Ever abandoned a shopping cart? (Walmart, deal, purchases, cereal)

[MoMark]

Originally Posted by I LOVE NORTH CAROLINA

MoMark, I think you let your anger get the best of you on this one. I understand your frustration about the situation. Here is a tip a got a few years ago, I can't say I always remember it, but when I do, it helps me, remember the word HALT.
Never become too

Hungry
Angry
Lonely
Tired

When you do, you open the door for the devil to come in. Just a thought.

Good advice, as usual ILNC , thank you I'll try... promise

[NewHomeHappy]

Mission:Big Shopping will be completed tomorrow.
I will take my meds and have a light snack before I attempt this unpleasant task.
I admit to leaving a cart full of unpaid groceries - once. But there's always a chance it could happen again.

Wish me luck. I usually hit the $400 mark so you think they would be a little nicer? Open another line or provide boxes?

I'll let you all know how it goes

[CharlotteAgent]

To funny... I do not think I could have walked away as I think a little different. My thoughts would be somewhere along the line of these bums that own the store are not going to get the best of me.... I'll show them...

Then next time I talk about it I would just *itch and complain and say next time i'm leaving that dam cart!

[SpeedyAZ]

I've done it also. I grocery shop usually once per week and stock up with everything I need and want, usually quite an expensive trip but it beats going back everyday to pick up something you need that you forgot to pick up the day before.

I remember going to the local Whole Foods for my weekly grocery run. Now I never usually have trouble with the checkout lines here but this time was different. I don't know if a few people called in sick but only a couple lines were working! Now I have this overflowing cart full of all the stuff I need for the week (probably around $300-$350 worth) and the lines are obscenely long. I didn't want to spend my Saturday afternoon standing in line to get groceries so I leave.

But this was a rare instance, most of the time they do a good job of getting you out fairly fast.

[Yorkie_Mom]

Originally Posted by MoMark

You're a hoot! You lacked intellectual capacity to debate properly on the President Success/Failure thread, so you come here and try to knife in a different way! I am always amazed when I see people cover inadequacy with attacks. Someday you may grow up!

I so agree with you, I guess Lannie likes to push buttons, I for one don't like mine pushed, so I hope she will grow up some day.
I would have left the cart there also, why, is because I know a lot of the stores try to get by with so little help, I used to work at Wal-Mart until the screwed me over, promised me a full time job after I had my child, then told me they wouldn't be giving fulltime to anyone any more, so I said to keep it, because I am better then that. So I know how you feel, our store never seems to have enough help.

[ScranBarre]

Well, I work at our local Lowe's Home Improvement warehouse store in Wilkes-Barre, PA, and not a day goes by where I don't feel completely degraded, belittled, and downright depressed at the end of my shift. Mark, in this instance, you were justified in abandoning your cart out of frustration---I just hope that in the future you'd stop to at least tell the cashier politely that you weren't angry at him/her, and that your decision to leave was because of inept management. I can't tell you how many times I've had people berate ME, criticize ME, and scowl at ME for personnel issues that are obviously way over my head! There was a recent instance in which the understaffing was so bad at our store that a woman working alone in the flooring department was also being expected to cover kithcens and appliances on a busy day! The frustration was visible in her eyes as she fought back tears after rude customer after rude customer became irate with HER for an issue that any lucid individual with half a brain could see was NOT HER FAULT! Meanwhile, management goes by unscathed day after day by customer complaints; they can cut back the payroll budget as much as they please knowing that irate customers will be quick to come down on we "underlings" and not blame management for the problems. What do they care? They get hefty bonuses anyways the higher they can boost our store's profit margins, regardless of how terribly customer service is affected.

My solution is simple---Implement a "Take a Number, Please" system, similar to what they have at the DMV and most grocery store deli counters, in which customers who wanted to interact with a department associate at Lowe's or Home Depot would take a ticket, wait for their number to be called, and then have a maximum of FIVE MINUTES to ask away. (You'd be surprised at how many people selfishly harness our time for 25-30 minutes at a time while we have to neglect OTHER customers, which contributes to the frustration). I know some people say this makes them feel like "nothing more than a number," but at places like Wal-Mart, Lowe's, Home Depot, etc., that's truly all you people are, so get over it! Do you mean to tell me that you never felt like cattle being herded around as you tried to maneuver around endless crowds of people on a busy Saturday? Folks, one-on-one customer service went out the window when consumers, en masse, demanded "low, low prices under one roof!" Well, to get those "low, low prices", corporations such as Wal-Mart or Lowe's need to drastically cut their payrolls and/or underpay their employees in order to reduce their expenditures enough to be able to slash their prices. Having "everything under one roof" means that you need to have DIFFERENT people specializing in DIFFERENT areas; I can't tell you how many times I've had clueless people walk up to me in the parking lot while I'm pushing a row of carts into the store and asking me how to rewire their home or install a patio door, since I apparently "must know" because I work here! Would you go to Victoria's Secret and ask the cashier how to fix a noisy muffler? LOL! The same logic applies here---Everyone in the store is not going to be well-versed in roofing, cabinetry, plumbing, wiring, carpentry, fertilizing, etc., so don't get nasty when I tell you "Let me go grab someone who knows more about this than I do!" Do YOU know everything there is to know about snowblowers to drywall to washing machines? If not, then why get rude when we don't?

