Archived Walmart workers getting paid before payday

[can't touch this]

Sorry but target has all of that too. Yeah the stores are cleaner but they are also smaller. Walmart has better everything else. I can buy fish and rims in the same store.

You can't at Target

^^^^

yo does anyone know what's up with Target having billions of dollars and billions of square feet of retail space but less product selection than the tiny local chain I used to work for that has 29 stores? I'm getting real tired of having to tell guests "no sorry we don't carry this super common item that literally everyone else has palletloads of" to odd looks and irritated sighs. I'm not joking either, if you shop at this local company you can find 150 varieties of cheese, 60+ different brands of marinade and BBQ sauce, about 175 different brands/varieties of salad dressing and hot sauces, and a fuck ton of other shit that Target doesn't have all packed into about 50% of the floor space. Oh yeah and they sell Kingsford charcoal all year round instead of as a seasonal summer item (WTF)

hey corporate: less ugly Millennial furniture, more shit that people actually want to buy.

 

[can't touch this]

let me guess, packed-out shelves aren't "BRAND"

 

[Anelmi]

Because not all stores are full-on groceries?

And I'm not going to buy fish from the same store I can buy rims. It doesn't speak about the quality of either item IMO.

 

[FlowTeamChick]

Interesting thread. I refuse to shop at Wally World not because I'm such a loyal little Target TM, but because I think their business model stinks. Saw both a "Frontline" and a "20/20" show that discussed how they make outrageous demands of their suppliers, only so they can offer loss leaders to their customers.
On the other hand, when they raised their starting wages, I got a larger-than-usual raise too, two years in a row.

 

[IWishIKnew]

Walmart has generally played their part in the overall stagnation of wages in the US and the destruction of small businesses, before other big box stores & Amazon got seriously into the game. I don't believe for a second they would have done anything to raise wages without the specter of a $15 federal minimum wage. Even the publicity around their blatant expectation that taxpayers will subsidize their shitty wages for their employees to survive didn't manage that. Other retailers rode their coattails, to be sure, but Walmart embodies the "I got mine, now fuck you" mentality to do anything and everything in their power to avoid paying anyone except their C-suite execs, family members & shareholders a significant portion of their profits.

Target, for all its faults, was paying above minimum wage when I worked for them almost 20 years ago and is active in the community and encourages their employees (including time off for volunteering, etc.) to be involved, as well. Employees are disposable commodities in all corporations in the US these days in the ongoing race to bottom out anyone not in the 1%, but I feel like Target makes some sort of effort to make things more comfortable for employees & customers vs. saving money, no matter how much it costs you in the end.

 

[Backroom81]

I've actually encountered worse. Back in the days of 3 truck nights and 70 exterior storage containers, nearly 100 pallets of backstock...

At least that's understandable. That high of a volume and there's only so much space to utilize. There's zero reason for my store to be the way it is. We have the space but the process is so shitty that nothing is getting finished. This was the first time I've ever seen NCF toys and seasonal not purged and pushed out prior to Christmas.

 

[HRZone]

but I feel like Target makes some sort of effort to make things more comfortable for employees & customers vs. saving money

Yup the well being and personal holiday hours. The matching 401k.

The fact stores catered food rather than forcing employees to have their own potluck like at other retailers

 

[masterofalltrades]

Yup the well being and personal holiday hours. The matching 401k.

The fact stores catered food rather than forcing employees to have their own potluck like at other retailers

At least that's understandable. That high of a volume and there's only so much space to utilize. There's zero reason for my store to be the way it is. We have the space but the process is so shitty that nothing is getting finished. This was the first time I've ever seen NCF toys and seasonal not purged and pushed out prior to Christmas.

My store is a shitshow as well. More than 4000 for seasonal liability. Pallets of salvage in the steel. Literally ten pallets of dcode toys going clearence .Shippers from summer never set. Missing signing everywhere in our bike valley. Our stl got their bonus to say the least. They're already trying to cut payroll for January. I've really gotten to hate my store. It wouldn't be so bad if my etls would remove their thumbs from their asses.

 

[IWishIKnew]

This is something that baffles me a bit about retail, it seems like with the general turnover and really obvious metrics (sales figures, stuff on the floor or in the backroom, stuff that any member of higher leadership can see when coming into the store, and so on)--how do bad store leadership teams stick around? In the Office Space world it's generally much easier for shitty managers to hide their shittiness but at some point if a store isn't selling because stuff isn't going onto the floor and DTLs, etc. can walk around and see all the fails, it seems like it should generally be easier for them to say "fix this shit or you're fired" and have it much easier to document than a lot of office drone malfeasance.

