What's So Bad About Wal-mart??? (last minute, second-hand, deal, Sears)

[Nea1]

My mom has worked at Kmart 33 years, she is also a horticulturist, but couldnt get decent work! Anyway, they have been trying to find a reason to get rid of her for years, they prefer all part time, that way they dont have to pay benefits, she missed 3 days of work due to problems with MS and they tried to fire her, but wised up when she threatened to sue for discrimination. It is all over different work places, just walmart gets alot of press due to their sheer size.

[sunrico90]

Originally Posted by Areyouserious?

lol, Walmart should get down on the ground and kiss their falling prices that people actually still go to work there.

I was once reprimanded for being late 15 minutes IN FRONT of other employees. This was the day after I worked a 16 hour shift because somebody was out sick, and the same jack@ss reprimanding me asked me to stay.

Well since he wanted to make it a public issue I bet that man will think twice about discussing anything in front of other employees again.
I cut that man up six ways to Sunday, made sure I pointed out every inadequacy and shortcoming related to his management, and told him to get down on one knee and see how long he could hold his breath while kissing my.... Then I walked out the door, made two phone calls and had a job making more money.

Granted, I was just a kid then, and it was a lousy retail sales job. I certainly would not do that where I am today, but I probably wouldn't have to. In fact, lateness is not at issue at my level. As long as the job gets done nobody cares. We have to work so many 60 hour weeks for a flat salary, nobody would dare to mention 15 minutes.

I use a statement that always shows respect and fairness for the employees:
“Praise in public and punish in private”. We must be professional and respect individuals to receive the same treatment. Most of the time we look at other factors and we end up loosing the better person.

My rules that I brief to all employees, mature individuals love this...

First time late, bring breakfast
Second time late, better be a good reason and should have call
Third time late, stay home, I'll mail you your check

If you have a valid reason why to be late, no problem. But if you got home late and had too many drinks and now a morning discomfort, your problem.

Small business get the worst, due to limited manpower, is important to know your workers and let them know up front the rules...

[turboredcart]

i cant get a good toilet brush. everything is so cheaply manufactured! it doesnt really matter who the vendor is.

i love thrift stores!

[FistFightingHairdresser]

Originally Posted by christina0001

I love WalMart. I am very frugal and I enjoy shopping there, and I can resist the urge to overbuy just because the price is right. My mother spends triple at WalMart than she would anywhere else, because "it was such a good deal!"

Hi,

Some would say the price you pay is not what gets rung up at checkout. It's a brutal fact that Wal-Mart can sell cheap because they don't buy anything from America. As a result the economic muscle of this country is cut away as less and less is made there. You don't feel the cost all at once, and you certainly don't feel it when you buy that Chinese-made plastic gadget for who-knows-what, but in the long run, the United States is going to pay a huge price for low prices.

I'm just not a fan of Wal-Mart, or of globalisation in general. I think a country has *got* to actually be in the business of making stuff to stay healthy. Wal-Mart and all big-box retailers like it are making a living off of weakening America by selling cheap. The only way they sell cheap is to buy cheap. From China.

Oh gosh now that'll stir up a hornet's nest, won't it?

[mark6052]

I refuse to shop at wally world. i will buy american made first, then will shop small stores to help them. american low class not poor class shop at walmart.
there products are driven to lowest quality to get to low price. you people want all the benifits, medical , retirement etc. yet support a company that pays low, and no benifits, just part time work.

[alexander59]

My mother thought she saved a lot of money going to Wal mart, so I took her receipt and went to Publix where I shop, and compared it was only a matter of a few dollars and if I figure what I save in gas and aggravation I will shop at Publix [grocery stores in Fl] for cleaning supplies and food. I would not eat Wal marts meat, its select, not prime or choice and I can tell the difference. The clothes at Wal mart are not good quality and I do not want to look like everyone else. The bad part of it is so many of the smaller stores I used to go to are gone and I find I have to go to Home Depot or Wal mart for some things. I was in a Wal mart a few years ago and they made the employees come out and do the wal Mart cheer, I was so embarrassed for the employees and you could tell they were also, it took a long time for them to show up when they were called up front. My daughter worked for them for two days and felt like she was treated like a piece of kaka. I have read enough about their strong arm tactics to get suppliers to lower thier prices and I also know the wages and benefits are terrible for the work they do. I am glad they made China a world power, so we could borrow so much money from them. Its time our communities stood up to them.

