Wally World in trouble

[warmsecondrinse]

"Walmart management would remember that

Logically, yes. But it certainly seems like in corporate America, vision does not often extend much past the current quarter... "

 

Agreed. I find it very telling that there was no mention, even in passing, of things that have an impact on whether or not a customer goes back to a particular store. Things like:

- How long did it take to find parking and how far did the customer need to walk to get into the store?

- How clean was the store?

- Did the customer have a problem finding sales help?

- How long did the customer have to wait in line to pay for his items?

 

I have to admit, I have this perverse fascination with decision makers (of any type) who make plans with no attention to the practical implementation thereof. Then the decision makers act as though the plan's failure was something that happened to them as opposed to something they caused.

 

Jim

 

[arbilab]

Good lick, Jim. Reminds me of what happened to Dell support. A throng of MBA middle managers desperately clawing to get somewhere, tasked with BPI -- business process improvement -- which typically amounted to a subfractional cent saved wholly without regard for what it did to CE -- customer experience -- the big Dell buzzword before somebody sold them BPI. That transition coincided with the one from "dude you're getting a Dell" being a blessing to being a curse.

 

[vacerator]

Let me guess?

Dell support went offshore? Many did, but some are back. GM for instance.
Overall though, the employees are the poorly treated today. Once you get to be age 50 plus, it's very difficult starting over.
My brother works for US steel, and they have severed 25% of salary employees, and are retiring hourly as well early by attrition.
They call it the "new Carnegie way". Well I studied all about the Carnegie way and the first strike where he hired a security company to disban the picket lines.
It got nasty, and people died.
My brother is a journeyman electrician, and is expected to spend two hours or more doing repairs on a crane, then go repair or maintain the furnaces, and rolling and extrusion lines. Often without a safety break. Then work overtime every day.
He refuses of course, until he has a break to regroup. Safety first, or they will have OSHA all over their tails.

 

[daveamkrayoguy]

Thought to be Title: 'Wally World' GONE FOREVER?

Honestly wish it would be--and I work there...

 

Too much bitchin' over prices of stuff being too high, when what the customer wants is in the wrong spot over/under the wrong spot due to sloppy aisles and areas, by customers' hasty shopping habits and lack of proper zoning by my lazy fellow-associates...

 

Few frozen/cold returns being put back to their proper storage, then more food waste, card readers that don't work, the self-checkout machines & check-out scanners breaking down, (and/or stuff not getting scanned, there and at "real person" registers) illegitimate price-matching with other stores, and not even counting the theft, shoplifting, and other kinds of losses, and general shrink... --And I could go on...

 

I worked at Arbor which is now CVS and when we had meetings with the District Manager he could be quoted as saying we'd be best off closing the store, just to not at least suffer the losses we had then, so I often wonder if there is any sort of concerned management likely to be quoted with saying or believing the same, as I certainly do...

 

(Yes, what would I do, w/o where I work? Guess join the ranks of those who get helped by our Guv-Ment! Everyone else does...  Well, I'm sitting on a fortune somewhere...)

 

 

-- Dave

 

[vacerator]

Dave,

Wow! I presumed you repair appliances.
Would you believe Wally would not hire me with 31 years of experience?
I was with Borman and then A&P (Farmer Jack) both hourly and salary.
If you ask me, Wally needs the UFCW, but not like Kroger has it.
No two tier contract, pay everyone equally again. No limit on hours they can work either. Folks work in order to live. They need benefits and insurance, and enough paid time off to compensate the many weekends they work. Not to mention a good retirement plan.
Oh, I forgot, I'm stuck in the 70's and 80's.
The little people mean nothing today.

 

[mayken4now]

We will keep buying Persil and have only Henkle/Dial Company in out laundry room since last year.

I had said, Bye Bye to P & G on a previous thread back when.

 

[daveamkrayoguy]

DaveAMKrayoGuy Appliance Repair?!

No, I'm afraid I have ten thumbs, I'm too often in my good clothes, and I'm allergic to dirt under my finger nails...

 

I have a retail background which I'd acquired in my 11th & 12th grade of school, in lieu of dropping out & finding I would not miss anything academically as I couldn't get a scholarship to a good college (and I was too precognitive to get any good college credits, let-alone good grades, not to mention stocking grocery shelves & sheltering shopping carts more than taking any courses, to show even for part-time enrollment on a linoleum campus at OCC)... 

 

After a year-and-a-semester, of which either the 'year', or the 'semester' had been enough taking up time & space, I went to a trade school to learn electronic engineering technology & computer repair...  (And hadn't found much work in it as much as a need to pursue more school--Guitar Lessons (and keeping my day job) came after that...)

 

 

-- Dave

 

[vacerator]

Me also,

I like the Persil, but I'm a loyal Meijer shopper.