 

[Backroom81]

This is something that baffles me a bit about retail, it seems like with the general turnover and really obvious metrics (sales figures, stuff on the floor or in the backroom, stuff that any member of higher leadership can see when coming into the store, and so on)--how do bad store leadership teams stick around? In the Office Space world it's generally much easier for shitty managers to hide their shittiness but at some point if a store isn't selling because stuff isn't going onto the floor and DTLs, etc. can walk around and see all the fails, it seems like it should generally be easier for them to say "fix this shit or you're fired" and have it much easier to document than a lot of office drone malfeasance.

Hiding the truck in the trailer and "accidentally" forgetting to change the pin lock is one method.

 

[IWishIKnew]

But how long can that last before someone notices? It can't stay that way forever, right?

Also, I confess I don't know what "hide the truck in the trailer" means in this context--I'm in hardlines and not familiar with backroom/flow beyond being able to "take" stuff out of inventory for a guest.

 

[masterofalltrades]

But how long can that last before someone notices? It can't stay that way forever, right?

Also, I confess I don't know what "hide the truck in the trailer" means in this context--I'm in hardlines and not familiar with backroom/flow beyond being able to "take" stuff out of inventory for a guest.

Some stores get a storage trailer for extra space. Hiding it in the trailer would just be unloading the truck and stuffing it into the storage trailer, instead of pushing it to the floor.

 

[IWishIKnew]

Ah, ok, I see. But someone would check there at some point, right? Are there any processes that reconcile what was sent with what was put into backstock/on the floor? Nobody higher up in the food chain would ever notice that a store kept getting stuff it never sold, not even some finance person at corporate? Don't mess with the finance people, man.

 

[Backroom81]

Ah, ok, I see. But someone would check there at some point, right? Are there any processes that reconcile what was sent with what was put into backstock/on the floor? Nobody higher up in the food chain would ever notice that a store kept getting stuff it never sold, not even some finance person at corporate? Don't mess with the finance people, man.

Our DTL thinks we're the model store of a working E2E process. He just walks into the backroom, sees an empty line, and walks right back out. Our store also flexes ALL outs so we look full no matter what.

 

[IWishIKnew]

I think I need to come up with a macro for that double facepalm image.

ETA: But if the E2E thing is something that corporate has hung their hats on then it makes sense--if directed, store/district leadership will do everything they can for as long as they can to pretend it's working. At least until the next quarterly earnings statement or something so corporate can publish it among their "successes." With any luck, directives will change and they'll be able to drum up some new initiative to "improve" the E2E system that basically puts things back where they belong while allowing corporate to save face and not tank stock prices.

 

[can't touch this]

tbh I think there's less of a distinction between Target Corp and Walmart than some folks think. I mean yeah, I do vastly prefer Target over Walmart as far as working there as a regular peon, but all megacorps these days are cut from the same cloth when it comes to treating their workforces like a cost to be minimized. And why shouldn't they, considering that the top-level execs are all clones created in the same lab at Harvard Business School that hop from company to company like some weird kind of overcompensated nomad. Look at Cornell's resume, he was previously VP of Safeway, and then CEO of Sam's Club, and then served on the board of PepsiCo, etc.

As I recall Target got caught purging long term employees who cost them the most money and got sued over it. Typical corporate hijinks were afoot. Moral of that story is don't grow old, don't accept raises and definitely don't reach a comfortable income if you want to keep your job over the long-term.

Target can crow about $15/hr by 2020 all they want, as if inflation and hour cuts won't make up for the nominally higher wage (and you can bet they crunched the numbers to be sure it would look good on paper but do nothing in real terms). 15 bucks means a lot less if by 2020 it's worth around what $11 is now, and they can always reduce hours across the board in case it isn't. Yay I'm getting paid fifty bucks an hour now and I only have to work 1 hour a week!

 

[TTGOz]

^^^^

yo does anyone know what's up with Target having billions of dollars and billions of square feet of retail space but less product selection than the tiny local chain I used to work for that has 29 stores? I'm getting real tired of having to tell guests "no sorry we don't carry this super common item that literally everyone else has palletloads of" to odd looks and irritated sighs. I'm not joking either, if you shop at this local company you can find 150 varieties of cheese, 60+ different brands of marinade and BBQ sauce, about 175 different brands/varieties of salad dressing and hot sauces, and a fuck ton of other shit that Target doesn't have all packed into about 50% of the floor space. Oh yeah and they sell Kingsford charcoal all year round instead of as a seasonal summer item (WTF)

hey corporate: less ugly Millennial furniture, more shit that people actually want to buy.

my store's favorite one; Calendars.

we don't have calendars

 

[HRZone]

Ah, ok, I see. But someone would check there at some point, right? Are there any processes that reconcile what was sent with what was put into backstock/on the floor? Nobody higher up in the food chain would ever notice that a store kept getting stuff it never sold, not even some finance person at corporate? Don't mess with the finance people, man.

