Serious Question to anyone who works in retail

^ I love that site. A daily stop for me on the tubes.

yup!

And let them keep their low prices, it drives al lthe crazies to them and stores like Target have the normal folks.

Price for price on most things Wal MArt and Target are fairly close. Wal MArt just tends to have a larger selection in auto, outdoor stuff, camping, etc...

This is something my wife and I talk about all the time... prices may be higher other places, but I will gladly pay that premium not to be surrounded with the walmart crowd...

I think you're missing my point. They can still be the #1 leader in retail and can afford to pay their employees more than minimum wage. They dont have to be shady with their employee health care, or lack therof.

Target is just as busy and they at least give people 8.25 an hour. I think Target could overtake WM if they had the # of locations.

I've read Sam Walton's book before. He pulls no punches. He was all about coming in, driving the "mom and pop" places out of business, and beginning his monopoly. With that said, he also beleived in treating his workers better..
Well maybe they are not shady with wanting to provide health care.
Wal-Mart Backs Drive to Make Companies Pay for Health Coverage - WSJ.com (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124640564559176649.html)

If anybody here on the site has a job in retail, i've got a question for you about something that really bugs me.

Why are the stores set up for like 50 register lanes, but at any given time, no more than 3 or 4 are opened?

I notice it in Walmart the most, especially the one around here. Even during the day on Saturday, there is no more than 5 open at a time. All of the lines are completley full, and nobody comes up from the back to open a new one. I'm talking about a line of at least 10 to 20 people per register.

Martins in Stephens City is the same way, but at least they have the self-checkouts. Whats the point of building the store with 50 lanes when they know that they will never, ever, have a person at all of them.

Could the economy have something to do with it? Meaning they dont have the money to pay more workers?? I saw yesterday that the 7-11 down here now has only 1 person working at a time....

Labor percentages are low, especially in these times, and the need to replenish stock and do other floor work is very high. I've worked retail and there's ALWAYS something to do... if someone is taking downtime they're just avoiding doing something. The stores are built in order to accomodate max flow at busy times such as holidays and other seasonal times (back to school/college), etc.

It really depends how cheap the company as a whole is. They figure once you're in line you're going to buy something so they'd rather have the workers elsewhere doing what they deem is more productive. This is happening more and more. I worked for Bed Bath and Beyond for a few years and if checking out people in our line (if you worked as a cashier) would take longer than it took to get another worker up there, you called for backup. About a year and a half ago they changed the way that stores were graded on service and mystery shops and it was higher penalized to have less people on the floor than to have a line at the registers, so the backup calmed down a lot. Not to mention they were very cheap and typically only had 4-5 people there at a time in the evening so if you had 2 other people up there... you only had 1 other person in the store to do everything... in a 40k square foot store. Not to mention stores like that love to constantly move stuff around from spot to spot so you basically can have 1 or 2 people moving a large fixture's contents to another spot.. and what was in the new spot elsewhere, etc... so you've essentially wasted 20 mins to several hours to literally move things 15 feet by the time that you've done the project, done backup, helped customers, etc.

I don't mind lines... I HATE when workers aren't willing to help and don't know their products. I'll gladly spend more time in line if the store has knowledgeable and friendly people.. unfortunately you don't find that many places.

I've worked retail since I was 16 and have done management since I was 19, 26 now. It's a crazy business.

I think you're missing my point. They can still be the #1 leader in retail and can afford to pay their employees more than minimum wage. They dont have to be shady with their employee health care, or lack therof.

Target is just as busy and they at least give people 8.25 an hour. I think Target could overtake WM if they had the # of locations.

