Wal*Mart Stories
I'm in Wal-Mart hell I tell you. I've been working there for 2 months. I
never knew how screwed up this walmart was until I started working
there. We have some of the rudist most obnoxious managers you have ever
seen. from the day I started I found out you will never get anywheres in
this Slidell Wal-Mart unless you kiss ass to those stuck on them selves,
don't really give a shit about the public jerks. How did they wind up
with that managers job, anyways? Don't get me wrong I like my job I just
dont appreciate the way they talk to me there. for instance I tried for
2 weeks to get a code for that damn telxon to make tickets and the
manager just ignores me everytime. This past week they made a terrible
mistake with my check, I gave them a voided check(with my account # on
it) and they didn't get it right.! That shows how bright Wal-Mart runs
this so called family oriented hell hole. Well, anyways, while I thought
they sent my check direct deposit I was writing 3 checks. 2 to a doctor
and one to Wal-Mart themselves. And guess what all 3 bounced b/c of them.
and they are hounding me b/c I haven't that bounced one to them yet. I
think they should pay for them if u ask me. Well I have a lot more to tell
but it will take me an eternity to type it all. My main reason for telling you all this is ( I SHOULD HAVE WENT TO WORK FOR K-MART) If I
wind up quitting in the next couple of days which I probably will if I
have one more smart ass comment from another manager or associate in
that place I will never shop at that place again. They just lost one
hell of a hard worker and a customer. Oh by the way I work in
Dept.31 (lingerie) just if u get this please don't use my real name
anywhere if you decide to use this on your website. but I really
appreciate you taking the time to read this. I enjoyed reading all u had
to say. And I agree with you 100%. Thank You!
I was just fired from Wal-Mart. I live in Chico, California and I worked
at store 2044.I worked there for approximately I yr and a half. I was a
cashier and was told if I learned layaway and the service desk I would
get an "above average raise" on my next evaluation. So I learned layaway
and the service desk. I am a single mother and depended on this job, so
I could support my son and I.I hated working there because like you said
the managers and most of the employees there are a bunch of stupid
idiots. Anyways I had never gotten written up or even a verbal warning
for anything, I would get like 5 or 6 Zapp cards a month, and I got
along with everyone. Then last Tuesday I was working my 8-5 shift and at
1:45 my son's daycare called me at work and said my son had a 102 fever.
So of course I had to leave... Then a manager asked me what time I
worked the next day and I told him, I thought this was weird that he was
asking me so I got a letter from my daycare stating that my son really
was sick, they made me feel like I was lying...So then I called in the
next day and said I would be in at 12 and would work til 5. So they said
Ok, little did I know they wanted me to come in so they could "let me
go". At 2:00 I was working like normal and the CSM came up to me and
said "will you walk to the office with me" so I went...There in the
office was the stores Co-manager, an asst. manager and the CSM.....He
told me that they were monitoring the use of my discount card and that I
was abusing it.....Let me tell you what happened.....
Ok, me and my mom went shopping and we bought about 150.00 dollars worth
of stuff which we payed with cash...and of course I used my discount
card,,, then I had a vacuum cleaner which was about 70 dollars and I
only had 60 dollars so my mom said to give her the cash and she would
put it on her credit card...So without thinking I said Ok....I used my
discount card. So they said I broke the policy....Then I returned a $20
barbecue that broke and I didn't have a receipt so the girl at the
service desk returned the barbecue and I asked her if she needed my
discount card and she said no...she used my license number
instead......So I got like $1.70 from that.....Tell me....was that my
fault that she didn't take my discount card??? No..I don't think so....I
think they had something else against me....Oh they also told me that I
was never allowed back in that store again because this was an integrity
issue......I am sorry but I have never been fired before, and I got
along with everyone in the store and this was very humiliating to
me....But sorry if I bored you with my story but I wanted to tell it to
someone.....
My husband works in the automotive shop in a WAL-MART in Mississippi
(LORD help us) and they have a funny habit of having them stay late (an
hour or two) past his shift, THEN to not let them get overtime, they
make him and the others take it off at lunch breaks. Who needs a two-
three hour lunch? They have been told that they will be written up for
unauthorized overtime. Do you know if this is legal or not? They don't
even get paid for work meetings that occur after shop hours, they are
made to "knock it off" by the end of the week.
Please let me know what you think...
(Webmaster's note: The story below was written by one of the funniest people I've ever had the pleasure of "meeting." A link to her own Wal-Mart page will be found at the bottom of this page.)
