Serious Question to anyone who works in retail

[Monkeydad]

Do they possibly use them for Christmas sales? That's the reasoning for the massive, unused parking lots too.

I agree, spend LESS on registers, MORE on training and better employees to keep the lines moving!

[SolidSnake84]

Now i dont know about everywhere, but i can tell you that 90% of the time i drive by the Walmart here to go to Home Depot, the parking lot is usually 70-80% full...

Still think its asinine for the stores to have all those registers and never have intentions to use them. A friend yesterday told me that he counted 35 registers at the old Winchester, VA Walmart. Some of them have probably never been used at any point in time....

[MTK]

As someone already pointed out it's probably more for the cosmetic look of things up front and to control the flow of people out of the store.

[SolidSnake84]

Well one thing i didnt know, i was talking to a guy on facebook chat this morning, and he said that his local walmart has now only started opening 1 set of sliding doors, he says he's not sure why...maybe that has to do with crowd control too...

[MTK]

Are you obsessed with Wal-mart?

[firstdown]

Originally Posted by Mattyk

Are you obsessed with Wal-mart?

Really, not sure what he is getting at with all this Wall Mart stuff. Maybe it was early in the morning so they only had one door open or maybe they have had theft issues so they are trying to keep a better watch on who is coming and going. I only will go to Wall Mart early in the morning before 9am. Any time after that the place is a mad house and I hat waiting in lines.

[hooskins]

I am sure they save a lot of money keeping less employees, as they are also paying insurance benefits, etc. per person based on their status.

However, I want to point out that what you are seeing at your Walmarts isnt always true. The Walmart by my house, has 7-10 registers open at a time, if not more. And that is normally, on weekends almost all registers are open.

[mredskins]

Originally Posted by hooskins

I am sure they save a lot of money keeping less employees, as they are also paying insurance benefits, etc. per person based on their status.

However, I want to point out that what you are seeing at your Walmarts isnt always true. The Walmart by my house, has 7-10 registers open at a time, if not more. And that is normally, on weekends almost all registers are open.

You live in NOVA which is a mad house and they can support that kind of work force, Solid Snake lives in East Butt Fawk, Va where they don't have the same volume of folks.

I can't believe how this thread has continued to grow!

I just keep coming back to see Solids frustration.

[SolidSnake84]

No guys, i'm not obsessed with walmart. I can poke fun at myself for this thread.

It was an issue that kind of grinded my gears, and i wanted to know if anybody had like an "official" reason for why they do it. It is just my luck i guess, because i went to Sheetz on my lunch break, and lo and behold there was only 1 person working...i couldnt make this up if i tried.

I guess with all the walmart talk, i kind of got obsessed. Being honest with you, i think i really hate them. But anyway, thanks to everyone for responding

[MTK]

Originally Posted by SolidSnake84

No guys, i'm not obsessed with walmart. I can poke fun at myself for this thread.

It was an issue that kind of grinded my gears, and i wanted to know if anybody had like an "official" reason for why they do it. It is just my luck i guess, because i went to Sheetz on my lunch break, and lo and behold there was only 1 person working...i couldnt make this up if i tried.

I guess with all the walmart talk, i kind of got obsessed. Being honest with you, i think i really hate them. But anyway, thanks to everyone for responding

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

I think everyone has a "I hate Wal-Mart" story

[mooby]

Originally Posted by SolidSnake84

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.

[SolidSnake84]

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.

[SolidSnake84]

Working At WAL-MART

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.

[tryfuhl]

Originally Posted by Mattyk

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.

[mooby]

Originally Posted by SolidSnake84

Working At WAL-MART

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.