Walmart observations

[veteran+]

I have used washable cloth bags for many years. When Paper was the it topic, I transitioned to washable cloth. Never used plastic.

The majority of the plastic problem world wide is from corporations and businesses of all kinds. The oil industry is a big player in all this.

I find it somewhat dubious especially for a retailer like Wal Mart to focus on bags given the amount of plastic crap they have for sale in their store (toys, totes, ton of hardline items, home items, it feels like half of the store is plastic crap).

But I understand Wal Mart doing this as a reaction to the various bag regulations and to try to get the environmental groups off their back. They are searching for a "bag program" they can apply in multiple states with bag regulations. It is a management nightmare to navigate so many different bag laws. Each state has different rules on bag thickness, etc.

The cloth bag ironically is the worst for the environment for a variety of reasons unless it is reused thousands of times (which it can be if it is taken care of properly). It has to be reused thousands of times to have less environmental impact than thousands of single use bags would have.

But most "reusable bags" for sale today are not cloth bags. They are just "reusable plastic bags." My favorite is the reusable plastic bags with a cloth handle. Like frankenbag. They are usually flock lined plastic so you can't easily clean the inside of them. If you try to wash the handle/get it too wet the inside of the bag basically disintegrates or stinks. If you use too hot of water or have the bag directly in the sun/in a hot car all day, the outer plastic part of the bag starts to crack and disintegrate. None of this is an issue with cloth bags.

Perhaps my cloth bags from the early 1980s finally qualify as environmentally friendly (I take good care of them). I have a collection from Florida, Colorado and California.

[BillyGr]

I find it somewhat dubious especially for a retailer like Wal Mart to focus on bags given the amount of plastic crap they have for sale in their store (toys, totes, ton of hardline items, home items, it feels like half of the store is plastic crap).

Though some of the things are helpful, at least.
Like those totes - they work better for storing items in areas where moisture may be present, and are generally sturdier than other options (like cardboard boxes).
Same goes for a few containers, where the older options (glass) were more dangerous - think something like a shampoo bottle dropped in the shower.

Certainly, there are other cases where an alternative could work just as well, though

Maybe bring back the box corrals?

That makes sense as well - reusing something that is already there (boxes that items came in) to put purchases in after purchasing (they could be kept by the checkouts to avoid getting taken and used in store for those avoiding payment).
They seem to work well at other places (such as Aldi and the club stores).

[storewanderer]

I find it somewhat dubious especially for a retailer like Wal Mart to focus on bags given the amount of plastic crap they have for sale in their store (toys, totes, ton of hardline items, home items, it feels like half of the store is plastic crap).

Though some of the things are helpful, at least.
Like those totes - they work better for storing items in areas where moisture may be present, and are generally sturdier than other options (like cardboard boxes).
Same goes for a few containers, where the older options (glass) were more dangerous - think something like a shampoo bottle dropped in the shower.

Certainly, there are other cases where an alternative could work just as well, though

Maybe bring back the box corrals?

That makes sense as well - reusing something that is already there (boxes that items came in) to put purchases in after purchasing (they could be kept by the checkouts to avoid getting taken and used in store for those avoiding payment).
They seem to work well at other places (such as Aldi and the club stores).

With how a lot of stores throw boxes on the shelf to stock, you can just get boxes yourself from the shelves.

Not that that makes any difference, I still think the thin single use plastic bag is the best option for environmental purposes, security reasons, efficiency, and sanitation reasons.

But for some item purchases like, say, loose cans of pet food, or even a purchase of a large quantity of standard canned food, putting them on a flat box is better than the bags as it organizes them, keeps them all standing up/organized, etc.

[Brian Lutz]

Yesterday while shopping at the Pyramids Village Walmart in Greensboro, for some reason I saw that this particular store had a couple of locked cases in the men's underwear section of all places, which seems like a really odd place for this since I don't think I've seen any other locked cases in this store besides the places you'd normally find them (high value tools and video games.) Those cases seemed to hold mostly the "name brand" products (under armor, Hanes, etc) but there were several other rows of socks and underwear that were not locked up. I also don't think there are any locked cases in the women's section, but I didn't look too closely.

Ironically, even though this store seems to be in what would be considered the "rough" part of Greensboro, it feels like this store is actually quite a bit nicer than the Battleground Avenue store in the nicer part of town. That particular store is on the small side and seems rather awkward, more like the type of store you'd find in a less populated area (it reminded me quite a bit of the Park City UT store) even though it's in one of the busiest parts of town. Greensboro seems to have less Walmarts than you would expect for a city of is size (third largest in NC, but only 4 Supercenter stores and 3 Neighborhood Markets.)

[cjd]

My Walmart has gotten new self scan stations. They do kit seam to be as heavy built as the prior units. The scanner seems to have a delay a times, I accidentally scanned an item twice and had to have an overseer remove it.

The touch screen is also somewhat insensitive and doesn’t register sometimes that you touched a button.

The bagging area is also smaller.

The second time I used the machine it locked up after I scanned the second item, wouldn’t allow me to scan a third one, despite the fact that I always keep the cart behind me and only pick up one item at a time to scan, it still froze up and I had to get an attendant to come over.

