Monday, February 27, 2006

If You Call The Police, You're Fired

I was hired at a Wal Mart store in ARizona 8 months ago.

In that time, I became amazed at the number of borderline and definitely illegal activities going on. I have a friend who was being stalked who works at the same store. When she tried to get help against the coworker who was stalking her, they put him in a nearby area to work and wrote her up!!! I have a restraining order against my ex because he bbasically tried to kill me, when I saw him at work one night (I work overnights as a stocker), I was told by the managers that if I call the police, I will get fired.

"That's not Wal Mart's policy" It gets even worse. When I first started there, we had around 45 people working nights. Today, May 9, we have maybe 15!! People are leaving and our store manager refuses to replace them. I am leaving this particular store next week and gave them 6 weeks' notice and no one has been hired to replace me or been trained to replace me.

Also, because of the increased departure of staff, there are a certain number of people, myself included, who are being pulled from our departments and being expected to work 3 or more deaprtments every night. Now, there are associates who absolutely refuse to leave their departments and so they get to work their areas and not help out while the rest of us are busting our butts to try and help. And nothing we do is good enough.

One colleague got written up because he worked 7 departments in one night and sent back 1/2 a pallet he couldn't get to. There is another worker who suffered a heart attack and the day he was back, they only allowed him three weeks off, they sent him right back to water and sodas,one of the hardest areas to work. I worked so hard that I ended up out for 10 days and the day with severe flu and exhaustion. The week I get back I have to work 4 or more dapartments.

Then I get a verbal reprimand for stuff I did not do. The day people do not work at our store. I come in to 6 baskets of items that have not been put away and a department that has not beeen zoned. When the day people got caught, they said I do it! So I was reprimanded. No one asked my co-workers, no asked me, no one asked the night coaches, no one worked with me to see. This happened the weeks I was out. And I have been yelled at for mistakes that happen on my weekends! This is a problem throughout all the areas. We come in and the day people are not working. Also, no one is in the same library much less on the same page. We are told to do features and we come in and days has ripped down the features. If we don't do features, the night coaches will write us up; if we do put up features, our department managers will write us up.

It is a no win situation.

Food Tasted Like Walmart

I bought food at walmart. it tasted like walmart. it smelled like walmart. when i farted happy faces filled the air. how weird is that? please investigate.

Wal-Mart Can't Stand Cancer Survivors

My horror story involves Sam’s Club - which, as you probably know, is owned by Wal-Mart. I am a volunteer with the American Cancer Society here in Maine, and a cancer survivor myself. I needed to purchase a number of items for the upcoming ACS Relay for Life and went to Sam’s to buy in bulk. I don’t have a Sam’s Club membership so I explained to the store manager that I was purchasing items for charity and asked if I could have a 1-day pass to shop.

The manager flat-out REFUSED.

She told me that I could buy a membership for $35, but that she wouldn’t let me in for 1-day … even if it was for charity. Can you imagine?! I was outraged. I wasn’t asking for a discount. I wasn’t asking for a donation. I was asking to be allowed in to make a CASH PURCHASE on behalf of a charity, and this company refused.

How stingy and less civic-minded could a company get?

This is a new low for even Wal-Mart. I wrote Sam’s Club president and the chairman of Wal-Mart, but doubt they will ever respond. The best we can do is to stop shopping with this company and hope their karma catches up with them.

jwojo@maine.rr.com

Sunday, February 26, 2006

My Mom Being Worked to Death

my mom works 80 to 90 hrs a week, she is told daily that her job is at stake if one thing is forgotten, she does not get a lunch, or even breaks. her district manager goes around bragging that they had the pay for new assistances cut, it’s a proud moment, they make less then minimum wage when you figure out the hrs in comparison to the wage. no wonder they take out an insurance policy on there associates, they work them to death, they die and the big profitable company gets richer while we lose those we love and charish. my father and I are trying to get her to look for another job, and hes going with her to help her job hunt next week. I hope the big wigs read this, there killing good people, family orientated my ass, my moms district manager feels that you shoul live and breath wal-mart forsaking your family, if that’s family I say no thanks, and hopefully soon so will my mom, because wal-mart we are still young and we need her, you just want to run her into the ground then disguard her like trash. I hope this gets printed, because maybe if people realize that its not just the regular associates who get jerked around but the assistance as well. thank you hopefully wal-mart free very soon.

evilsk8er75@hotmail.com

Humiliating the Staff

My wife has worked for Wallyworld since 1998, first as an associate then as a department manager for the last two years. She has a great work ethic and is a kind and gentle person, probably too gentle. She helped set up three new stores as they opened in our town because she likes the feeling of enterprise that goes with opening a new store. She did fine at the first three locations, earning several merit pins for good work, but her job has turned sour starting one year ago when she moved to her present location.

