I have commented on how it appears that Walmart is chasing #2 Target. Yet another development in support of that observation: Walmart is moving towards uniforms.
Now, in a bold move of originality, Walmart won’t insist that it’s employees sport the familiar red polo with beige khaki pants that rival Target requires. Instead, Walmart employees were sport a BLUE polo with beige khaki pants.
I also heard that hours of retail employees are being cut across the board and the reaction has been fierce. First uniforms, then a cut in the hours available to work.
Let’s see, first you anger the shoppers by discontinuing layaway. Then you anger the employees by requiring uniforms and cutting hours, which of course has a trickle down effect on already disgruntled customers.
It’s my understanding that the reason given for the uniform edict was that employees weren’t dressing in a professional manner, thus the need for uniforms. Great job, Wal-Mart. Way to get a “dig” in at your “associates.” Make is an issue of the employees lack of taste and decorum. Don’t try to candy coat the decision by telling your employees that this is something you’re doing FOR them. Instead, make sure they know that they weren’t measuring up so they’ll see the uniforms as punishment. (Which is how it’s being viewed by the front line employees in the line of fire.)
How many suns grace the sky over Bentonville? Does the atmosphere there still resemble that of planet earth?
For the longest time (while Sam was alive), Wal-Mart kept their world wide headquarters in a remote part of Arkansas to stay “in touch” with their core customer. The other day, an employee told me that he overheard someone from Bentonville talking to an “associate” who said, “If you remember the days when Sam was alive, then it’s time for you to leave. That Wal-Mart doesn’t exist anymore and it’s not coming back.”
Wal-Mart has lost sight of Sam Walton’s original vision, where a working family could find everything they needed at a price they could afford. Now, the retail giant doesn’t listen to or respect those who made it great. Their disrespect is obvious, from their bogus social networking site to their feeding of material to bloggers…. Wal-Mart has lost sight of the reason they’re in business.
Don’t you lose sight of why you are in business.
A great reminder of why I hate Walmart, and Home Depot too!
These two companies have completely lost their way in terms of relating to their customers. Home Depot has already paid a price for relegating their older and wiser employees, Circuit City the same. One can only hope it cathes up with Walmart soon.
Dennis Foreman
Let me start of by saying from someone that has been in the retail business for 25 years plus have done business myself. I decided to take a part-time job at Walmart. Having moved to a smaller town that doesn’t have very many stores I decided I would apply for a part time job at Walmart to earn alittle extra cash.
Now I swore I would never work at this store ever and my reasons were as follows in my eyes.
A) Because I swore they hired every imbicile or idiot they could find on the streets cause no one else would work there.
B)Because their customer service simply just sucks!!
C) I felt I was lowering my standards as Walmart’s reputation is very much known as a shitty place to work at. And that it was beneath me for all the above reasons.
So having worked for and still working there I can honestly say.. that I was right!!! “WALMART does suck!!!
We have something called CBL’S that are basically little tests on the computer everyone must do as they are their training guides.
I had only been at my job 1 week when I was saying to myself…OMG what kinda of shit hole is this place. Everthing I learned on the CBL’S is totally opposite to what I see is going on, on the floor. Respect the individual is one of their beliefs…”OH PLEASE” if that isn’t the biggest crock of crap I have seen in along time.. Open Door Policy….okay that’s alittle bit better if your going past the actual Manager on down working there to the higher levels. Satisfaction Guaranteed!!! Pffft…to me that’s almost a embarassment even having that sign up there.
Satisfaction Guarnteed only after they grill ya first on why your returning it and then I even see some associates adding exceptions to the policy to tell the customer no they can’t return something.
To sum my experience so far at Walmart I can say that what they try to portray to what is actually is. They try to sound like they are a great place to work for and you get that feeling doing their CBL’S and going hmmm it sounds all good…but is it really like they comes across??… Heck no!! It’s a whopper pile of “Camel Dung if you believe even 95 percent of those CBL’S.
A) Their training after CBL’s is here our store , here’s the jungle, now find your own way…ops what’s that you still don’t know things after a week….well here’s your walking papers.
Walmart doesn’t need doors that slide open as you come to work, they need revolving doors because employees come and go so fast you don’t even want to know their names anymore.
Some get fired but most quit and why is that? Because in the simplest of terms they “SUCK”!!!
I could go in a Walmart store 300 miles from me or 3000 and guess what? You see the same bullshit and lack of customer service and useless tits in all of them..of course bearing in mind there are your good apples. What’s even amazing is when you see the good apples that work there turn to sour apples because of the lack of respect given from Management to fellow employees. Which is truly sad!! If they can take happy go lucky people by nature and turn them into miserable people once they go to their job there then something is wrong! It’s called the trickle down effect!! Bad management =no respect from employees. Who would want to give their all to a place that doesn’t give a shit about them.
So in saying all that, there is a fix!!! And it is clear what needs to happen.
Firstly the set up of your Management in store needs re-structuring. Badly in need of a revamp if you ask me.
