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Re: Walmart observations

Posted: September 20th, 2020, 1:55 pm
by Alpha8472
Walmart stores in the San Francisco Bay Area are still very strict on masks. Most customers are wearing them as well as the employees. However, you do see people doing stupid things such as pulling their masks down to talk on their phones or eat.

The supermarkets such as Safeway and the rest in Northern California do nothing. I am not even sure if employees clean the carts anymore. There are no employees at the doors, and the carts are as dirty as ever.

Re: Walmart observations

Posted: September 20th, 2020, 10:44 pm
by storewanderer
Alpha8472 wrote: September 20th, 2020, 1:55 pm Walmart stores in the San Francisco Bay Area are still very strict on masks. Most customers are wearing them as well as the employees. However, you do see people doing stupid things such as pulling their masks down to talk on their phones or eat.

The supermarkets such as Safeway and the rest in Northern California do nothing. I am not even sure if employees clean the carts anymore. There are no employees at the doors, and the carts are as dirty as ever.
Some Raleys locations are still cleaning carts and baskets...

I've touched a grocery cart exactly 2 times since March, and haven't once touched a basket. Not going to play that guessing game as to how clean it is. The juggling items game is more fun.

Re: Walmart observations

Posted: September 22nd, 2020, 10:07 am
by mbz321
storewanderer wrote: September 20th, 2020, 10:44 pm

I've touched a grocery cart exactly 2 times since March, and haven't once touched a basket. Not going to play that guessing game as to how clean it is. The juggling items game is more fun.

I think it has been shown by now that the coronavirus is more airborne than surfaceborne. At the Costco I work at, we still have someone stationed to sanitize carts (from what I've heard, other locations have stopped), but it is basically just 'sanitation theater' at this point. At the start of the pandemic, we had crews routinely sanitizing everything inside the store, but that has basically stopped. Once in a while if the cashier manages to catch a break, maybe a quick wipedown of the belt and pinpad, but that is about it.

Re: Walmart observations

Posted: September 22nd, 2020, 11:23 pm
by storewanderer
It seems in my area some Wal Marts reopened both doors and some did not. The store in Reno on Lemmon Valley did not reopen both doors, nor did the store in Reno on Kietzke, nor did the store in South Carson City. A couple other Reno Stores I went to as well as the one in North Carson City have all reopened both doors.

Also most of them got rid of those awful railings at the entry but one location still had them up in Reno.

Also most still have signs up with the 8:30 PM closing time posted...

Re: Walmart observations

Posted: September 23rd, 2020, 4:52 am
by Alpha8472
I normally go to 2 Walmart Neighborhood Markets near me and one has had an enter door and an exit door this entire time. The other one opened their second door a few days ago only to close it again. For a day or so, they had an entrance door and an exit door. However, this would require 2 employees. The store is short of employees and probably decided that it could not spare the extra employee. This store is one of the only ones in the entire county that still closes at 8:30 PM while the other Walmart stores all close at 10 PM. The early closing time has driven customers to other stores and leads to angry customers being turned away at 8:30 PM when there are tons of people still shopping and groups of angry customers arguing at the front door trying to get in.

The problem is that Walmart bases the manager's bonus on fewer employee work hours. This causes employee hours to get cut, and customers get angry that the store closes, then the store loses sales, then the employee work hours get cut even more, etc. It is a downward slope. The manager should just expand the hours, get more sales, then you earn more employee work hours, then you can have more employees and higher sales.

I have seen angry customers outside of Walmart pharmacies at closing time at 7 PM. Apparently, Walmart still closes their pharmacies at 7 PM, which is quite early. Turning away customers at such an early time leads to the customers going to other pharmacy chains which have already returned to 9 PM closures. Even Safeway pharmacies are open until at least 8 or 8:30. CVS was talking about closing pharmacies earlier a while back, it seems like they have expanded hours in some areas.