Before I get into Mal-Wart details, have you ever visited Keirsey.com I
ask only because their temperament profile was one of our management
training (read stupid) exercises. This was an enlightenment for me. Of
36 ass & store mismanagers, I was the only NTJ. "That explains a lot"
was my comment to the room. Bottom line is that I was a woman, a
maverick and unique. No freakin' wonder no one understood me. In
retrospect, I think the Big One was fucking with everyone's minds when
they kept handing me promotions. Of course, those promos always came
with a disclaimer: "nobody else wanted this (shit) job so we are
offering it to you, we love your work, if only you would do something
about your personality... you are intimidating, you're not a team
player, learn to make friends (do you have any friends?), if you were a
man, you would have had your own store years ago" and so on...
I was part of the Woolco take-over. There is another corporate entity
that has mismanaged it's way into oblivion. In most respects, Wal-Mart
was a huge improvement. I got into the business because I wanted to do
"something better than waitressing," a lofty ambition for a twenty year
old. Through my own fault (I learned to do my job well and went looking
for other people to help on my free but company paid time) I worked my
way up from shoe sales clerk, which is truly worse than being a
stock/cart guy, to Jewellery Dept msmgr, Camera dept. msmgr,
section-merchandise msmgr (Woolco couldn't make up it's mind what to
call us and changed our official names every year... they should have
called us what they thought of us but Shit-For-Brains doesn't look good
on a name tag), inventory msmgr. Just about the time Woolco took a firm
stand on the pricing problem (reg. price w/o GST, reg. price w GST, sale
price w/o GST, sale price w GST -- yup, we used all four simultaneously)
Wal-Mart came in and bought the company ('94). At that point, I became
an Ass Store Msmgr, got my work hours bumped up to 60 officially ( w
Woolco it was 45 official, 60 actual) and my pay raised to Base. Wow. Be
still my beating heart. I won't even go into the horrors of operating a
business with scaffolds in the middle of fashion, bedding in the
housewares dept. and the entire store gutted and rebuilt from the inside
out. On top of that, my doctor discovered a huge lump (4") in my abdomen
and wanted to book me for immediate surgery but my store msmgr begged me
to postpone surgery for three months because he needed someone to
supervise the night construction crew and no one else wanted to do the
job. I am a moron. I did as he asked, all the while believing I would
probably die. Two weeks after surgery, with a 5 and 1/2" incision from
hip to hip, I was browbeaten into returning to work. I put in 80 plus
hours in two weeks and broke from the strain. Threw my keys through the
receiving bay doors, said a whole bunch of nasty things and feebly
wobbled out of the store with murder in my heart. Two months of
convalescence gave me opportunity to begin packing my parachute, so to
speak. Two days after I returned to work, I got transferred (for my bad
attitude) to a sister store, which was now being msmged by the "salami"
guy. They could have done me a favor and just shot me, but Wal-Mart
doesn't do any favors. I got to work 6 am to midnight shifts during the
month of December. In Jan, the salami msmgr left the company. We were
leaderless for two months and then got a real mgr, the best of seven I'd
worked with. (His hard work and sound management skills got him a
corporate dick in the ass, and a transfer to someplace other than where
he wanted to go, big surprise.) This store was actually a decent place
to work at. No politics, few psychotics and a lot of good work ethic,
even from new hires. The downside to utopia is that you begin to believe
that it exists everywhere. Wrongo bongo. I was beginning to burnout from
the hours. In addition, I was promoted to operations msmgr from
softlines, but my replacement was sent to our sister store because of an
unexpected vacancy and the Powers That Be decided I was capable of doing
the job of two ass msmgrs at the busiest time of year. In addition to
running the entire back end & stocking crew, scheduling 85 associates,
supervising the $8 million softlines area, auditing every fucking log
(there were so many I created a log to log the logs...guns, pets, cash,
layaway, blah, blah, blah) and writing weekly progress reports (I am
really minimizing my responsibilities) I was also given the job of
training a new management hire. Someone decided, I am assuming, that
since I stayed the hell away from Mal-Wart on my day off, that I must
still have some time on my hands... I raised the art of time management
to a new atmospheric height, believe me. In between the paperwork hell,
I was unloading trailers, sorting skids, pulling freight from the
stockroom, stocking consumables shelves, setting up modulars, hiring and
training staff, listening to people's problems ( I once asked why it
was, with four other ass msmgrs in the store, that I was the only one
that got paged and the answer was, "You're the only one that answers the
calls." ) and peeing only when I got home after a fourteen hour absence,
because it didn't interfere with my work. The upside was that I did get
a 10% raise. Too little, too late. I then made the grandiose error of
saying to an associate who was having an unnatural relationship with his
dog, "Don't fuck with me..." He pulled a holier-than-thou and filed a
complaint about my language. He didn't seem to mind it from the guys who
played Hearts in the smoking lounge, where he went voluntarily every
day, even tho he didn't smoke. Uh, huh. So I got transferred. To where I
wanted to be, since 1989. Obviously, someone screwed up, but I sold my
house, packed my stuff and got the hell outta Dodge (Regina) before
anyone noticed. Six months of hell with the "you need to learn how to
tolerate abuse" msmgr and I closed a twenty three year, eleven month
career with "Whatever" as I unclipped my keys, picked up my
ever-organized possessions and was out of there in under ten minutes.