So starting at the top you have the Store Manager, the then Co-Manager which is fine, below them is the Assistant Manager, fine as well but you need to change what their role is in the store. Put them in charge of a S.W.A.S like you already do but under the the Assistant should be a Department Manager in charge of overlooking the S.W.A.S hands on (unlike a Assistant Manager) and under that would be full time staff and part time staff to back up that department Manager.( S.W.A.S=store with in a store for those who don’t know basically means “Team leader for certain areas given to them”)
The set up now is that the department mangers usually each have 1 or more areas and they are considered the full time person to do most of the work and the sales associates play a minor role and do nominal stuff because they aren’t allowed to do certain things…aka basically it’s like being treated like a 2 year old feeling and they are trying to control things so only certain people have access to doing stuff and associates don’t. Leaving the Department Manager who gets a mere . 90cent whoop dee shit raise to take that role to have most of the responsibility put on their shoulders instead of giving us the capability of helping them out more. So getting back on track to what I was saying is that if Walmart allowed the sales associates on the floor to be active in helping out and allowed to access more functions instead of getting treated like babies then you would see areas run a lot smoother with team work. Allow the associate to grow in their positions to learn every aspect of the area they work in so that they can have more knowledge of what is going on and be more rounded in that area. You are trying to be to controlled in who can access stuff creating your sales associates to have bare minimum knowledge and therefore your staff has no clue, so basically they say to the customer “I don’t know.” Or you’ll have to ask the my Manager when he/she is in because only they could answer that. Which creates frustrated customers. No customer wants to here I don’t know, they want answers to a question if they ask it.
Also another problem I see is lack of training, when I did not work for Walmart but was a customer my perception of the floor staff that I could find if I was lucky was that they kinda worked around the store and didn’t really have specific areas they worked in. I think was because usually you could rarely find someone to help you so you just assumed they worked all over.
In working there, I now realise that people are given certain areas and you help out around those areas, but unfortunately what good is it to work in a area if you really don’t have the product knowledge, proper training or cross training given to you and you feel useless when a customer asks if we carry something and you don’t have a clue. Or how many times have I come across a customer asking me to help them in a section outside of my own because the staff is so sparse or the section might only have one staff person that works in that area but is not in. Staff need to be properly trained!!!! But with saying that how do you train staff if Walmart can’t seem to keep their staff in the first place…kinda of a tough spot then isn’t it??
Also what the heck is Walmart doing by putting immature teens who are 16 and 17 in roles of CSM. It is one thing to put a person of this age in charge of others who have maturity are responsible and have good people skills and work ethic. But you are creating your own demise when you put anyone into positions that don’t have the skills the fit the job title. How do you expect others employees to respect their superiors if they don’t respect how they act towards others. It is not hard to find good quality people you want to work for you if you have good quality people that are in charge. But I see Assistant Manager’s to Manager’s being in roles they have no business being in. But yet they are. I believe in equal opportunity, but I also believe in order to have opportunities given to a person they have to earn the right and have the skills to be in that position be it young or old. In the world of retail it is a “MUST” to be a people person and a problem solver so that you can ensure that customers walk away feeling satisfied when leaving a store. If you put people in these positions that don’t have or aren’t ready for these roles then you will see the trickle down effect back on to the customer.
Walmart has some major cleaning up to do in how they run their business if they want to change the perception of what the majority of people think of Walmart.
Dress Code, I am so in favor of seeing a dress code at Walmart mostly because I see what people get away with wearing and it disgusts me that in a retail business such as this, its like everyday street clothes, there is no standard really. Yes there is paperwork that gives guidelines on what we are allowed to wear and not wear but like almost everything else it has gone out the window. You have some that follow it and others that get away with wearing things. If there is one thing that is clear Walmart is very inconsistent with their rules No one seems to be on the same page and if you ask 10 different people from staff to Management you get 10 different answers.
Walmart would be out of business if it was based on customer service and knowledgeable staff. We all know it’s only the prices and that alone which keeps people shopping at their store.
It’s really unfortunate it my eyes what I listened to on the CBL’S about what Sam Walton’s dreams and ideas were and what he wanted to give to his customers to what actually I see. If Walmart held true to his wishes then truly we would see a “Great Walmart” one to be proud of, but as it stands unless some of the bow ties up top make that happen and they truly want to give Walmart and their customers a better perception of this Retail Giant, then the better pick up their speed and make it happen sooner then later.
I honestly commend myself for having the endurance to stick it out for the time that I have and put up with so much bullshit in the short time I have been there…actually in Walmart time my employment there is probably considered long as I passed the 1 year mark.
Some might wonder why it is that I would work for them still and my answer is simple. I believe change is possible, I also believe that if more people stopped complaining and started doing things to help make it better then even one person can start to make a difference and see things trickle up instead of down. I see it as a challenge to myself on how much I can take as a person but also how much I can give as a person as well. It’s who I am. I like challenges and obstacles. I just didn’t realize how much of a obstacle I was facing and have questioned myself as to “What am I doing this for? They don’t care…so why should I care? But if we all thought like that and didn’t try to improve and change things for the better I am no better then the people that only grumble about how much they hate working there.
There is no reason why Walmart could not have a better image for themselves and have their stores neat and orderly and well run, but you need to have the right people with the right staff to help make that happen and alittle thing we all call “TEAMWORK”.
I’d be stupid to leave my real name, so ill just leave it as,
……