Walmart observations

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TW-Upstate NY
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Re: Walmart observations

Post by TW-Upstate NY »

Alpha8472 wrote: September 11th, 2021, 1:44 pm Walmart is still rounding change up due to the coin shortage. A refund for $10.01 will result in $11 being given back. Multiply this by every cash refund and the store will lose tons of money.
Walmart being Walmart makes you ask the question how long will they continue to eat those kind of losses because as you say that adds up quick.
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Re: Walmart observations

Post by storewanderer »

TW-Upstate NY wrote: September 12th, 2021, 9:50 am
Alpha8472 wrote: September 11th, 2021, 1:44 pm Walmart is still rounding change up due to the coin shortage. A refund for $10.01 will result in $11 being given back. Multiply this by every cash refund and the store will lose tons of money.
Walmart being Walmart makes you ask the question how long will they continue to eat those kind of losses because as you say that adds up quick.
I suspect they know exactly who/what to blame for this... (not sure if this is an issue with the change provider, Federal government, or what)... ultimately, I don't expect them to eat the losses.
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Re: Walmart observations

Post by storewanderer »

Wal Mart in Reno on 7th St. is a complete trash show.

All spring/summer this store has had pallets all over the store throughout the non food and clothing areas. Today I went in looking for some yard tools. They have some garden items on the sales floor where seasonal is. Then there are two outdoor garden areas both accessible by separate sliding doors from the interior seasonal area, one of which is just fenced in and loosely covered and the other is more greenhouse like for plants.

The two outdoor garden areas had paper covering over all of the windows/sliding doors which I thought was odd but I walked into one. It had hundreds of pallets stacked all the way up to the greenhouse-like ceiling and there were a few employees in there, one of them told me to "get out." I asked for the item I was looking for and was told "we don't have any, this is employees only." Okay. I got out, and went through the other sliding door. Same thing- pallets everywhere. I did see what I was looking for off in the distance, but it was completely blocked by pallets stacked 2 or 3 high, and there was no way to get to it. A person in plainclothes who had no name badge came in there and told me it isn't open and I needed to leave the area immediately. I asked for the item I needed and he said they didn't have it right now. I pointed to the item and he told me those items aren't available right now and I needed to leave the area right now. Okay then.

I did notice they had a few plants for sale in part of the outdoor garden center visible from the parking lot, but it was locked/closed, so I asked to get to that, thinking I may find what I need there. I was told I needed to go outside (through the main exit by pharmacy) and walk around to it and someone will come over there and unlock it if I need something. Forget it- too much hassle. There are other retailers that are actually ready for business.

What is funny is beyond this mess of hundreds or maybe thousands of pallets in both parts of outdoor garden center, they still have many pallets out on the sales floor as well.

Can only imagine how much money this store is losing between lost sales, lost efficiency, finding old inventory that has to be deeply discounted by the time it is finally found since it was hiding in the pallet disaster.... the employees are clearly frustrated and no help at all to trying to take care of the customer. I understand their frustration but frankly it is not my fault, I am there to buy products. As Sam said- the customer is the boss. Well, not with these employees who refuse to sell you product that is there, but buried from access by all of the pallets.
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Re: Walmart observations

Post by wnetmacman »

Alpha8472 wrote: September 11th, 2021, 1:44 pm Walmart is still rounding change up due to the coin shortage. A refund for $10.01 will result in $11 being given back. Multiply this by every cash refund and the store will lose tons of money.

Say you buy a 79 cent drink. You pay in cash $1. You get $1 back in change. This is free stuff. Forget the dollar store. You make money shopping at Walmart!

I also saw plastic Christmas trees for sale and I heard Christmas music playing.
Many stores are circumventing this by requiring card payment at self-service registers. My store requires card payment.
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Re: Walmart observations

Post by ClownLoach »

storewanderer wrote: September 12th, 2021, 10:55 pm Wal Mart in Reno on 7th St. is a complete trash show.

All spring/summer this store has had pallets all over the store throughout the non food and clothing areas. Today I went in looking for some yard tools. They have some garden items on the sales floor where seasonal is. Then there are two outdoor garden areas both accessible by separate sliding doors from the interior seasonal area, one of which is just fenced in and loosely covered and the other is more greenhouse like for plants.

The two outdoor garden areas had paper covering over all of the windows/sliding doors which I thought was odd but I walked into one. It had hundreds of pallets stacked all the way up to the greenhouse-like ceiling and there were a few employees in there, one of them told me to "get out." I asked for the item I was looking for and was told "we don't have any, this is employees only." Okay. I got out, and went through the other sliding door. Same thing- pallets everywhere. I did see what I was looking for off in the distance, but it was completely blocked by pallets stacked 2 or 3 high, and there was no way to get to it. A person in plainclothes who had no name badge came in there and told me it isn't open and I needed to leave the area immediately. I asked for the item I needed and he said they didn't have it right now. I pointed to the item and he told me those items aren't available right now and I needed to leave the area right now. Okay then.

