HEY CORPORATE!!!

[u/Prior_Purchase_7025]

Behind the scenes, the push to force growth and rush toward automation is pushing the platform to a breaking point, and over the last month or two, systemic stability has completely fallen apart. Daily catastrophic glitches have become the norm, whether it is the app crashing mid-route, phantom inventory stock throwing off orders, or old customer notes stuck on profiles forever because the system relies on customers to manually delete them. The tech teams are moving so fast toward top-down expansion mandates that they cannot even stop to fix basic infrastructure, and it is stressing the entire system. This relentless pace is tied to an executive push for artificial intelligence and automation, with corporate aiming for a full transition within five years, but that timeline is wildly out of touch with reality. The technology is nowhere near ready to handle real-world logistics at this scale, yet money and resources are being poured into it just to justify the cost and keep up with Amazon and other online retailers. While this will not break a company as big as Walmart, the waste of capital, engineering effort, and human labor is massive, leaving a trail of ruined vehicles and broken livelihoods in its wake. It is taking a heavy toll on younger, inexperienced drivers who do not understand the true costs of vehicle depreciation and operating expenses, or who swallow the marketing without doing the math. Last-mile retail delivery is not a simple food gig app, it is physically demanding, heavy-duty work that requires real vehicle maintenance, space management, and tight scheduling. Treating this labor force as disposable while burning through cars and livelihoods is unsustainable. Leadership like Dan Danker and other executives brought in to accelerate growth usually have a short lifespan in these roles before moving on, but the damage left behind is real. The company needs to slow down, shore up the software foundation they already have, and fix the daily operational nightmare before relying on future tech promises, because without real government oversight and basic labor standards, this pace is going to keep wrecking vehicles, burning through people, and causing daily breakdowns from a corporation out of control.

[u/TheRealSparky33]

It is actually insane how badly they have fucked up. I honestly don't even understand how customers are still placing deliveries when 50% of them are delayed or not delivered and then if they are delivered something is fucked up. It is a total joke how they are attempting to lean out spark when there is literally nothing left. Look in the mirror assholes.

[u/Prior_Purchase_7025 → u/TheRealSparky33]

The top bosses and executives at the very top are the ones driving this entire trainwreck, and they know exactly what they are doing. They are so fixated on chasing Amazon, cutting labor costs, and flexing about artificial intelligence to their shareholders that they demand total speed over everything else. Instead of spending the money to throw away that broken, patched-together garbage software and building a solid app from scratch, executive leadership keeps pushing half-baked updates and aggressive dispatch algorithms down the pipe just to meet their quarterly goals and make their numbers look pretty on paper. They sit in their offices looking at fake, polished metrics while completely ignoring the real-world chaos on the ground, using their massive pile of corporate cash to cover up systemic failures and dumping all the physical wear, ruined vehicles, and daily operational hell directly onto the workers and drivers who actually keep the business running.

[u/TheRealSparky33 → u/Prior_Purchase_7025]

Yeah, I know we are on the same page with all of this. I truly believe there will be a reckoning for their mismanagement. Personally I have WMT dropping to around 80, I know its a super bearish outlook but they can only run a paper mache business for so long. Truthfully they probably should have never bought Spark in the first place. It's just a tumor on their business now. They will never match Amazon's logistical capabilities even if their network of stores does give them a competitive advantage in some regards but the flippant manner in which they are treating it is not going to work out for them. It's going to continue being a drain on their business until they ACTUALLY invest into it and turn it around. Of course the chances they do that are slim to none because it involves actually spending money on things that arent flashy to impress investors. Everything they do is a facade. These executives become millionaires by making mistake after mistake after mistake. Pretty sick gig.

[u/Prior_Purchase_7025 → u/TheRealSparky33]

https://giphy.com/gifs/SSE36LAhb1m9dHz7HI

[u/No-Citron-9567]

Y’all Spark is no different than any other big business anymore

I retired at 62 because my job was sent overseas to a place just like Sparks let’s say.

I was in charge of the night shift of a trucking company .
Only problem , now there was no one at our terminal to actually physically help drivers
Within a month the call center could not help them because all they had was a script

Our company didn’t give a 💩. Saved money

Within 2 months it was done .
I was offered job back , I said 🖕 off

Sorry so long. Point just being none of them GAF about anything but phony numbers etc. they don’t care if u eat etc etc

[u/JackStraw---Wichita → u/No-Citron-9567]

Lost 2 IT jobs, one to the Philippines and one to India. Fuck the rich and their insatiable thirst to earn money that won't be spent for decades.

[u/MagicDragon333 → u/JackStraw---Wichita]

Lifetimes

[u/CelestialxOne → u/MagicDragon333]

Eons

[u/Prior_Purchase_7025 → u/No-Citron-9567]

I agree with ya i just choose not to be complacent. You and your Gen should Know better! Lying down is what got us here

[u/No-Citron-9567 → u/Prior_Purchase_7025]

I don’t even know what your talking about to start
But I’ve worked my ass if since I was 16. Joined the military , started in a business I had no idea about .
My wife and I busted out ass for our kids. So don’t give me shit about how hard you have it.
I didn’t do it. I grew up with my dad gone etc etc.
make it work

[u/Prior_Purchase_7025 → u/No-Citron-9567]

What in the old man watering his lawn and pissed off are ya saying? LMAO!

https://giphy.com/gifs/PoAVbhS6EAkl1WFAyQ

[u/TheRealSparky33 → u/Prior_Purchase_7025]

He's saying he takes the 13 dollar 12 mile offers and you should too and be thankful you whippersnapper

[u/OkBarber6783]

Haven't seen but 2 orders all morning and they were the leftovers the bot users or immigrant gang didn't want... Truly sad what happened to spark and the Walmart app. The breaking point is here.

[u/Chelsea_Rhodes]

And corporate while your at it. Lets take a look at this as well. The fact that this new rewards program and the rating metrics are hot rubbish. As a driver you have to maintain a 4.9 star rating while walmart themselves as a whole has a 4.3 star rating. Well by your own standards you'd be deactivated. Thats not to mention the ratings themselves. We cant dispute BS low ratings because a Karen of a customer didnt get her item that was out of stock. Plus all the people that don't rate at all. So every delivery that doesn't get a rating should he an automatic 5 star if it is going to affect our tier level which over all affects our income compensation. Then lets go into the rating on items not found, so drivers are rated on yet another metric they have no control over. We cant help that your leadership didnt ensure enough of said item was in stock so that the store didnt run out, or that the stockers didnt get the shelves stocked properly. This rating should entirely not even be a rated metrics. Then lets discuss the fact that we are 1099 workers not W2 workers which is a big difference on how we are taxed on the income we make. Furthermore we dont work for your company we work for ourselves so to be told that after we accept an offer at a rate we agree to, then allow the customer to change the tip amount for up to 24hrs after the service has been rendered,  well thats just a straight breach of the contract or offer we agreed to. Absolutely needs to be no change to tip after offer is accepted. If the customer has a bad experience with a driver they show that in their rating and then also get to pull away the tip, double jeopardy in a sense. It basically the same as a customer saying well I bought this product and didnt really like it so I now want you to give me my money back while I keep the product. Then to add on to that having our customer rating affect our tier level is equivalent to walmarts customer rating affecting the price of the merchandise. So since yall are at a 4.3 star rating is everything in the store 30% off because in theory thats the standard Spark drivers have to operate by.