Here, she received a coaching for her "mods" not being perfect last year. She was being put under increasing pressure to meet new demands but was rarely given help though she often asked for it. At the same time management started taking away her riser space (above the retail shelf space), her bin space (in back) and she had to share one of very few "telzons" (hand-held wireless computers) with other departments. She was often pulled off her work to help other departments that already had help; she was usually the only one in her own department.

Recently she was given another coaching and a D-day after working very hard trying to keep up with the demands. In the recent SWASS meeting, the store manager openly humiliated her in front of her co-workers by reprimanding her for 11 misplaced or miscounted boxes of shampoo in her mod. She tried to explain that in that department, there are hundreds and hundreds of small items and that she made every effort to finish the mod in the time allowed as she had numerous other duties and "special" projects for other departments.

They are now in the process of demoting her to an associates position. Although she feels poorly treated, she is going along with it because she may have less stress, though lower pay. If management felt that my wife did not have certain attributes demanded of managers (the other supercenter did not have a problem with her work as dept. manager), they should have talked to her in private and explained their position to her instead of reprimanding and humiliating her in front of the whole team!

centiped@velocity.net

Friday, February 10, 2006

Walmart Made His Brother Gay

My Brother like to work there for fun because he is gay.

So he works with guys and when they bend over he will slap there A$$ HoW GAY CAN WALMART GET FOR TURNING MY BROTHER GAY

(HES NAME IS JXXXXX)

doctordeeeee@yahoo.com

Thursday, February 09, 2006

Morale lower than a gopher's basement

Howdy! I slave for a Wal-Mart in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. 3027 Edmonton West! (that's what we are all supposed to cheer at the end of our nightly spelling of the company name) I work nights, and I would like to tell people out there a little bit about the situation in my store.

