Serious Question to anyone who works in retail

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..

Woah no. Definitely not true. I worked at Target for 10 months up until last June, started on sales floor and finished on the planogram team, and they most definitely do not start people at 8.25 an hour. Sales floor started at 7.50 an hour (They do not give two shits what salary you ask, everybody starts at 7.50 unless you're hired as a team leader), presentation team started at 8/hr, and cashiers started at 7/hr.

As for why you only see 5 people operating lanes at any given time (usually not true on weekends, which is when more people hit the stores), well I found at Target it's because total hours given to workers are generated by sales determined at the same month of the last year (ex: hours right now are determined by sales in Jan. 09) as well as a mixture of other factors(All this determines cashier hours fyi), including how many credit applications you got people to apply for (if you didn't get people to apply for a Target based credit card your hours would be cut), what your cashier speed was, etc. All of the above determined how many hours a cashier would get a week, but the total pool of hours was determined by sales. And you could bet that on Black Friday every register would be open, mainly because more sales means you have more customers in the store and thus a need for more registers open.

Also at Target we practice backup, in which all sales floor personnel are cashier trained so that if lines get too long we will go up to help ease the congestion until it dies down. But if we didn't have a lot of people on the sales floor and the cashiers called for backup you'd see more managerial types get on register because we gotta have some people on the sales floor to assist customers and get work done.

The reason most big box retail stores have 14 or so registers is for situations like the holiday season and Black Friday, which is also when retailers make the most money. Thus you're more likely to see more lanes open between September and the end of December and if you go to a Target on a Tuesday in Mid January around 2 pm you'll probably only see 2 lanes open.

Well it must just depend on the location/geographical area. I would imagine every single store is not the same depending on what they start workers out at.

For example, my brother while he was in college, had a job at Cosco (similar to Sam's Club), and he made 8.00 an hour just to push/retrieve carts from the parking lot.

The Target in Winchester, which is the closest one to us, starts people at $8.00 an hour, and that is info i just looked up at their website/employment link. However it does not say which positions that is for; it just said now hiring.

Working At WAL-MART (http://workingatwal-mart.blogspot.com/)

I meant to post this link yesterday. This was kind of a "social experiment", by a 23 year old college student named Joshua Adam, a.k.a. "Josh Smith".

After graduating with a degree in political science, he volunteered a year at Holy Cross working with the poor, and afterwards, he wanted to see what it was like working at walmart, so he got hired in the Augusta, ME store. His blog is supposed to help people realize that things are never so bad that they have to work at walmart.

It's a long read, but i find it answers all our questions we may have. he is specifically asked about the register situation, and he says that it is done intentionally. It is done to make the store look busier; which is a part of the psychology and marketing involved. They supposedly believe that if the average customer sees people jammed in lanes, with lots of items, that it encourages them to buy more. They've spent a million dollars in research about this stuff...

Please find the time to read this from the beginning. Josh tells it like it is and explains his days working there, and you get to hear how f'd up everything is. He comments on the obvious gender discrimination, the practice of "punishing" the elderly (ie making them be greeters during the winter time, and not allowing them jackets because they can't cover up the vest/nametag)..it sounds unbelievable but he worked there for 4 months, or as he put it, long enough to prove his experiment of how things worked.

Their "brainwashing", or anti union messages are very telling. Also the pre-hire questionnaire has flagged questions so that the manager may realize if someone is sympathetic to workers rights, and/or unions....please read.

lol it's all good, just bustin' your chops

I think everyone has a "I hate Wal-Mart" story
Yeah.. and really most retail is very similar. I don't know why Wal-Mart is typically the only one singled out by it. I guess just due to sheer volume of locations, workers, etc.

Working At WAL-MART (http://workingatwal-mart.blogspot.com/)

I meant to post this link yesterday. This was kind of a "social experiment", by a 23 year old college student named Joshua Adam, a.k.a. "Josh Smith".

