Welcome to Walmart
Oh, Walmart, how you never fail to impress me in the lowest of ways.
I commonly have the lowest of expectations when entering the store, and on many visits those incredibly low expectations are met or exceeded by either the workers, the conditions in the store, or my fellow shoppers.
The Walmart experience begins with the parking lot, a place where danger and stupidity lurks in every corner. Whether its the crazed soccer mom too busy talking on her phone while zipping into a parking spot; the handicap fakers, those who claim to need the specially reserved parking spots yet they have no problem walking quickly in to, out of, or though the massive superstore; or, my favorite, those arrogant jackasses who will park their car right in front of the door and spend ten minutes waiting for their passenger to take care of whatever they need.
It’s even more arrogant when there are open parking spaces like twenty feet away. Those jerks will still sit there on the curb with their engine running and waiting for their companion to return. The response from those cretin is always the same: “It’s okay because so-and-so just ran into the store to grab or return something. They’ll be back in just a minute.” Of course it’s never a fast process. This is Walmart. Speed is not a concern to many of the workers.
Normally those signs at Walmart alert us to price DROPS.
Walking into a Walmart used to be accompanied by a friendly greeter. In the old days the greeter would actually provide you with a shopping cart and make you feel somewhat welcome in the store. These days, if there’s a greeter at all, that person is normally some overweight cow sitting off to the side on a powered wheelchair and glaring at people as they enter and leave the store. That is, if they’re not to busy having a snack, chatting with other workers, or doing useless crap on their phone.
Unfortunately, many of us are Walmart shoppers because we cannot afford to shop at real stores. Remember that not everything is a deal simply because it’s at Walmart, but if you do your research and know how to shop, then you can definitely save money at Walmart. Hit other stores when they’re having sales and you’ll be a super shopper.
Sales and clearance items at Walmart are always a crap shoot. First of all, you never know how an item is really going to ring up at the cash register. A sign may claim that an item or set of items is on sale, but you need to pay close attention to see if it really rings up that way during the checkout process. Catching incorrect prices at the checkout register is somewhat of a regular occurrence.
For example, one of our local Walmarts had a bunch of shoes on sale in the front of the store. Pretty much all of these were display models and overstocked items. The store wanted to get rid of them so ALL of the pairs of shoes were $5 each. Signs posted all around the shoes stated that they would ring up as $5 each at the cash registers. My girlfriend and I picked up a total of four pairs of shoes. Some were for us while others were for family members. OUT OF THOSE FOUR PAIRS OF SHOES, NOT A SINGLE ONE WAS PRICED CORRECTLY AT THE REGISTER. The worker had to do a manual price adjustment for each pair of shoes. What made the experience even more special was the worker’s attitude. We were at one of the self-service checkout stations and the worker kept walking away after adjusting each pair of shoes. She saw the other pairs still waiting to be scanned at the machine, and we told her that they were all from the clearance section (it was fifteen feet away from us, BTW) and likely priced incorrectly, but she kept walking away and we had to keep waving to get her attention so that she could correct the price. Welcome to Walmart.
We returned a few days later and they still had clearance shoes, so we picked up another pair for one of my girlfriend’s family members. This pair must ring up correctly at the register. It’s been a few days since they were placed on sale. Management must be aware of the problem by now, right? Apparently not. This pair of shoes was NOT priced correctly in Walmart’s system. Once again we told the cashier and that person had to manually change the price of the product. One can only wonder how many people ended up overpaying for what should have been ridiculously inexpensive shoes. The store has an obligation of being honest with its customers, but when the customers fail in paying attention during the checkout process, then they share the blame for paying an incorrect price.
Our Walmart likes to place a “clearance” cart near the back of the food section. It’s obvious that many of the items on the cart are old and most likely discontinued. The odd part is that, and we’ve seen this several times, the workers never bother to place price tags on the items. There’s only a sign that labels them as clearance. That’s it. It’s up to you to take an item and find one of the price check machines to see if it really is on sale. Remember that this is Walmart, a store where the poor attitudes of the customers can disrupt the store. People commonly pick up items, later change their minds, and then set it wherever they please. This includes placing regular items in clearance sections.
A classic example of this occurs back in electronics with the cheap DVD bins. It’s common to find $15-$20 movies that have been incorrectly placed in the cheap DVD bin. Is this really the fault of incredibly lazy customers, or do workers intentionally toss some modern films into those bins? It is an attention-getter when you see something that appears too good to be true. But when you pick up said recent film and take it to a price scanner, you’ll find that it’s definitely not on sale. How many people will grab the expensive movie out of the cheap bin and assume that it’s cheap, not bothering to verify it first?
