty nasty stories about the harassment people get at work when they take on the Beast.
I’ve always secretly fantasized about organizing a nationwide Wal*Mart boycott.
I’d never pull it off, but it’d be fun anyway.
Anyway, if you do try that, feel free to report back.
Except in areas where there is no Target for miles and miles. Wally World (when I first heard that phrase I thought there was an adjoining amusement park. Oh my, no. No amusement, no park) is basically the big discount place around here, and the closest one is more than half an hour away.
Mr. Levins did a management internship at Wal-Mart for college credit (over ten years ago) and has frightened me with the Scary Stories Behind Wally World.
But I think the best use to which he ever put his Insider Knowledge was like six months ago. The toilet in the master bath had gone awry, so he went to Wal-Mart at like three in the morning to get the parts to fix it.
And while there were several employees hanging out within eyeshot of the registers, some of whom were putting up displays, nobody would come to the register and check him out. He stood at the register with his stuff on the conveyor belt for like ten minutes. People made eye-contact with him but nobody would check him out. Nobody even called for someone else to check him out.
So he picked up the phone by the register and, every-inch-Mr-Wal-Mart-employee, pressed nine or whatever (the phones haven’t changed at Wal-Mart in forever) and used all the Wal-Mart lingo over the whole-store PA to call a cashier to the register.
So every single Wal-Mart employee in the entire store heard this strange “employee” on the PA calling for assistance.
The manager on duty (along with half the store) suddenly appears like magic and tries to read Mr. Levins his rights. The manager assumed Mr. Levins was an employee at some other store and he was livid; he was making threats like he was going to call “the other store” and get Mr. Levins in trouble.
Mr. Levins told him, “Look, I’ve had eye-contact with half your staff for like ten minutes, and none of them will check me out; I interned at Wal-Mart like ten years ago so I did what I knew would get your ass up here so I can buy this stuff and get out of here! And if you don’t like it, maybe you should talk to all the employees over there who’ve been ignoring me for ten freakin’ minutes. I just want to pay for this stuff and go home to fix my toilet. So don’t start with me about using your damn phone. You’re here, FINALLY, aren’t you?”
The manager was still absolutely furious, but he couldn’t really argue with Mr. Levins once it turned out he was a Real Live Customer, not an employee whom he could discipline.
Even so, I feel for anybody who works there. I have Mr. Levins’ word on how much it sucks.
Oh, and several corporate restaurant chains have those godawful cheers, too. At each shift-meeting. It’s horrendous. I’d never hated my job more.
Earlier this evening I did a spot of shopping at Walmart and heard one of the strangest pages ever.
…
WITH THE TAPE.
How can someone possibly need assistance with the tape? Are they unable to figure out which type they need? If so, how is a Walmart associate going to help them? If you’re at that level of ignorance you’re unaidable. And it’s not like the tape could be up high out of their reach; I’ve SEEN that tape aisle and it’s all at chest level.