Walmart observations

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Alpha8472
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Re: Walmart observations

Post by Alpha8472 »

Walmart's district managers are constantly telling store managers no overtime for any employees. This is a terrible policy that results in lost customers if there are no other employees available.

Walmart needs to stop trying to micromanage and allow flexibility. The Walmart stores in the San Francisco Bay Area are having trouble recruiting seasonal employees for Black Friday and Christmas. They need to offer some better incentives.
storewanderer
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Re: Walmart observations

Post by storewanderer »

So it seems on Wednesday Wal Mart had a 3 cent sale on many summer clothing items.

They weren't supposed to have a 3 cent sale. They were supposed to have sold off or removed from the sales floor all of the summer clearance clothing weeks ago... but so many stores failed to do that, so today they had a big 3 cent sale at many locations.

I read in Facebook that some customers got cartfulls of items and were they stopped by store management and told they could not buy the items. This is funny because the store management was supposed to have removed this stuff from the floor, but was too lazy to do so, then watches as a customer spends hours digging around for the stuff, then doesn't let them go through with the purchase. Almost like the store management let the customer do the work the store was supposed to do then not say anything until the customer completed the task. That is pretty slick. But many other people did appear to be able to purchase large cartfulls of goods at 3 cents each:

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_ ... %253D%253D

Based on videos I see, the items price check and scan at 3 cents on the register or self checkout. It wouldn't be hard to either do a price required prompt (like Target does on stuff like this) or a do not sell/item recalled prompt if they don't want to sell stuff for 3 cents.
Alpha8472
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Re: Walmart observations

Post by Alpha8472 »

When items go on clearance, the prices are set by the corporate office. The employees at the store level cannot change the prices for clearance items. Often these clearance items, if still found in the store after the prices have gone down, become big money losers. The low prices cannot be raised on clearance items.

The store level employees cannot do a recall or do not sell order.
storewanderer
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Re: Walmart observations

Post by storewanderer »

Well it came out in one of the coupon groups that the .03 items, per official Wal Mart policy, were not to be sold. The items were to be rounded up, put in the back room, for "donation" (write off I guess).

Okay- why did they SCAN at .03 on the register or self checkout then?

Why were the items on the sales floor?

This still seems to be a bit of a scheme where Wal Mart issued a task to stores to pull this stuff from the sales floor. Some stores ignored the "task" then the customers show up and essentially spend hours finding the .03 items in clothing, then get stopped by management/security when attempting to purchase said items and have the carts taken from them. Some customers on coupon groups seemed to argue and in one case in GA police were called on the customer. Definitely would never advise anyone to let something like this escalate like that...

At the end of the day the Wal Mart receives free customer labor to do what would have taken their employees hours to do and they either didn't bother/had everyone working pulling online orders/didn't care/didn't read their e-mail/employees did not do a good enough job finding the items. So they got free customer labor. Again, pretty slick.

Need to do something to the cash register so the .03 items come up do not sell or something.
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Re: Walmart observations

Post by J-Man »

storewanderer
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Re: Walmart observations

Post by storewanderer »

It will be interested to see what states/areas the stores they opt to close or increase prices are located in.
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Re: Walmart observations

Post by arizonaguy »

storewanderer wrote: December 12th, 2022, 11:51 pm
It will be interested to see what states/areas the stores they opt to close or increase prices are located in.
I'd guess Washington, Oregon and California.
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Re: Walmart observations

Post by Super S »

Saw something that struck me as odd when at my local Walmart today. It appears that, sometime in the last couple months, that they replaced all of the traditional checkstands. These used to have the three racks of bags on a rotating table at the end of the checkstand, they now instead have a small bagging area and what is a stainless top that is slanted toward the end. These still have a conveyor belt before the scanner. This strikes me as odd due to how many Walmarts are removing more of these during remodels. I wonder if this was in response to Washington's bag laws/fees. On my visit today there was only one checkstand open.
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Re: Walmart observations

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Super S wrote: December 13th, 2022, 4:23 pm Saw something that struck me as odd when at my local Walmart today. It appears that, sometime in the last couple months, that they replaced all of the traditional checkstands. These used to have the three racks of bags on a rotating table at the end of the checkstand, they now instead have a small bagging area and what is a stainless top that is slanted toward the end. These still have a conveyor belt before the scanner. This strikes me as odd due to how many Walmarts are removing more of these during remodels. I wonder if this was in response to Washington's bag laws/fees. On my visit today there was only one checkstand open.
They did this to many, but not all, CA Stores when CA implemented the bag ban. The issue with the turning racks is when they pile items onto them, the items just fall off if they are not bagged. They need the counter space to let items accumulate. I have always felt that design of checkstand (stainless top slanted toward the end) is most efficient and also best for organizing bagging because it allows the cashier to scan everything then total it out and let payment run as items are bagged. At that point the entire transaction is bagged at once and this allows for the most strategic bagging. The old set up with the spinning racks basically led to items being bagged in the order they came down the line, which made little sense, and often resulted in poor bagging.

Wal Mart is not providing any bags anymore in states that have bag regulations/bag fees in the future. So far they have done this already in a few states back east (Maine for one). After January 1, CO, OR, and WA Wal Marts will no longer offer any .08 or .05 or .10 or whatever bags. Their lowest cost bag option will be a really flimsy .33 plastic mesh type reusable bag (which has a cost somewhere around .15 to them making it a very high gross profit item).
Alpha8472
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Re: Walmart observations

Post by Alpha8472 »

The 10 cent plastic bag fee doesn't cover the cost of the super thick plastic bags. Stores that sell bags for 10 cents or less end up losing money. Storage of the super thick bags is costly. They take up more space and the boxes are heavier. Supply problems are making the bags even more expensive and out of stock most of the time.

It would be cheaper to just buy sturdy reusable bags instead of paying 10 cents for a super thick bag that people usually throw away.

Walmart has reduced the number of self checkout machines at several California Walmart stores due to theft. It is clear that customers are not ringing up all of their items or ringing up cheap items instead of their expensive items.

There are California stores that have heavily invested in anti-theft measures: locked glass cabinets in practically every aisle, armed security teams in body armor, steel roll down garage doors at all entrances, barbed wire garden centers, lot cop cameras, few self checkout machines, portable trailer positioned in front of doors to prevent ramming by cars. Seriously this is extreme, but I have seen it. I think they spent so much money on security upgrades that there is no way some of these stores will close. Then the security upgrades would have been a waste of money. These fortified Walmart stores are high volume with tons of sales and lines stretching half-way across the store even with aisles of locked merchandise.

The ones that might close are the low volume California stores that did not get the locked cabinets and are suffering from shoplifting because of understaffed stores. There are many suburban Walmart stores in the San Francisco Bay Area that are so slow that they are ghost towns. These are rich suburbs where the residents shop at Target and Costco instead. Shoplifters have moved to the suburbs and arrive in groups of cars.

The Christmas section at many Bay Area Walmarts are wiped out. The plastic Christmas trees were all gone. Even the display trees were all taken. The customers bought everything in sight. It looked like a hurricane hit it.
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