Sanitation theater perhaps, but it does help. If a person sneezes and leave mucous on a surface it is infectious. You then touch the surface and unknowingly rub your eye, the virus can enter your eye. I am a reasonably healthy young adult and I work in a pharmacy. However, flesh eating bacteria is no joke. I had a very tiny small scratch on my ankle and it got infected. Antibiotic pills could not stop the infection. Within hours I had a raging fever and felt completely awful. I ended up in the hospital emergency room and had to stay 24 hours overnight. I had to be treated with IV antibiotics. They were pumping me full of medications, magnesium, potassium. I had to be hooked up to an infusion machine. It was crazy! I could not walk for weeks. Skin peeling off, open wound...

The cleaning may seem excessive for coronavirus, but there is flesh eating bacteria. You may think it will never happen to you, but it does happen. I also have seen many pharmacy customers with scabies. Scabies is not fun either and it is highly contagious. People drop off scabies medication prescriptions all the time and then proceed to shop all over the store and touch everything. It will make you cringe.

Re: Walmart observations

Posted: September 25th, 2020, 9:11 am
by TW-Upstate NY
Saw something at one of their local stores this morning and am wondering if this is happening anywhere else-in some areas of the store, the one way arrow markers on the floor have been removed. I saw this near the pharmacy and the HBA and cosmetics area and also in electronics and cleaning supplies. Haven't checked out the grocery area in months so I have no idea what's going on in that part of the store. Just found it odd that in some departments they've taken them away and other places they're still in place.

Re: Walmart observations

Posted: September 25th, 2020, 1:42 pm
by Super S
TW-Upstate NY wrote: September 25th, 2020, 9:11 am Saw something at one of their local stores this morning and am wondering if this is happening anywhere else-in some areas of the store, the one way arrow markers on the floor have been removed. I saw this near the pharmacy and the HBA and cosmetics area and also in electronics and cleaning supplies. Haven't checked out the grocery area in months so I have no idea what's going on in that part of the store. Just found it odd that in some departments they've taken them away and other places they're still in place.
I was just at my local Walmart this morning. They have removed the one way decals throughout the store, but left the ones that say to keep 6 feet apart. I never quite got the point of the one way aisles when they are open on both ends. And I honestly don't think anybody paid attention to them.

Re: Walmart observations

Posted: September 25th, 2020, 4:41 pm
by Alpha8472
My local Walmart stores have also removed the one way signs and decals. No one ever followed them here either.

Re: Walmart observations

Posted: September 25th, 2020, 7:30 pm
by cjd
Went to Walmart tonight. The security gates were all left opened. The whole set of self checkouts on the north end of the store was shut down so everyone was forced to use the set near the pharmacy entrance and the line was very long. I decided not to buy anything because of that and actually exited through the security gates which were left open. The door at the pharmacy area is now opened as an exit only, but still must enter through the grocery side.

As I was walking up to the store I noticed an emergency exit door had been opened by employees (presumably to run some things out to the pickup area) and the alarm on it was going off.

Also for some reason the lights in the entrance/cart area were all turned off and it was very dark in there. (It was raining as I came in the store and a loud thunderstorm was going on while I was there).

Re: Walmart observations

Posted: September 25th, 2020, 8:30 pm
by Alpha8472
The emergency exit doors are never to be used by employees because it sets off the fire alarm. It must have been a shoplifter and security probably was chasing them. It takes a manager to turn off the alarm.

Turning off self checkout only happens if they are so short staffed that they do not have attendants to monitor the self checkout area or if the machines are out of cash / broken.

The NCR repair people are notorious for poorly maintaining the machines so that they break down. Everytime there is a problem the store gets charged $500 for a repair person to come out. It is sabotage for sure. There is one creepy NCR repairman who lurks at the local Walmart just looking for problems to be found. It is ridiculous that they break down so much. It would be cheaper to just hire another cashier to run a regular cash register.