Again, it’s ultimately up to the customer to verify everything before completing the checkout process, but you do expect the store to be honest with its merchandise and the pricing of its items.
It scares me when purchasing cold food items at Walmart. Many times I’ve seen workers get distracted when stocking cold items, leaving a cart full of the stuff sitting in warm parts of the store. I’ve also seen workers casually returning cold items back to their correct places after finding them in other parts of the store. One can only wonder if the item that you want has been sitting in a non-refrigerated area for long periods of time. Because of this very real problem we’ve encountered bad pieces of meat on several occasions. That’s a gamble you take when shopping for groceries at a store like Walmart.
Walmart is the only store I’ve encountered where finding open containers of food and other items is a frequent problem. I stopped counting the number of times we tried to purchase a small bookshelf or other piece of furniture only to discover that of the three boxes on the shelf, two boxes were beaten and badly damaged while a third had been opened and taped closed by a worker. Sure, you can purchase them and then return the item if anything is damaged of missing, but that’s one hell of an inconvenience and waste of time. Why can’t the store keep better care of its merchandise? Is this because the customers have a commonly poor attitude that it spreads to the workers and store managers? When was the last time you encountered a smiling, polite and helpful worker at Walmart? I don’t know about you, but that’s a rare sight these days. When the workers have bad attitudes which further degrades the customers, and the store continues on that long downward spiral.
It’s the customers though who can do the greatest amount of damage to the store’s reputation.
How many times have you seen parents let their minion children run wild throughout the store? How often do you pass by the toy section in Walmart and, A) The little monsters are playing with unpackaged toys right there in the store, or B) The shelves look ransacked with many items of merchandise scattered on the floor? Sadly, many of these all-star parents are the same people who let their kids scream and run wild at restaurants, whether it’s fast food like McDonalds or a buffet such as SteviB’s or Golden Corral. The world is their playground and their parents will raise hell if you tell them that they suck at parenting and their kids are wrecking havoc and disturbing other people.
Something I learned a while back was to avoid Walmarts in touristy areas, especially in central Florida. IF you need something from that store, the best time to go is during a weekday morning, preferably Monday through Wednesday and no later than 11 am. Visiting in the afternoon puts you with the locals, and in the evenings you’ll be stuck with buses of tourists, many of which do not speak or understand English. Avoid the late night hours at those locations at all costs, especially during the summer months.
How bad was it late at night inside of a Walmart in central Florida? This one particular 24/7 Walmart supercenter was a common location for buses to drop off a bunch of tourists for snacks, supplies and souvenirs. In the summer this means buses of teenage Brazilians (it’s common for literally thousands of Brazilians to visit the Florida theme parks during our summer months). It also means the local Hispanic population doing their normal shopping. The store would frequently be dirty, items would be missing from shelves or placed in inappropriate areas, and during this time the workers (the few that were there) would leave pallets of food items blocking the walkways while they slowly restocked the shelves. On top of that there would only be a couple of open cash registers in the front of the store, and the lines for checking out would literally stretch throughout the store. The wait time to check out in those monstrous lines at Walmart rivaled waiting for Space Mountain or Revenge of the Mummy, but with a severe lack of fun or entertainment. If you were lucky and only had an item or two, you could pay for it back in the electronic section.
We did this once and other people saw what we were doing. In no time a line formed behind us with people trying to check out with fully loaded shopping carts. Remember that this was back in electronics, a place designed to accommodate those people with only a couple of items. It’s not designed for those people will full shopping carts who didn’t want to stand for over 30 minutes in the main checkout lines at the front of the store.
That’s what shopping at Walmart was like late at night in central Florida. You can imagine the frustration after spending all day with the heat and crowds in the theme parks only to have to put up with a horrifying process late at night. All you want is to grab a few items and get back to the hotel, but doing so is going to cost you almost an hour of your time and much of your sanity.
Could Walmart correct its numerous internal problems and actually convert itself into a respectable and quality store?
Yes, without a doubt it can. The corrections need to start at the highest of levels within the chain of command and then work its way down to the regional managers, the store managers, the shift leaders, and then all of the hourly workers. It can be done.
But it’s up to the company to make that happen. You know that people aren’t going to protest and suddenly stop shopping there. It’s part of the mentality for the regular customers. Shopping at Walmart is simply a part of everyday life. Until those regulars get serious about demanding an improvement inside of Walmart, then the store is less likely to actually improve the experience.
Once again, welcome to Walmart.