I have sadly been employed in a Wal-Mart store locally in Kansas for nearly eight years now. I know its my own fault taking the punishment managerial charlatans and frauds can heap while maintaining their innocence.
But still for every time they manage to destroy your morale there are those very few times everything comes together to be a simple paying minimum wage crap job. Those are very few and far between though now.
Where can I begin to criticize. Maybe start with the fact that We recieve way too much freight than a twenty-four hour store should. Every store recieves large amounts of freight, but this one loves to get large amounts of merchandise that has no where to go.
The shelves are overfilled by earlier shift to the point they can't be stocked and probably cause problems for the shoppers who in managers own words "always gotta bitch about something" like freight stacked so high its toppling onto the floors. I've been told there is no space in back for my freight so supposedly I have to put it above the soda aisles.
I have a limited amount of time sadly and no help since again in managers words I have to ask for help to do what is most obviously a two man job so this turns into a feverish escapade every day. Now we even get so much unusable freight its become impossible to put stuff above the aisle and they've started cramming it up there. This makes pulling freight from the shelf a chore of constantly shifting the merchandise, but supposedly this Okay since there is none of my merchandise in the back.
Speaking of the top shelves or Risers, there are rules that are mainly tossed out when they need to get rid of merchandise. Unfortunately the shelves are rickety. Sure they look solid but one good shove to put some merchandise on the shelf and these things shake like grass in the wind.
One day these things shook so much I was hit in the head by falling Gerbil Houses to which I stupidly didn't report to management but the first time I was hurt on the job the situation was turned around in their favor to the fact that I shouldn't have been pulling a thousand pounds of water softner salt down an incline and straight into a pallet of magazines.
Speaking of the recieving crew with the overages in freight this causes them to work too fast and there is no real safety in the six foot tall pallets. When you pull these onto a floor filled with browsing slow customers this could cause a problem with freight falling on customers. Management again "They shouldn't have been so close to the pallet" like a customer knows how to shop properly.
This is from a company that prides itself on safety as well.
I heard recently as well that the company is trying to crack down on unwanted clutter. Hope it happens soon because in order to get rid of my freight earlier shifts are piling boxes on top of other merchandise. Theres so much of it they're piling it in small corners of the floor of the aisles that are so small two customers can't fit down the aisle without causing cramping in the aisles.
One last thing favortism which is rampant. There isn't supposed to be such a thing in Wal-Marts little society but it happens. Every night there are a few select associates (employees to people who don't want to feel special) who stand around talking and slowly working because they know they'll always get help. This is painful when I'm a few aisles down trying to dodge customers on my aisles (two aisles for one man) to stock the shelves and at the end of the night when I'm beaten and battered I have to help them clean up their work whether I want to or not.
This is also painful because I've seen managers just standing around with them talking all chatty at the begining of the night. When I stop for a short chat with my department manager this one manager is on me like its the most heinous act I could possibly do.
Theres just so much nonsense in this store I can't believe they sit around just building more in order to make more money. The company says they want to corner the market, but look at it my way.
Six stores in a twenty mile area, this cuts down on a stores earning. A store not earning cuts its employees cutting wages for the company. So they're really getting more money for the company while keeping stores overstocked with needless freight and under valued employees that are kept in order by two managers whose job seems to be to defend the managers and keep employees working. If there was a god Wal-Mart would be wiped off the face of the earth by some major event. Just get rid of Bentonville to beautify Arkansas a little bit too.