I did notice they had a few plants for sale in part of the outdoor garden center visible from the parking lot, but it was locked/closed, so I asked to get to that, thinking I may find what I need there. I was told I needed to go outside (through the main exit by pharmacy) and walk around to it and someone will come over there and unlock it if I need something. Forget it- too much hassle. There are other retailers that are actually ready for business.

What is funny is beyond this mess of hundreds or maybe thousands of pallets in both parts of outdoor garden center, they still have many pallets out on the sales floor as well.

Can only imagine how much money this store is losing between lost sales, lost efficiency, finding old inventory that has to be deeply discounted by the time it is finally found since it was hiding in the pallet disaster.... the employees are clearly frustrated and no help at all to trying to take care of the customer. I understand their frustration but frankly it is not my fault, I am there to buy products. As Sam said- the customer is the boss. Well, not with these employees who refuse to sell you product that is there, but buried from access by all of the pallets.
Let's take this to the next level. Clearly that store is behind in stocking dozens of trucks. They probably are only stocking fresh grocery immediately and everything else is going in a pile. When the truck is received in store it goes into the inventory counts. Walmart has a dept by dept shelf scanning schedule for inventory maintenance. So if the freight gets delivered, goes in that pile outside unworked, and the scanning routine gets done that week - everything on that pallet is going to be zeroed out and reordered because nobody will be able to find all of the missing items for the 30+ aisles scanned each day. I guarantee that the shelf scanning gets done daily as expected because if not it will go on a report and the District Manager will be on the phone screaming at the Store Manager for not being 100% on inventory management. Despite the fact that there are tens of thousands of cartons not stocked that aren't on a report. This is a seriously broken store in a death spiral. Their negative on hands are going to go through the roof. And once they get an army in there to force out all of those unworked pallets - the product will get sold - it will keep going negative on hand as it goes through the register - and when it is negative ordering for that item is cut off until that individual SKU is reconciled. So they will finally get through the mountain of freight... Only to suddenly have empty shelves everywhere once it all sells... Then once they fix that they will get massive orders again and become buried in freight. The only fix would be to schedule a physical inventory immediately after the backlog is caught up - but I'm assuming that staffing shortages are the root cause of the backlog, and Walmart in their infinite brilliance no longer hires inventory service counters. They hire WIS or RGIS to manage the count but Walmart employees are the ones that complete the physical count now. And if they can't staff the daily trucks they probably can't get a hundred or so people together for an overnight inventory. It's a broken store. The District Manager probably has no idea since Walmart now has 60-75+ store districts. Most other retailers have 10-12 stores per DM. A DM with 60+ stores is not seeing every store every week. They are lucky if they see every store twice a year with how much time they're going to be stuck in their office on the phone and in meetings with so many stores. And this is how a Walmart store can stay broken for so long now... No payroll at the store level... And nothing left at the corporate level for supervision/leadership. And the store won't get cleaned up until they get a calendar invite for a District Manager visit next month...
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Re: Walmart observations

Post by storewanderer »

ClownLoach wrote: September 13th, 2021, 9:42 pm
Let's take this to the next level. Clearly that store is behind in stocking dozens of trucks. They probably are only stocking fresh grocery immediately and everything else is going in a pile. When the truck is received in store it goes into the inventory counts. Walmart has a dept by dept shelf scanning schedule for inventory maintenance. So if the freight gets delivered, goes in that pile outside unworked, and the scanning routine gets done that week - everything on that pallet is going to be zeroed out and reordered because nobody will be able to find all of the missing items for the 30+ aisles scanned each day. I guarantee that the shelf scanning gets done daily as expected because if not it will go on a report and the District Manager will be on the phone screaming at the Store Manager for not being 100% on inventory management. Despite the fact that there are tens of thousands of cartons not stocked that aren't on a report. This is a seriously broken store in a death spiral. Their negative on hands are going to go through the roof. And once they get an army in there to force out all of those unworked pallets - the product will get sold - it will keep going negative on hand as it goes through the register - and when it is negative ordering for that item is cut off until that individual SKU is reconciled. So they will finally get through the mountain of freight... Only to suddenly have empty shelves everywhere once it all sells... Then once they fix that they will get massive orders again and become buried in freight. The only fix would be to schedule a physical inventory immediately after the backlog is caught up - but I'm assuming that staffing shortages are the root cause of the backlog, and Walmart in their infinite brilliance no longer hires inventory service counters. They hire WIS or RGIS to manage the count but Walmart employees are the ones that complete the physical count now. And if they can't staff the daily trucks they probably can't get a hundred or so people together for an overnight inventory. It's a broken store. The District Manager probably has no idea since Walmart now has 60-75+ store districts. Most other retailers have 10-12 stores per DM. A DM with 60+ stores is not seeing every store every week. They are lucky if they see every store twice a year with how much time they're going to be stuck in their office on the phone and in meetings with so many stores. And this is how a Walmart store can stay broken for so long now... No payroll at the store level... And nothing left at the corporate level for supervision/leadership. And the store won't get cleaned up until they get a calendar invite for a District Manager visit next month...
I noticed there is no photo of the store manager by the door and the receipt says "Store Mgr TBD." There are a few other Wal Marts in this area with a similar circumstance but this is the first one I've seen that is using both parts of the exterior garden center closed to customers to have pallets (stacked atop one another even). Never seen anything like this- wanted to get some photos but clearly it was something they were trying to keep hidden.