I've read Sam Walton's book before. He pulls no punches. He was all about coming in, driving the "mom and pop" places out of business, and beginning his monopoly. With that said, he also beleived in treating his workers better..
most retail operations keep their workers under the state's overtime hours in order to not have to offer benefits, etc.. this is far from being exclusive to walmart

another company that I worked for, I was a manager working 40-50 hours a week, sometimes more.. and I was still listed as part time, which is actually criminal.. when I left I printed out a copy of my timesheets, etc.. I had only gone under 40 hours in the first 3 weeks that I was there.. I told them to either give me backpay in sick days and vacation time or it was going to the labor board, I got it.. ironically enough I ended up back there after 5 months with a promotion, 45pct pay raise, full benefits options from day 1, etc

Well at least we are "civilized". There was a guy killed at black friday this year, he was 6 foot 5 and like 250, he was a walmart worker and he was trying to protect a pregnant lady from a violent crowd...they killed him for it...seriously look it up
He was actually trampled at the initial surge of workers rushing the doors at a Long Island location. Several other injuries occurred including that of a pregnant lady, but he wasn't killed because he was protecting somebody.

People are crazy.. they were pushing the doors in and broke them to get in.. workers had actually formed a barricade and that's how several of them got trampled. I never did hear if they were ordered to form the barricade but that seems like a likely scenario.

They watched this video in the marketing classes when i was a sophomore in college. I am watching excerpts from it now.

Totally blown away that 80% of the walmart workforce is considered below the poverty level going by their salary alone.

A guy just said that if they only raised the price of every item by .10 cents, they could afford to pay their store workers 10$ an hour...

Watching this now makes me wonder why/how the government has not been involved yet....

I used to subscribe to Business Week. One of the most memorable articles was about the retail sector, with a lot of focus on Walmart. That stat of 80% is pretty much in line w/ the sector, about 3/4 of all retail employees earn below the poverty line, and that was 3 yrs ago so it's sure to be higher today. Anyway the gist of the article was that more and more of the workforce is retail and, according to the best stats available at the time, about 1/3 of the total workforce earns at or below the poverty level.

What's crazy is how freakin poor you have to be to fall under the line. I think a family of 4 has to have less than $31k household income to be under the line. That's insane. My wife and I had a couple years of making only around $50k between us and it was paycheck to paycheck.

He was actually trampled at the initial surge of workers rushing the doors at a Long Island location. Several other injuries occurred including that of a pregnant lady, but he wasn't killed because he was protecting somebody.

People are crazy.. they were pushing the doors in and broke them to get in.. workers had actually formed a barricade and that's how several of them got trampled. I never did hear if they were ordered to form the barricade but that seems like a likely scenario.

I read other reports that the mob became angry when the man tried to shield the lady, but anyway, having workers to try and form a barricade without any protective equipment or training was crazy.

In 2005, i was still in the military and a few guys from my guard unit was brought in to help the local police provide crowd control/security for a large retail store near Crepastown MD, that was cleverly opening on black friday for the first time. They were very professional....water filled barricades, Police in protective clothing, etc. They were prepared for a crowd riot/unruly situation.

The point is that is different than trying to have a couple untrained workers trying to hold back a violent mob of 300+ people could only end in disaster. Stores need to be more prepared. The water barricades easily installed, could be taken down quickly, and the police made sure that if the mob got violent, they were easily dispersed...

Still though, nobody seems to mind that we as a society, have no problem killing one another on black friday in order to get that last "sale item"...

yup!

And let them keep their low prices, it drives al lthe crazies to them and stores like Target have the normal folks.

Price for price on most things Wal MArt and Target are fairly close. Wal MArt just tends to have a larger selection in auto, outdoor stuff, camping, etc...

Target and every grocery store does the same thing...having one or two lanes of the 20 registers open.

I do try to avoid WAL*MART entirely when possible, but it's more due to the low-class customers and employees (and Spanish) that seems to congregate there.

Target's customer service and customer base are much more tolerable to be around and I'd gladly pay a little more to avoid being in line behind a 300-pound woman simultaneously beating her kids and yelling on a cellphone in Spanish about her baby's daddies and paying with my tax money. Was that a bit harsh? :silly:

It seems the general consensus is that the store builds the registers with no intention to ever staff them.

There for sure isnt enough employees to fill 20 registers. So i think its stupid...save the money, put in the 4 or so registers that they actually use, and pass the savings down to the consumers.....