[ScranBarre]

I just don't know anymore. I started my tenure at Lowe's nearly two years ago, at a time when we weren't in such a staffing crisis, and I noticed our store teeming with satisfied customers who had their needs attended to in a timely manner. Now that we often have one employee covering another department to which he/she is clueless about in addition to his/her own area of expertise, I'm noticing more and more customers leaving confused, frustrated, or, most likely, IRATE! I truly want to put a smile onto the face of every one of our customers as they both enter and leave our store to bring them back as repeat business. Instead, I see very few familiar faces and hear very many "I'm going to Home Depot" in reply to my "Have a nice day." (Even though I have insider information from a friend at Home Depot who says that the SAME customers say "I'm going to Lowe's" when they likewise get frustrated there, which indicates that our region is just home to a bunch of negative fusspots with unattainably high expectations). The problem I seem to notice is that people think places such as Lowe's, Home Depot, or Wal-Mart are just like "big mom-and-pops" when nothing could be further from the truth! You have to sacrifice SOMETHING in exchange for rock bottom prices and convenience, and customer service is often it. DEAL WITH IT, OR GO BACK TO MOM-AND-POP! As for me, I'm tired of crying after some shifts from hearing so many complaints and rude comments while my managers hop into their $35,000 luxury pick-up trucks and head home with greedy smiles on their faces. The next time you start yelling at the "low guy on the totem pole", such as myself, put yourself in my shoes and realize that I'm only doing the bidding of inept managers who care more about cutting the payroll to increase profitibility to boost their bonuses than they do about retaining customers. Then, you have employees, such as myself, who continually handle the workload of three people with incessant stress while wondering if life will ever improve.

Here's a scenario for you all: You just got hired as a loader for your local Lowe's store. It's a busy Saturday at around 1 PM, and you're alone from
8-5, which means that you'll have to forgo your breaks in order to help as many customers as possible. You've just punched out for lunch from 1-2 PM, and you head to your car to mellow out to some soothing music. While in the car, you notice an elderly couple struggling to heave twenty bags of peat moss into the back of their old pick-up truck, a suburban stelleto-clad socialite rubbing her back after heaving a chimenea into the trunk of her Lexus SUV, a contractor cursing aloud as he snaps a 12-foot sheet of drywall while unsuccessfully trying to load it himself into the back of his work van, etc. All three instances occur simultaneously, which means that even if you were still on the clock, two of the parties involved STILL would have left your store with a sour taste in their mouths, and, in the case of the Scranton area, those two parties would drive up alongside of you when you had just finished up helping the one other party to chastise you for not doing your job to the best of your ability. Over the course of your lunch hour, you sit there, stressed, watching helplessly as person after person flips out by chucking shopping carts around or going back inside to flip out on the nearest Lowe's vest they can find, regardless of as to whether or not they were aware of the circumstance.

I've just about had it with our store's "anti-customer/anti-employee/pro-profit" mindset, and I'm at the point now where I'm considering quitting and living off of my savings for a while to try and enjoy life again. I've always been lonesome, but for some reason knowing that I made a positive difference in people's shopping experiences while working for Lowe's helped to overshadow that. Now that I often feel like providing adequate customer service is entirely unattainable at our store, all of my depression is just pouring right back in to the point where life just doesn't seem to have much meaning anymore. Whenever I ask for help outside, I'm basically told that it's our "slow season" and to "suck it up." Well, tell that to the nearly FULL parking lot this past weekend as temperatures hovered in the 60s and people rushed to buy heavy gardening supplies! "Slow season" my ****!

[YOU-CANT-EAT-SCENERY]

That's why my wife and I eat out so often. There is a little family restaurant here in town, that she and I can eat at for about $15. To me it's worth it to not have to spend $600 a month on groceries that are rotten, and will get worse, and may have to be thrown away, before they get used. And then to have to fight the crowds, etc.
I'm not saying we eat out every night...well almost, when it's just she and I, but it sure seems like groceries almost cost more than eating out...depending of course, where you go.

[MoMark]

Originally Posted by johns65vette

That's why my wife and I eat out so often. There is a little family restaurant here in town, that she and I can eat at for about $15. To me it's worth it to not have to spend $600 a month on groceries that are rotten, and will get worse, and may have to be thrown away, before they get used. And then to have to fight the crowds, etc.
I'm not saying we eat out every night...well almost, when it's just she and I, but it sure seems like groceries almost cost more than eating out...depending of course, where you go.

That's why I didn't renew my membership at Sam's Club here too. I love the store, but it's always so crowded that going there is a trial for me, so I don't anymore.
As for the price of groceries...I had a hankering for Special K cereal. I pulled a box off the shelf then looked at the price... $5.50!!!!!! Five dollars and fifty cents for a box of cereal!!!!!!!!!!!! No wonder I don't buy it, it's a ripoff! I stopped buying boxed cereal when it was $3.50 a box because it was outrageously overpriced in my view. Now $5.50? I just don't understand why people buy this stuff when it's so overpriced. I will buy bulk cereal in those big ten gallon plastic bags if it's under $4.
I just can't justify spending that amount of money on a box of cereal.

[lookingfortheperfectplace]

That sucks for you to have to shop all over again MoMark.
I have left a cart before at walmart. you all know how much I hate that place.
I thought this thread was about abandoning a cart as in not putting it in the cart return area. Which by the way I hate that. Especially when you see the cart right next to the return thing but on the outside.