This is the exact type of location where a Fred Meyer nearby could have cleaned up had Kroger bothered to expand the chain better. But they didn't. There was a Super Kmart nearby (it opened in the mid 90's) in a poor location which didn't ever really even hit $1 million a week even before Wal Mart opened, and it eventually closed a couple years after Sears took over (did under $300k a week by the time it closed- complete ghost town).
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Re: Walmart observations

Post by cjd »

At my Walmart, there is a seasonal dept/indoor garden center section that is walled off/separate from the main store, and has its own exit to the parking lot. It also has two registers, usually at least one is open, but I think the stockers tend to also work those registers if it's not really busy enough to have a cashier specifically there. From that section there are two doors that go out to the garden center.

The last few times I noticed the doors leading out to the parking lot have been locked.

I think it must come down to staffing, as the first time I walked into that department to look for something and there were exactly zero employees there, and none of the registers were open. In fact I was the only soul in there. I didn't try to go through those doors on that trip so didn't realize they were probably locked.

The last two times I went I tried to go in thru that entrance but signs were up that it was closed.

Also noticed the last two times I've been that they seem to be checking all receipts. First time I got checked, second time I left without waiting for a receipt check, but nobody said anything.

The security gates at the health and beauty entrance, which would sound an alarm if somebody tried to exit thru them, were also removed about a month ago. Don't know if that has to do with the receipt check or not.
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Re: Walmart observations

Post by storewanderer »

cjd wrote: September 15th, 2021, 8:49 pm At my Walmart, there is a seasonal dept/indoor garden center section that is walled off/separate from the main store, and has its own exit to the parking lot. It also has two registers, usually at least one is open, but I think the stockers tend to also work those registers if it's not really busy enough to have a cashier specifically there. From that section there are two doors that go out to the garden center.

The last few times I noticed the doors leading out to the parking lot have been locked.

I think it must come down to staffing, as the first time I walked into that department to look for something and there were exactly zero employees there, and none of the registers were open. In fact I was the only soul in there. I didn't try to go through those doors on that trip so didn't realize they were probably locked.

The last two times I went I tried to go in thru that entrance but signs were up that it was closed.

Also noticed the last two times I've been that they seem to be checking all receipts. First time I got checked, second time I left without waiting for a receipt check, but nobody said anything.

The security gates at the health and beauty entrance, which would sound an alarm if somebody tried to exit thru them, were also removed about a month ago. Don't know if that has to do with the receipt check or not.
The Wal Marts in my area have not operated the cash registers at garden since 2019.

I noticed security gates were removed from one of the Wal Marts I go into, but they are still present in most of the locations that got them. Many locations never got them.

Some Wal Marts were using that garden entry for the employee entry to do the employee health inspection during COVID (temperature check, mask check, etc.). Some also used the closed auto repair entrance for that.
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Re: Walmart observations

Post by BillyGr »

wnetmacman wrote: September 13th, 2021, 1:21 pm Many stores are circumventing this by requiring card payment at self-service registers. My store requires card payment.
I don't know why they can't simply set up a few (depending on how many they have) to take cash and the rest as only for cards.
Every other store chain that has self checkout has done that - that way you still limit the amount of cash needed (since you don't have to fill all the self checks with money).
Especially silly when you have a handful of items and only 1 or 2 regular registers open, and not everyone paying with cash will need a ton of change - the last time I was there it was a whole 2 cents (if the machine had not had that I wouldn't have worried about it).
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Re: Walmart observations

Post by ClownLoach »

BillyGr wrote: September 16th, 2021, 9:08 am
wnetmacman wrote: September 13th, 2021, 1:21 pm Many stores are circumventing this by requiring card payment at self-service registers. My store requires card payment.
I don't know why they can't simply set up a few (depending on how many they have) to take cash and the rest as only for cards.
Every other store chain that has self checkout has done that - that way you still limit the amount of cash needed (since you don't have to fill all the self checks with money).
Especially silly when you have a handful of items and only 1 or 2 regular registers open, and not everyone paying with cash will need a ton of change - the last time I was there it was a whole 2 cents (if the machine had not had that I wouldn't have worried about it).
And where they are leaving one or two that take cash, while the other 6 to 8 don't, it creates chaos when the customer doesn't pay attention until its time to pay, then needs an associate to void the order and move them to another register because they didn't see the little sticker or handmade sign that says no cash at this station. Now one customer clogs up two registers and an employee who could have been helping other customers.
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