My last trip to Walmart, I think

[borg69unimatrix]

KameApart is right!

I remember when my mom worked for them back in the 90s/early 2000s before our store location closed down. The quality was terrible. Walmart had much better quality products than our Kmart, and that's saying something!

I remember when K-Mart was basically what Wal-Mart is today - minus the food (although they did have a deli/restaurant in the back). They carried lower end stuff that low income people could afford, and they flourished for it... there's no shortage of low income people. They even offered Lay-Away.

But then they started trying to compete with Target and other 'new' and upcoming stores, raised their prices, and brought in all the 'designer' crap with Martha Stewart or Jaclyn Smith's name all over it trying to piss with the big dogs instead of staying what they were good at. I feel like Wal-Mart is doing the same thing now.

 

[PreTTy PeTe]

I discovered homosexual literature at a K-Mart when I was 15.

Thank you Patricia Nell Warren.

 

[bendted]

I've been working at WM for a few weeks and I can address the customer service aspect of it.
They want to be left alone. When I ask customers if they need help finding something (or some variation of that script) they bark and say "WHAT!?" and invariably give me a dirty look like I am intruding into their glorious shopping experience.
Or if they ask me a question and I say we don't have something they rudely say "ARE YOU KIDDING ME??!!! WHY NOT???) and then walk off. Men by far are the worse offenders. I haven't had anyone curse, or as a bonus call me a faggot yet, but it's coming. So my new policy is to simply ignore customers and not to offer them any help. The exception would be if they ask me a question.

 

[borg69unimatrix]

My gripe about Wal-Mart is (here) they have a lot of stuff locked up on the racks (movies, USB drives, cologne...) and you have to track down someone with a key.

One time I bought some BOD cologne, which is pretty cheap cologne, and I had to track down an employee with a key. After she got it out for me, she insisted on walking me to the cash register to make sure I paid for it. I found that extremely insulting.

 

[jdcnow]

I remember when K-Mart was basically what Wal-Mart is today - minus the food (although they did have a deli/restaurant in the back). They carried lower end stuff that low income people could afford, and they flourished for it... there's no shortage of low income people. They even offered Lay-Away.

But then they started trying to compete with Target and other 'new' and upcoming stores, raised their prices, and brought in all the 'designer' crap with Martha Stewart or Jaclyn Smith's name all over it trying to piss with the big dogs instead of staying what they were good at. I feel like Wal-Mart is doing the same thing now.

You're 200% right - Walmart IS doing the exact same thing Kmart did with its store. Only problem is, Walmart is now the 20-ton gorilla in the middle of the living room. Back in the late 90s/early 2000s, Walmart went on a construction boom, converting most of it department store-class stores into supercenter-class, with the added supermarket side in each. Such a massive super-class big box store would and can only run properly with massive staffing to cover all bases for customers. Trouble with Walmart is that they do their dead-level best to run massive supercenter-class stores on a skeleton crew, and then wonder why service goes downhill, quality goes downhill, and customers get absolutely fed up and go else where. As someone who works in this business, I honestly can't say I blame customers for how they feel. Much of the criticism from customers is actually quite justified.

The truth is, especially with Walmart - one of their dirty little secrets is that all employees get what's called "MyShare" - basically a bonus, paid quarterly, if that particular store location does well in 4 criteria - sales, customer experience, merchandise in-stock/item turnover ratio (how quickly or slowly is each individual item selling out, storewide), and profit margin. One thing that directly affect profit margins is labor/manpower hours costs. Now, not only do the lower ranks get bonuses, but for store management, their MyShare bonuses come at the end of the year, and some of them, depending on the store location, can actually be quite a windfall. So hiring more people and staffing the salesfloor with more employees to help customers and work in individual departments actually takes away from profit margins, which in turn, takes away from the managers' bonuses. <-- That right there is directly responsible for most of Walmart's problems.

Every warm body on the sales floor or at a cash register running a checkout line literally directly translates to that much money that will not be in the management bonuses at the end of the year!!! I've said for years that the staff of an average Walmart store is literally a microcosm of the US economy as a whole - you have managers, salaried assistants, and store co-managers (assistant store directors - the store manager's seconds-in-command) making at least $40K/year to upwards of over $100-150k a year, plus bonus money. And you have the lower ranks who barely make enough to get by on, or to feed their kids. It's an absolute disgrace.

 

[gsdx]

Why not go there when you don't need anything and just walk around and familiarize yourself with the place? Just case the joint ahead of time.

It's not that I couldn't find the departments. I found those, and I found the places where the stuff I wanted should have been. They simply didn't have it. I'm not talking exotic stuff. I'm talking about things like tea, iced tea mixes, and flannelette bed sheets. One thing, a walking stick, was iffy. They had canes, but no walking sticks. But really, tea? Bed sheets? I considered myself lucky getting the pillow and underwear I needed, although I didn't get the T-shirts. The shelves were so mixed up that I couldn't be bothered rifling through them all to find the colours and sizes and styles I wanted. They might as well have had them all dumped in a huge bin.

 

[Willie Boy]

K-mart here is pure ghetto.

Target fills their shelves with psuedo-stylish crap that is overpriced and underwanted.

Sears is facing their apocalypse soon but serves customers as poorly as ever, and doesn't care. Their service department is misnamed.

What, their SERVICE hasn't DEPART[strike]MENT[/strike]ed? You are lucky.

Wal-Mart here is like a government office. Everyone is on break or hiding while complaining they are overworked. Few cashiers are fully literate in English. Their aisles are dotted with intentionally re-located items by vandals. I entered a store Sunday afternoon with a friend and his nephew. I told them we could play a game to see how many mis-located items we could spot. I counted over 23 items between the front door and the department we reached. It's likely an organized attempt by adults or could be young pre-teens. Hard to tell, but one gets tired of finding socks in the produce, motor oil in babywear, etc. It's not random, but intentional.

And you're knocking the FREE entertainment? You have to pay for those games elsewhere, you know.

The only other economic options are Walgreens or the dollar stores. Walgreens is more middle class pricing, but ubiquitous, and with narrow selections. Dollar stores have almost no selection but are good for cleaning supplies and little else.

Retail has gone to Hell.

I just don't understand why people still don't do more of their shopping online and have it delivered. Saves time, AND you don't have to deal with the stores, their policies, or even fellow shoppers.

 

[Callum]

Went back-to-school shopping with a friend's kid and discovered Target sells the Cherokee brand...it's the same shit as Zellers, they just knocked the prices on each clothing item up by 5$. It's not worth anyone's time.

I mostly buy everything online these days, and if I don't like it in-person I just mail it back.