[elfyum]

First off, Areyouserious? is SO right on!!!!!!! (& deserving of 10 reps! ) Sorry MoMark (are you the red head?) but I totally disagree with you! I work in hospitality/customer service & believe WHOLE HEARTEDLY in great customer service! We all know what it feels like to be on the OTHER end, & if a company has poor customer service, I don't want to give them my business. And it is an absolute fact that happy employees are in a good mood & it shows in the way they treat their customers. I am one of those - I do my job & do it WELL, but if I can stay late & go above & beyond, then I don't want to hear nit picking because I couldn't find parking or there was an accident! Pick your arguments carefully or you will lose your best employees!!! Not that companies with that anal retentive crap CARE LESS anyway!!! It's that corporate robot mentality which you can STICK YOU KNOW WHERE!!!

Anyway, BACK TO WALMART! I have actually never been in a Walmart to my knowledge...And their policies don't seem any different than any other chain retail store. So I don't have a problem with Walmart per se, but for the BUY AMERICAN thing!!! I TOTALLY agree that we should be a country that is dependant on OURSELVES!!! We have such diversity here - we have everything!!! We could be totally self sufficient. Yet people don't get that & it's really a shame. Like all the jobs going overseas. Like all the oil bs. C'mon America!!! Let's get it together & be the proud Nation we once were! Our forefathers are rolling over in their graves!!!
Whew...I needed to vent...

[SteelCityRising]

As an employee of Lowe's, I've found myself coming home quite literally in tears several times during the past week for being continually mistreated and overextended by management for so many months that I'm now beginning to feel like I mean nothing at all to our company.

I'm quite literally the bottom of the heap at our store; I've been a loader for about 20 months now with no hopes of ever gaining a promotion due to the fact that I'm, as management put it, "too good of a loader to give up." While cashiers, department personnel, and management regularly take 15-minute breaks twice during their nine-hour shifts, I don't take any breaks because I'm punished for doing so---not verbally by management, but rather verbally by customers because when I'm working alone (which is now everyday), that means that there's fifteen minutes of nobody around to retrieve shopping carts or to help people load heavier purchases into their vehicles. I can't tell you how many times I've come back from breaks on busy Saturdays only to have no carts left in the store due to the sheer volume of customers we bring into our store, as well as having to endure backlash from customers who just see me for the first time when I return from my break after loading a heavy purchase on their own, assume I must have just been "hiding", and chastise me for it. As such, I no longer take breaks, and I force myself to suffer in order to keep our customers as happy as I possibly can. For this same reason, I've also stopped taking lunches as well; how can I be alone on a busy Saturday and leave all of our customers needs' unattended for an hour while I'm sitting in the break room literally shaking with worry? Whenever I used to ask the front-end to provide coverage in the parking lot to cover my lunches, in the form of sending a cashier out every ten to fifteen minutes to push a few rows of carts in to prevent depletion, I was always told "we'll handle it." Each and every time, I'd come back from my lunches to see no carts available, as well as having to have elderly people complaining to me about "not doing my job." As such, I often now work nine hours straight without taking my paid breaks or my unpaid lunch hour. Do I enjoy how physically-draining this is on my body? Of course not. However, it's better than the alternative of actually taking my breaks/lunches and being emotionally downtrodden afterwards to the point where I feel like a piece of garbage (Shoppers in NEPA are probably among the rudest in the nation).

Then you also have the problem of "intentional understaffing", as I like to call it. Recently, two of my fellow loaders just quit right on the spot, leaving us short-handed. Two other loaders also are preparing to quit, meaning I'll be the only available remaining loader to handle the day-to-day operations of our extremely busy store. I've already had several discussions with my human resources manager, who told me that there's simply "no room in the payroll to hire anyone else at this time of year." When I questioned what happened to the budgeted wages for those other loaders who had recently quit, I was fobbed off with "this time of year we just have to rely on other departments to help out..." When I asked why none of these department personnel would ever give me a helping hand, I was met with silence. I could see right through her lies; our managements' bonuses are based upon our store's overall profitibility, and the less wages they have to pay out, the better our bottom line looks and the more cash the upper-crust skims off the top! I also brought my concerns to the front-end manager, who told me to "suck it up", and to our main store manager, who just said "I'll look into it."