I know in my district the northernmost store is 60 miles from the southern most store so we see my dtl one or two times a month.

We get maybe one or two visits a week total and leaders at the other stores are really good at texting us when a visitor has left a nearby store.

I liken it to making a big mess and cleaning it up an hour before mom gets home.

The other problem is on these visits the visitors usually don't actually talk to the team members about the problems. Some leaders dont talk to team members other than a brief hello. The few team members when asked how things are going get stage fright and say everything is great!

I know my leaders try to hide disgruntled team members from our visitors.

 

[Yetive]

I know my leaders try to hide disgruntled team members from our visitors.

In the storage trailer with the reshop?

 

[Backroom81]

The other problem is on these visits the visitors usually don't actually talk to the team members about the problems. Some leaders dont talk to team members other than a brief hello. The few team members when asked how things are going get stage fright and say everything is great!

I literally don't remember the last time we had a DTL that bothered to speak to anybody below ETL level. The only one I vividly remember was the one we had back in 2004 who walked every aisle, talked to every TL and most TMs, and would constantly ask us what we're doing to improve our areas. When I was backroom TL, he would take my PDA and start checking random locations while asking me about the backroom's error rate.

Now all we see is him walking in, looking at the line, and walking right back out.

 

[Kartman]

I want that job!!!

 

[Flow Warrior]

I agree with you on this. Target is dumb putting people in the backroom who have no business back there.

The problem with letting softlines team members in the backroom (exception to people like @Doglover89 and @Jenna120) is they have no pride in the backroom because they spend the majority on the floor.

Backroom team members took pride in doing sweeps, setting the line, and clearing backstock because it gave them more room to breathe the backroom was THEIR area.

Too many cooks in the kitchen Target.

And yeah most stores who tried end to end full on with essentials rolled it back. You need a flow team to some extent.

Actually, the problem was the pushed E2e before palletized frieght. For example, we all have seen what a food truck looks like. That should have happened on the frieght truck before all the E2E started and it would have worked with essentials.
Now Spot will red wedding those who failed because they failed (and maybe they wont, I am still assuming and hoping for the best but expecting the worst) and then give us palletized freight.

So for us, I fully expect that this time next year, there will be 4 flow tms working a truck in 30 minutes, I will be bitching about the DC a whole bunch more and different problem will exist.

 

[Flow Warrior]

No, no it isn't.

Walmart is the third world of retail. The stores are messy and disorganized, the staff is severely underpaid, management doesn't give a fuck, the CEO is a rat bastard. Oh, and the clothing is absolute crap that will fall apart after two washings.

So thanks troll, but no thanks.

South America third world or central Africa third world?

 

[Flow Warrior]

Sorry but target has all of that too. Yeah the stores are cleaner but they are also smaller. Walmart has better everything else. I can buy fish and rims in the same store.

You can't at Target

For good reason.
TLE hired people who had to have reasonable skillin putting up tires. They made more but they cost the store more in other areas. And the tires came in on the frieght truck. (of which I had to off load a few until I found a creative solution to get them to quit bothering me when their 'team' ncns)
Fish unless well taken care off would always be sickly. I know this because the pet department was next to Lawn and Garden in the store I worked at. So to prevent this I would dump the dead ones into the puffer tank because puffers eat dead fish.

 

[Flow Warrior]

^^^^

yo does anyone know what's up with Target having billions of dollars and billions of square feet of retail space but less product selection than the tiny local chain I used to work for that has 29 stores? I'm getting real tired of having to tell guests "no sorry we don't carry this super common item that literally everyone else has palletloads of" to odd looks and irritated sighs. I'm not joking either, if you shop at this local company you can find 150 varieties of cheese, 60+ different brands of marinade and BBQ sauce, about 175 different brands/varieties of salad dressing and hot sauces, and a fuck ton of other shit that Target doesn't have all packed into about 50% of the floor space. Oh yeah and they sell Kingsford charcoal all year round instead of as a seasonal summer item (WTF)

hey corporate: less ugly Millennial furniture, more shit that people actually want to buy.

I will vouch for the Kingsford year around. I will also explain why. Bentonville arkansas as opposed to Minneapolis. What good is Kingsford when it feels like -35 outside? I had this 'this local company you can find 150 varieties of cheese, 60+ different brands of marinade and BBQ sauce, about 175 different brands/varieties of salad dressing and hot sauces, and a fuck ton of other shit that Target doesn't have' too before I moved to Houston. It's called Reasors in Tulsa. Great benefits as well. 35 stores. Beautiful lay out. They started at $10 in 2010. Now they are at $15. They can afford it because they are small.

As much as I hate to admit it, we can't. Economy of scale. We can't have just one store stock those items, its too expensive for all the leg work. Why? Because I would like some things too. And I can't. So I send them to H-E-B or Kroger, or Ace or Academy