After graduating with a degree in political science, he volunteered a year at Holy Cross working with the poor, and afterwards, he wanted to see what it was like working at walmart, so he got hired in the Augusta, ME store. His blog is supposed to help people realize that things are never so bad that they have to work at walmart.

It's a long read, but i find it answers all our questions we may have. he is specifically asked about the register situation, and he says that it is done intentionally. It is done to make the store look busier; which is a part of the psychology and marketing involved. They supposedly believe that if the average customer sees people jammed in lanes, with lots of items, that it encourages them to buy more. They've spent a million dollars in research about this stuff...

Please find the time to read this from the beginning. Josh tells it like it is and explains his days working there, and you get to hear how f'd up everything is. He comments on the obvious gender discrimination, the practice of "punishing" the elderly (ie making them be greeters during the winter time, and not allowing them jackets because they can't cover up the vest/nametag)..it sounds unbelievable but he worked there for 4 months, or as he put it, long enough to prove his experiment of how things worked.

Their "brainwashing", or anti union messages are very telling. Also the pre-hire questionnaire has flagged questions so that the manager may realize if someone is sympathetic to workers rights, and/or unions....please read.

Oh Target was the same way, one of the first things they do when your hired is try to brainwash you into thinking unions are a really bad thing lol and that you shouldn't want any part of them.

And I'm sure regionally it's all different, especially depending on location and other factors. The one I worked at, and some of the other stores in my region generally had the same pay scale though.

The biggest thing Wal Mart has done to hurt us was making working for them a part time job. If you think back to the 70's working at places like Sears and JC Penny's was a full time job with good bennifitts. People would actually work there for 30 yrs. and retired with a decent retirement package. Then came Wall Mart and Kmart. They hired part time people with little to no beniffits. Sears and JC Pennys took a hugh hit from them in the early 80's because of their overhead and could not compete. Both of them in the 80's almost went under but to survive they made the nessary cuts and started hiring part time employees. It took most of the 80's for Sears and Penny's to catch back up and thats what has lead to where we are today in retail. The only reason Wall Mart gets dragged into the mud is because they are the top dog.

If any large retail store was forced to turn union while the others did not they would be gone in just a few years. The only way any of the large retail stores could turn union is if all truned union becuase if only one turned union their empolyee cost would drive their prises higher then the non union stores.

Well i've always believed that Walmart is anti-union only because they know that the Union would force them to make changes they dont want, mainly higher pay, safer conditions, etc...

I'm Pro Union. I won't lie. I feel like the average companies do not care about workers rights, i feel like we need someone to represent us. That being said, i agree that the stores would be gone in a few years if everyone unionized.

I'll be honest with you, I don't feel that a union is always a bad thing. It can be in certain situations, but for retail workers, it would be good.

Ask yourself; does anyone really deserve to be paid that low of a wage?? I understand that its a dead end job, that needs no skills, etc...but don't they realize that they could change their image as a whole, and attract better workers if they made the wages better??

Min. wage as it is right now is certainly not a livable wage.

Min. wage as it is right now is certainly not a livable wage.

It's not intended to be. The far majority of people making minimum wage are not working as a head of household or to support a family, they're usually kids. Increasing it so these kids make more money is only going to result in the company hiring fewer of them, or paying the rest of their employees less since the Government is costing them more for lower-priority, nonessential workers.

Well i've always believed that Walmart is anti-union only because they know that the Union would force them to make changes they dont want, mainly higher pay, safer conditions, etc...

I'm Pro Union. I won't lie. I feel like the average companies do not care about workers rights, i feel like we need someone to represent us. That being said, i agree that the stores would be gone in a few years if everyone unionized.

I'll be honest with you, I don't feel that a union is always a bad thing. It can be in certain situations, but for retail workers, it would be good.

Ask yourself; does anyone really deserve to be paid that low of a wage?? I understand that its a dead end job, that needs no skills, etc...but don't they realize that they could change their image as a whole, and attract better workers if they made the wages better??


they don't care about better employees they want cheaper employees. Little cost in training and uniforms for your average Wal Mart employee.

They don't need to change their image they are rolling in the dough!