It did the instant replay thing where I guess it’s trying to accuse you over under ringing items but the attendant seemed totally unconcerned.

I’ve seen some people actually never even remove items from the cart and just use the handheld scanner but I have no idea how that flies with these machines given how anal they are at watching every move.

One fumble sets the whole thing into locking up, so I would think scanning in the cart would really make it go nuts.

Maybe I’ll go back to using regular manned checkouts the way it was meant to be!!

[Alpha8472]

Self checkout machines are designed to constantly break down or need adjustments. If it is slow or freezing then tech support must be called. NCR is the company that handles Walmart registers.

Their business model is all about charging stores for expensive telephone tech support calls and sending out repair technicians. If these machines worked perfectly then NCR would make no money.

It would be extremely expensive to try to switch to another brand of self checkout machines. The new company would probably use the same tactics of excessive breakdowns and tech support calls.

[storewanderer]

I went to the Wal Mart in Reno on West 7th Street and have found there have been a lot of changes in this store recently. I thought this was in a pretty good area but something must have really gone wrong with this store.

They now have about half of cosmetics locked up, mens socks/underwear all locked up (like other Reno Stores), and various other lock up areas all over the store. Despite this they have an in stock rate of about 20% in cosmetics and somewhere around 70% on many other categories. Almost the entire cheese/lunchmeat/egg/juice wall area was empty (10% in stock rate at best). It looks like this store is on the verge of locking up its entire drug/HBA area. They have those plastic slider things running across the entire vitamin aisle now (never seen this before, that category usually is lower shrink relative to other drug categories). The store is a disaster. They had a couple of 60+ year old employees trying to restock the 15% in stock dry dog food aisle and I was watching as these two "joint lifted" giant 40+ pound bags from a pallet; a younger employee was standing at the pallet and messing around on his phone (work related I'm sure) telling these two what to go stock and where to put it, must have been the supervisor or something. The two employees had no clue where on the aisle to put the given bags and were arguing with each other if they put the bag in the right place then would both just agree to leave it there because the guy at the pallet was yelling back to them to hurry up. Pathetic.

The store had far less traffic than it should have on a weekend and checkout was not an issue with a choice of no/minimal wait for 5 checkstands or no wait for various self checkouts.

However the exit from the store was odd. At the pharmacy side exit they just had an employee who wasn't stopping anyone. At the grocery side exit they had 2 Wal Mart employees each positioned on the opposite side of the security alarm towers and then behind them was a third party security guard standing there. The 2 Wal Mart employees both wanted to see everyone's receipt and both looked over everything everyone was trying to take out of the store. It was the weirdest thing I've ever seen. I was glad I did not buy anything but I still got a real look over by all 3 of them.

[Alpha8472]

I noticed a Walmart Neighborhood Market in San Ramon, California the other night installing even more glass cabinets to lock up entire rows of merchandise.

San Ramon is a low crime suburb, but apparently the higher up people want to reduce shoplifting even more.

Shoplifting might go down, but now sales will go down since so many aisles are locked up. Previously, the store only had a limited amount of merchandise locked up.

[storewanderer]

I noticed a Walmart Neighborhood Market in San Ramon, California the other night installing even more glass cabinets to lock up entire rows of merchandise.

San Ramon is a low crime suburb, but apparently the higher up people want to reduce shoplifting even more.

Shoplifting might go down, but now sales will go down since so many aisles are locked up. Previously, the store only had a limited amount of merchandise locked up.

I am trying to come to the logic of all of this locked up merchandise, but I can't get there.

I am seeing loss prevention make the argument to operations like this:
AP: We are having theft rings come in and wipe out 100% of the items on the shelves, we need to lock everything up.
Operations: but we will lose sales
AP: But if it is all stolen you aren't selling any anyway
Operations: but lock ups will make customers not want to shop here
AP: But if you lock it up even if you sell a unit to 1 paying customer that is better than 100% of the units being stolen
Operations: but we will lose entire cart shops of a lot more than just these lock up items, due to customers being upset a couple items they want are locked up
...
...
...

And it seems AP is winning this fight.

The theft rings appear to be expanding their geography also. As the stores that the thieves have been repeat patrons of start to get tighter on security, the thieves go look for easier stores, and I can imagine a loose store in a well off suburb like San Ramon can be a target and get hit really fast before it even knows what just happened.

[mjhale]

However the exit from the store was odd. At the pharmacy side exit they just had an employee who wasn't stopping anyone. At the grocery side exit they had 2 Wal Mart employees each positioned on the opposite side of the security alarm towers and then behind them was a third party security guard standing there. The 2 Wal Mart employees both wanted to see everyone's receipt and both looked over everything everyone was trying to take out of the store. It was the weirdest thing I've ever seen. I was glad I did not buy anything but I still got a real look over by all 3 of them.

Is there anything legally that covers receipt checks at the exit door? This would almost certainly be something that is covered at the state and/or local jurisdiction level. I have always heard that the warehouse clubs cover this by including a receipt check in the member agreement when you join. The Walmart near me has gone 100 percent receipt check with two people at the exit doors. I showed my receipt because I just wanted to get going and not fight it the last day I shopped there. However, observing the flow from the self-checkout area, more than a few people declined or just kept walking. That made the receipt check people visibly angry but they just motioned people through.