 

[murando531]

I'm glad to see pressure being put on P&G. I do love many of their brands, but like many have said, the waters have become muddy with the oversaturation of so many different products for doing one chore. Detergent, plus boosters, plus scent boosters, plus odor neutralizers(?), etc... All things that were once upon a time just part of a box of powdered Tide. I'm glad Henkel/Persil is giving them a run for their money because perhaps it will mean P&G will get out of their comfy chair and start innovating again, and hopefully that means simplifying their lineups.

The bad thing is that, all things considered, P&G does make some of the best of the best products, which makes it hard to avoid buying them as opposed to some of the competition, so if this Walmart ordeal and their new rival bring them down to earth a bit, that's just fine.

 

[launderess]

Tide Free & Clear Coldwater.

Glad to see am not the only one missing that product.

For some reason P&G still produces the stuff, but only for sale in Canada and perhaps select parts of the USA. No one in NYC area has it and when asked a local supermarket to order, it wasn't even on his master list of P&G products.

Walmart in Canada has Tide "Coldwater Clean" unscented, but not stores down south.

 

[moparwash]

Once upon a time....

There was just Tide....now at the store I counted at least 10 different versions....when they come out with toothpaste scent Tide, Im done....just like with Oreo's....once upon a time there was Oreo.

 

[vacerator]

Dave,

there's nothing at all bad about what you do. Many of our best managers had little or no formal education.
You manage people. That is a skill set acquired from good parenting, and social interacting.
You're taking care of your family. First order of business, then the store, or in reverse.
As my former employer once told me myself; "You're a good mensch". That man made me feel appreciated.
Mike.

 

[warmsecondrinse]

Back when Rubik's Cubes first enthralled the world I was a cashier at Sears. Corded, handheld scanners had just come out. They scanned wrong more often than not and it was literally much faster (proven repeatedly by duels among cashiers) to enter info by hand. Our supervisors understood this and there was no problem. However, at least once per week some other manager would come by and explain to us that we were somehow confused and didn't understand that the scanners were actually faster and if we would just try them we'd see for ourselves.

 

Repeated demonstrations (causing huge lines said managers seemed not to see) to the contrary failed to make any impression. The point is that these managers never stopped insisting that the cashiers were the problem even though they themselves were unable to get the scanners to work.  And of course there was never any kind of explanation of HOW we cashiers were the problem.

 

Back then the first kind of managers (who knew the scanners didn't work) were the norm and the second were a small, loud, obnoxious minority. Now it seems to be the reverse.

 

Sounds like you're in the first group. Be proud!

 

Jim

 

P.S. I should mention that those of us who had prior cashier experience were unanimous that the registers Sears had were by far the best designed registers any of us had ever used. We had to enter 3 or 4 sets of numbers PER ITEM and our fingers flew on those! I doin't remember the name but they had a crescent, Jetson-esque design. 

 

[lordkenmore]

>Tide Free & Clear Coldwater.

>Glad to see am not the only one missing that product.

I, too, wish it were more readily available. I never used it, and--as far as I know--I only know of the existence by having heard of it on the Internet. But I'd be curious to try it.

It's puzzling why it's not carried in the US. They have no problem coming up with 5 billion other types of Tide, so why not carry something they are already making for another part of the North American market?

 

[tomturbomatic]

Jim, I remember those terminals in the pods that Sears set up so that there was no one in the departments to help customers find stuff and the stores were far from self service.Were the bar codes not bold enough for the scanners or was there some other problem? I, the late 70s, I used to go to the Sears near me in the late afternoon when there were few crowds and few sales people so most of the pods were covered with vinyl pod condoms.

In an earlier experiment in bar code reading, Rich's in Atlanta entered the Discount Store Age with their chain Richway in the late 60s. They used VERY sticky bar codes on items and the stores practically gave away merchandise from poor scanning. The real nightmare came when the weekly sales pages came out. Every item that was to go on sale had to be counted then new sales labels had to be affixed to the items so that they would ring up at the sales price. When they went off the sales price and back to the regular price, all of the items had to be recounted and restickered with the regular price. Needless to say, they did not have adequate computer technology to enter item codes to get counts to to program sales prices (some term called PLU) and customers ruined some plastic items with rubbing alcohol and knife blades trying to remove the stickers. It was sad. Then the oil shock hit the economy and many things took a hit like people losing jobs and Richway and Treasure Island chains closing.

Does anyone who was in retail then remember the price freezes to battle inflation? We had to keep lists to be able to prove to customers that prices had not risen during the price freeze. The only thing it did was to prove that the government cared, although its actions were misdirected and ineffective. With the price of oil going up, the price of everything had to go up. I never believed that the vertical monopoly that was the oil industry did not fleece us but good. They did not have price freezes because they had clout in the government; hell they owned most of the government.