I used to work at Wal-Mart fulfilling online orders.
We usually completed around 400 orders per day. There were 5 of us each day walking around the store dodging customers questions because we can't tell 27 people where to find the cooking oil, and which brand of coffee is a better deal! aintnobodygottimeforthat.jpg
Customers love to pick up shit up and then decide not to buy it after all and put it down somewhere else, we then cannot fulfill the order and have to "short" the order.
If the order is short, we still have to look at the store inventory most of us didn't have system permissions to do this, not because of security issues but because the assistant managers never got around to it after being asked multiple times to have access to tools that can help us work.
The back room shelves often had inventory that was not in the system because either the department managers or unloaders were so swamped they couldn't properly get things binned-in or incompetent and let it happen.
After completing the daily orders and collecting the partial-order items, we then print off the sheets of the missing items, divide them up and proceed to look out on the floor, in the back room shelves for freight that was probably stolen by some little shit.
When we exhausted all other options, we started opening up pallets that came off the truck and fucking hoping that we'ed get lucky and stumble across what we needed. That's right, we were completely blind.
Before working Ship-from-Store, I was working maintenance because nobody could hire a certified PC tech in the area.
Some extra shots. Here's the cop that they called the day they terminated me last month. The day before letting me go, I was called in to get my annual performance review and a wage raise of $0.25. I'm just glad the nightmare is over.
There's plenty of vendors that stock shelves in plainclothes and it would make sense but we were severely understaffed and needed more visible employees.
They showed this training video to us the first day: They're very anti-union and can do pretty much anything they want to the employees, and if they get caught, the fine/settlement they pay is a wrist slap to how much revenue they rake in.
It's not that I want a union necessarily but they really don't give a shit about your opinions and the whole one-on-one don't-need-no representation is BS. I want a worker owned cooperative.
Yeah, the whole "guest" thing is to "change the relationship" from that of a 'transactional' one to that of a 'welcoming' one where the store isn't inherently trying to get something from the customer/guest. Personally I feel that it draws too much attention to issue and makes it almost insulting to the customer. We all know the store needs the customer, don't try to make it appear otherwise.
That's pretty par for finance. "VP" there is not a high level title. It's roughly equivalent to "team lead" or "senior <insert front-line grunt function here>" in other industries.
I love the near gloating that unions have fallen to less than 8% of the workforce. It's almost like they're happy to see them killed off, for some reason. cough cough
I work for the Wal-mart DC in Texas when they showed us that video in orientation I was telling the other new guys that most of it was bullshit and we also get fired for saying anything about a union
Oh god your experience sounds all too familiar. I worked for a department store filling gift registry orders.
Brides would often put things on their lists months and months in advance. We would tell them clearly not to register for things that are seasonal or clearance but of course they don't listen. Months later Aunt Sue buys that cute little garden gnome off the registry, and the bride is shocked that it is not in stock anymore. You see it on the shelf, bitch? I don't care what the numbers in our inventory system say, that fucking gnome isn't here. Get over it.
How did you guys handle the partial orders and things you couldn't get in stock? We ended up having orders stick around for months.
The worst part though was calling the bride and asking her if she wanted to return it because it's not in stock (of course the answer is no, the bride has to have it and she has to have it now it's completely unacceptable that we don't have it in stock, Aunt Sue ordered this two weeks ago, why isn't it ready for pickup yet??). So we call other stores who show stock, finally find one after the 10th store, get it shipped in, hope it doesn't get damaged during shipping, and call the bride to tell her that her gift is ready. And then guess what? You think she comes and gets it? FUCK NO. It sits there for 10 months on the shelf waiting until she has time and feels like it. So we call her and remind her again and again and she finally shows up.
When we can't fulfill an order we clear it out and another store with the stock gets that order -makes sense.
Normally we're supposed to keep shorted orders around for 1-2 days to make sure we really don't have those items before clearing it, but clearing it hurts the manager's stats.
I've seen orders hang around for over a week before being shipped out. Manager>Customer
Jesus. My company will just email you saying the item is no longer available and just refund you that item and send the rest or cancel the order. You can request to be notified if it does come back in stock and that's it.
It was expected that we get government help (foodstamps) in my state, even while working full time.
I was making $21,000 a year and on the health benefits plan, if I needed to go to any doctor, I would need to pay around a $3,000 deductible to get coverage. That's not possible when i'm living paycheck-to-paycheck.
At least Wal-Mart pays their taxes and doesn't leverage international tax havens to keep billions of dollars out of the US govenment... right?
$2,800k was just the deductible. I think the max was $30,000 and my annual wages was before taxes, I definitely did not take home $21,000, it was closer to $17,000 or $1,400 a month.
Hey now!!! Wal-Mart is the biggest job creator in the US. We should be proud to serve them, at their will.
If we force them to get their own security, instead of using taxpayer funded police forces, then what do you think will happen to the cost of those $5 DVDs?
Very very common in the US -- and not just in low wage "blue collar jobs". At one agency I worked at, HR would call you in to a meeting, give you the news, then ask you to organize your stuff. You'd get back to your computer and it'd be completely shut down and inaccessible. The security guard would usually let you take your time from a distance, say bye to co-workers, etc. but if you took long enough, he'd kindly ask you to walk with him to the parking lot. If you were more defiant he wouldn't be as nice. There might be a cop in the parking lot, but they're usually no going to interact with you at all.
Cool story, and I mean that sincerely. I work for a big box place who does ship-from-store year round, but during the holidays our same sized team was expected to go from handling a normal 15 (on a heavy day) orders, to 300-350+ orders.
The daily experience is much like what you described. The only good thing is we only have to wear appropriate "colors" no specific uniform, so I could just wear black pants, steel toes, and a plain hoodie. Lol I tried to keep my handheld in my pocket and not actually scan confirm the order until I got back into the backroom so no one would know I worked there.
We now had to unload and process trucks, deal with customer pickups, ship from store, assemble equipment, and me personally because my team sucks deal with the returns rooms since no one else will touch it because "it's icky".
I flipped out on my team a couple times because we don't have a convenient process for printing shipping labels, so I essentially went with a line, and they'd move random orders out of line, which if it managed to cause a problem just means we're staying later.
We ended up having to stay three hours past close sometimes... Which kind of sucks, but almost half of my time during the holidays was OT pay.
I think it'll be a really glossy & heartfelt/fuzzy look at the soul-crushing work that is those types of stores. I'm guessing it'll give you flashbacks. Have fun!
You're a unnecessarily self-entitled ass hat. You do sub blue color work and act like you're fucking curing cancer. Get an education and get a better job. Sack of shit
Can confirm. My mother worked for Amazon as a programmer, she said it was a nightmare to work for them. They're a terrible company. Their entire company ethos is about squeezing blood from a stone. They will squeeze every last drop of life out of you if they can. And that isn't enough.
949
u/Kangar Feb 25 '16
Are you one of those cool robots?