[SteelCityRising]

Lowe's, in general, just doesn't care anymore about its employees. I've never felt so degraded to be doing my job as I feel right now, and when you couple that with a not-so-happy home life and being stuck as a minority going to the rare college of right-wingers, it's just very depressing. Just today I was running around so hard to keep up with the demand for carts and loading assistance (there were literally a few hundred cars in our parking lot!), that I began to have chest pains. When another employee brought up an appliance for me to load, he then told me that there was another waiting inside at the service desk. I swiftly loaded up the first one, and then darted back towards the door to retrieve the second, at which point I was told to "hang on a sec" by the other employee who was talking to someone informally. I told him "you know I don't have all day; there aren't even any carts left in the store right now!" to try to hurry him up, and he replied "You need to just chill out! You're going to have a heart attack, man!", which angered me even more. It seems as if everyone else in our store just dawdles around all day, letting their work slide, and forcing the overachievers, such as myself, to suffer. It's especially degrading to realize that at $9/hr, I'm among the lowest-paid in the store, yet the level of service I have provided over these past 20 months has worked to create thousands of dollars in repeat business (as I've been told by quite a few people who actually called the store to compliment my courtesy and professionalism!)

I just don't understand how a company can treat its most precious assets, its sales associates, like garbage and expect everyone to be happy about it. Whenever I do head to the break room to put my vest back into my locker I'm forced to scan around at miserable people who just sit in silence, scanning the classifieds or staring off into space. Nobody cares about anyone here---Management couldn't care less about employees, employees don't care about customers, and customers don't care about the way we underlings are being treated, berating US for problems created by management! I used to love telling people I worked for Lowe's, a company which, at the time, seemed to view its employees as an integral part of its growth. Now, I continue to put 110% effort into my work everyday, attempt to put a smile on a customer's face whenever I can, yet I'm still miserable and empty on the inside to realize that I probably care more about the store than our own managers do!

Every time I have to hear a customer blurt out "I'm going to Home Depot" in a fit of anger, I'm once again reminded of the fact that my job of ensuring every customer who leaves our store feels appreciated is impossible, which depresses me even more. This "skeleton crew" philosophy needs to stop before even MORE good employees quit out of frustration! There was even one point last Saturday where I saw a fellow employee nearly in tears in the break room because she alone was being asked to cover flooring, kitchens, appliances, and plumbing all at the same time on our busiest day of the week! Management doesn't seem to realize that we're not the same as Wal-Mart, who can keep a "skeleton" stocking crew floating around the store while still keeping customers content. At Lowe's, seemingly every one of our customers has about a dozen lengthy questions about various issues, and having such limited manpower available makes it impossible to give each customer our undivided attention in the way that they deserve! Just today we only had two registers open; at one point I counted 14 people in one line! I had people yelling at me on their way out of the store for not opening up, yet they obviously could see that I was busy at the same time preparing to help two customers at once load purchases!

[SteelCityRising]

I've come to the conclusion that we should only have college-educated professionals with backgrounds in Economics and/or Psychology at the helm of our store management, not the cookie-cutter types who can "rise through the ranks" just by continuing to work, and work, and work, for "X" number of years, sometimes without learning ANYTHING about our customers! A true Economics-experienced college graduate would realize that in the long-run, it is better to keep our store properly staffed and equipped at a higher operational cost in order to keep our customers satisfied and their needs well attended to. In the long-run, the happier our customers are with our store, the more likely they are to come back as "repeat business", the more likely they are to spend more money at our store, and the more likely they are to tell others about their wonderful experiences shopping with us, providing our store with free word-of-mouth advertising to new customers! On the contrary, by intentionally slashing our payrolls to the point where we can barely function, people are becoming so incredibly annoyed with our store's customer service that I rarely see any repeat visitors anymore. Couple this with the fact that these people will now go out into their social networks and tell twenty others about their negative experiences with Lowe's, and we're losing a LOT of potential sales in the long-run! Does trimming 15 employees off of the Saturday schedule, perhaps at a one-day savings of $3,000, really make up for the opportunity cost of losing $10,000 in sales from people who would have been shopping with us instead of Home Depot had they received better service in the past? Not at all! Instead, we're making an economic loss of $7,000 at a time when we could have made an economic gain of $7,000! Whenever I tell management this, they ignore me.

Why did I feel the need to get up on the soapbox? Well, Wal-Mart, and every other big-box store for that matter, have very similar philsophies of "screwing over employees", which in turn creates depressed, miserable workers with low morale who are less inclined to want to be courteous and helpful to customers, who, in turn, are less happy with their experience and less likely to shop at your store ever again! This is the reason why I'll be hitting up Downtown Scranton's expensive boutiques for Christmas gifts this year instead of the bargains at Wal-Mart or Lowe's---I refuse to patronize any establishment that doesn't view their own employees as human beings. When an employee feels pressured by management to not even take lunches in order to help out the store so they can skim more of the top in bonuses, then you know you have a weak organizational structure!