Wal Mart to limit number of shoppers

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storewanderer
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Wal Mart to limit number of shoppers

Post by storewanderer »

This is going to be a ^*#* show.

Glad I don't need to go to Wal Mart these days.

https://corporate.walmart.com/newsroom/ ... distancing

One in one out sounds like what I observed at WinCo. One way aisles also may be a pretty good idea actually, but if you have to have employees standing around enforcing it, that just adds "another person" in the middle of the whole thing.

Might be better to install gates for the one way aisles... like the ones by the doors...
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Re: Wal Mart to limit number of shoppers

Post by Alpha8472 »

It officially starts April 4. However, I went to a Walmart Neighborhood Market in San Ramon, California and there was a line even near closing time. One person goes out and they let another in.

I don't know how this will work at busy Walmarts with wall to wall people. It will be like the riots on Black Friday when people try to force their way through the doors.
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Re: Wal Mart to limit number of shoppers

Post by arizonaguy »

Target is also implementing this same policy and Costco has had it at least since Wednesday.
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Re: Wal Mart to limit number of shoppers

Post by reymann »

i suspect odd/even shopping days could be next based on your home address
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Re: Wal Mart to limit number of shoppers

Post by storewanderer »

I went into Wal Mart tonight around 8:10 PM and none of this was being implemented at all. There were about the number of customers you would expect in the store at that time of night on a normal night, so maybe they just did not reach capacity. There was no receipt checker or greeter at the door even. Paper and cleaning was still very empty, parts of grocery were stocked fine (like coffee and condiments and salad dressings) but canned meats, canned soups, were in horrible shape. Frozen and dairy was mostly back in stock, no more out of stocks than you would see on a normal day.

All departments were open, nothing was blocked off.
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Re: Wal Mart to limit number of shoppers

Post by TW-Upstate NY »

reymann wrote: April 4th, 2020, 10:20 pm i suspect odd/even shopping days could be next based on your home address
Quite possible but how could it be verified? At least with the odd/even license plate system to buy gas back in the 70's I referenced on another thread, the attendant (which pretty much all gas stations had) could see your plate and say yes or no. They will either need multiple employees at the door checking licenses or some sort of documentation or some type of scanner set up. And then if someone were to try and violate the policy and gets caught things could get real ugly real fast. It could also open up a store to liability issues in the ensuing riot that would occur if someone did try and pull a fast one. No question it's a good concept but then again we have much more of a herd mentality then we did back in the 70's when a similar system was used to buy gasoline as described above. This is in the category of the best laid plans of mice and men. The public at large respected those systems back then and they really don't today.
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Re: Wal Mart to limit number of shoppers

Post by reymann »

the walmarts in my area usually have police officers sitting in the parking lot. i would expect police and private security would be the ones checking IDs if designated shopping days were to start happening. with everything else closed right now i've been seeing more police officers stationing in front of stores to enforce social distancing.
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Re: Wal Mart to limit number of shoppers

Post by SamSpade »

Walmart's CEO is actually in a supercenter in Alabama and put out a video about what the chain is doing to help provide a safe environment for customer shopping (and yes, the focus is almost 100% on the grocery side of the store):
https://corporate.walmart.com/important-store-info
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Re: Wal Mart to limit number of shoppers

Post by wnetmacman »

So if you do the math on this, they are limiting the number of folks in the store to 5 per 1000 square feet.

If a typical Supercenter in a decent sized town is 190,000 square feet, that's 950 people in the store.

That really isn't a limit.

My biggest complaint is in the traffic routing they're doing to enforce this. Most stores are using the area between the doors to socially distance the line. What that means is that once you're inside, it's a tango with the folks leaving the checkouts to cross paths. That doesn't really help either; following protocols you shouldn't do that.

Every store that has an auto center has closed it. In stores with an Auto Center, they are using that as an employee screening/entrance.

Many states have ruled that non-essential merchandise cannot be sold, but many others have not. My local store is running seemingly full tilt.
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Re: Wal Mart to limit number of shoppers

Post by storewanderer »

wnetmacman wrote: April 21st, 2020, 2:01 pm So if you do the math on this, they are limiting the number of folks in the store to 5 per 1000 square feet.

If a typical Supercenter in a decent sized town is 190,000 square feet, that's 950 people in the store.

That really isn't a limit.

My biggest complaint is in the traffic routing they're doing to enforce this. Most stores are using the area between the doors to socially distance the line. What that means is that once you're inside, it's a tango with the folks leaving the checkouts to cross paths. That doesn't really help either; following protocols you shouldn't do that.

Every store that has an auto center has closed it. In stores with an Auto Center, they are using that as an employee screening/entrance.

Many states have ruled that non-essential merchandise cannot be sold, but many others have not. My local store is running seemingly full tilt.
These limits are nothing more than good sounding PR.

I have noticed routing everyone through a single exit/entrance is creating a lot more "groups" and "bunches" of people concentrated at that single exit/entrance, than when it was spread over two different entrances (I suppose I sound like Mr. Obvious to say that). They need to exit through one side and enter through the other side in order to fix that issue. Not squeeze everyone through the same exit/entrance.

Some stores seem to have much smaller limits (I have heard of some smaller stores like a CVS limiting to 12 customers at once) but it appears those may be localized rules the stores are following.
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