Ready? Got your flashlight? It's a dark ride.
we are in a new store, having moved from our old location just over a year ago (we opened at the tail end of january). I worked at the old location, took a few months off, and came back when the new location was finally open. Anyway, enough backstory right? You want to hear the nice juicy, tawdry bits of gossip right? Cool. Like I said, I work nights, and as such, am in a good position to see just how this store is going into the toilet. We have endcaps (the shelves at the end of the isles) that are half empty, and stay that way for quite a long time, regular shelves that are empty and stay that way for a few days before getting filled. We have probably the smallest night crew in the city (we have just, JUST over 20 people total, not including maintenence) and the day crew isn't much better. Our department managers end up having to finish our stocking duties because we have so few people, the part-timers end up having to help with department managers duties (except for getting the new mods done, they take forever to get done), the people who close the store have to help the part-timers, and then we (the night crew) have to clean and zone the store. For example, we might come in, and find some shoes and a bra or two, sitting on a shelf in foods, toilet paper in pets, and a box of cereal sitting nestled in with the stereos. Morale in our store is lower than a gophers basement. This is called reverse clock (or so I was told by my manager). They know what to call it, but when it comes to solving it.....another matter. If you were to apply at my store for a job, say....as an unloader (which BTW, we only have 2 of now, 2 unloaders to unload the 2 trucks we get every night) it will be a long wait. See, they now have to get a criminal background check done on the people who apply here, and that takes so long that anyone foolish enough to apply, will almost certainly find something else. There are associate shortages in every department, in every shift. They are doing almost nothing to find and hire more people, and they are doing LESS than nothing to stem the amount of people quitting. The nightcrew's morale is WAY low for many reasons, and since I'm on nights, I will list some of them. We come in and have to do other peoples jobs, zoning the store, we have to pull skids of merchandise on pallets from the back every night because we only have 2 unloaders (meaning we have even less time to do our job) we normally spend about an hour doing that. We have managers telling us that we are not allowed to talk to each other about wages (they don't want us comparing how much each other make, because that might upset some people...to know that they are making less than a person newly hired), we have some people on our crew who take our nightly average of pallets cleared and double it (I normally clear on average 14 pallets a night, plus pulling out skids, using the WAVE to riser stuff on the 30 foot high walls, and pulling skids of stuff back at the end of the night, and collecting empty pallets on my own) we have a few guys like me, and the rest....not so productive (due to having a lot of little stuff, or just are slow or whatever.) We have a reward program setup for accident free days right? So far, we are at like 140 days or something. The day crew got a BBQ at 60 days, 90 days and 120 days. The store manager was there for all of them, the DM was there as well for one of them. Night crew? HA! We got our BBQ for 60 days, about 2 weeks later, we got our one for 90 days......more than a month late, and our one for 120 days.....who know? Did the store manager show up for any of our BBQ's????? NO! Guess nightcrew doesn't mean as much, isn't as important as daycrew huh?(shrugs) Oh well. We have pallet jacks that are broken half the time (not to mention that we only have 7....7 to share with everyone) ICS carts that have crappy wheels or missing wheels, a backroom that is disorganized and overfilled. We have, on average about 13 people every night (if we are lucky) to fill the store as best as we can. I was called into the managers office by my managers, and was asked why I'm being so negative lately? I laid it out for them. I told them that morale is low and they aren't doing anything to fix it. I told them that the expectations are too high, and they are going to burn us all out. They said "We don't expect more from anyone because we have less people" BULL! They may say that expectations are the same as always, but really....not true. They intimidate, cajole, complain, insinuate and humiliate to try and get a few extra pallets cleared. How about safety? I mentioned that we are at 140 days or something? safety might be preached first around here, but practiced??? DEAD LAST. My manager sees me stacking pallets by myself (not 2 high, but 12) and says NOTHING. Sees me lift a 32 inch flat screen TV (Gross Wgt. of 136 pounds) says nothing. We have a WAVE (a machine that is like a rolling manlift) missing strobe on the front, no visual warning that I am travelling....was told that is optional and to quit bringing it up. Most of our nightcrew has no idea, NONE, where the emergency eye wash stations are, or how to use them, I mentioned this to my managers, to have a demonstration for everyone, and was told rather curtly "We aren't going to deal with that tonight", that was almost 3 months ago, nothing has happened. one of the ladies sliced herself with her boxcutter....she was told "we can take you to the hospital (it was rather a bad cut requiring stiches) we can take you to the hospital, but first we have to call the district poss pervention guy, wake him up so he can talk to you BEFORE we take you to the hospital. We are pressuered NOT to fill out accident forms, UNLESS you are going to go to the doctor RIGHT AWAY. we have people pulling pallets around that are over a ton and a half....alone. Asking for help? most people are not comfortable doing that, too busy, not enough people. Using pipeline? In our store, you have to be on the clock in order to log into it, can't do it on break or lunch, you must be on the clock, the computer will not let you in otherwise. Well, as busy and shorthanded as w are, most people are too intimidated to tell the manager that they want to check out a policy. We have to take our coffee that we get at breaks and lunch from claims (you know, the containers that are covered in tide, or bleach or motor oil, god forbid we use one that is off the shelf?!?!?!?!?! Our store manager has rarely gotten the nightcrew together, or even got on the P.A. to tell us w are doing a good job, we hear it lots from our managers, but it means nothing coming from them. We on the night crew get the crappiest treatment, and everybody needs us, you know what that makes us? Toilet paper. Everyone needs us, and we get the WORST treatment.
nice life huh?

ian_templeman99007@hotmail.com

You can put my name in this if you want to, Ian Templeman Overnights 3027 Edmonton

Tuesday, February 07, 2006

Fired But No One Knew

I have been employed by Walmart since Autumn of 2002. In March of 2003 I found out I was terminated from my job only after I tried to use my employee discount.

When I was told I was terminated it was by the attending cashier who was quite surprised that no one from the management team spoke to me. I was told to talk to a member of managementimmediately. I did try that night to speak to the shift-assistant manager but he would not talk to me about the "situation" and that I had to speak tosomeone the next morning.

I did go to speak to another member of management the next day and he referred me to my handling assistant manager who I had never met. She did tell me that I was terminated because of labour cut-backs and I would have known that I was terminated by the time clock. She did apologized that the time clock was on the blink for the past two weeks and I would have known earlier.

While I did get paid for the two weeks I did work while I was "terminated", no one below the manager and my handling-assistant manager knew. Not even my department manager.

What makes this matter even worse is that I was still on the work schedule for three more weeks with my department depending on my working myhours on an already poorly covered schedule.

Why is it the nit-wits are runningt his company.

The only good thing that has happened is that after the generalmanager was terminated himself for more that this infraction I was rehired, but only after a 90 day period.

signed, Still devoted to my customers at#2323

Tailordave@aol.com