Needless to say, my family and all my friends (surprise, I do have them,
Mr. Salami) all went into catatonic shock at my impetuous departure.
Geezus, I even did a live demonstration for the airport customs agent
who admired my Wal-Mart shoes. 725, new line, this part is stretchy and
yes, they are comfy as heck, under $25... Pathetic, isn't it. Wal-Mart
was like the Schwarzennegar of retail and I was horrified to discover
that it was really Richard Simmons in disguise. Yech! By the time I
left, I had worked hands-on, in every area of retail, except pets &
sporting goods. (They wouldn't trust me with guns, but they would trust
that guy that kept bragging about his break & enter and grand theft auto
dossier, although he wouldn't admit to the police assault or perjury
charges and it was really a misunderstanding, the stolen property in his
possession from the automotives department. Sure, spin me another
story...and who the hell hired this turd? He wasn't dismissed, was
moving to another city and "the manager there can deal with" the
problem...) Two more ass msmgrs left within nine months, two store
msmgrs that I knew got demoted into the pits, Mr Tolerate Abuse had a
mutiny on his hands and also got demoted. Some vindication, but doesn't
exactly get points on a resume. I worked for a private company for nine
months and got blind sided there and am now completely disillusioned
about every business in existence. Am not, however, desperate enough to
go work for McDonald's, having seen their toxic waste deposited in the
outdoor disposal. I took some Polaroid's and nearly got slapped with a
lawsuit. Got threatened, anyway. One of my peers was attempting to
describe the smell, not to mention the sight, and kept gagging. How bad
could it be? Well, the McDonald's employees that had to carry
Cherynobal-in-a-can down the Mal-Wart back hallways were a micrometer
away from projectile vomiting, as was the trainee who dared to accompany
me. Thank god I smoke and haven't the same acute sense of smell. Shortly
after the pictures, an improved air-tight container was issued. I still
don't buy the story that fermenting grease will be recycled for
automotive use... Nor would I want that shit in my car, recycled or
otherwise. I boycott Rotten Ronnie's. (I boycott any business that
doesn't permit smoking. With all the additional tax money I pump into
government coffers, non-smokers should be encouraging me and my kindred
smoking spirits not to quit. Otherwise, they'll have to pick up their
share of half the tax paying smoking public.) As for McDonald's, if
their corporate peons had a functioning brain cell between them, they
would be concerned with the Rotten Ronnie's nickname, which is
synonymous with the golden arches. Yeah, if... Did I learn anything from
my experience? Yup. Managing people requires integrity, fair play and
discipline. Nobody believes you can have these values and be a manager.
I think they're right...
(Webmaster's note: I don't know what's more despicable: Wal-Mart's attitude in this next story or this shyster seeking me out for help.)
If you know of any current or former employees who are interested in legal
action for back pay, they should contact attorney James Piotrowski,
(XXX)-XXX-XXXX.
Judge Says Case Against Wal-Mart May Proceed as Class Action
Portland, Oregon - A federal magistrate judge has recommended that a
lawsuit against Wal-Mart proceed as a class action. The lawsuit alleges
that Wal-Mart employees in Oregon were required to work without being
clocked in, and that Wal-Mart managers altered time records to reduce
workers' overtime pay.
The lawsuit, filed by former Wal-Mart employees Carolyn Thiebes and Betty
Alderson, is one of several pending lawsuits for wage and hour violations.
Faced with the possibility of thousands of claims by individual employees,
Federal Magistrate Dennis Hubel issued a Finding and Recommendation
stating that "a class action is a more efficient way to handle the potential Oregon wage and hour claims than individual litigation."
Plaintiffs' attorney James Piotrowski of Nevin, Herzfeld and Benjamin in
Boise, Idaho, said he was pleased by the Recommendation. "We believe that
thousands of Wal-Mart employees have been cheated out of their wages in
Oregon and other states." The Recommendation, if it is upheld by a
District Judge, would allow the claims of all present and former employees
in Oregon to be consolidated in a single case. "Many people are afraid to
sue their employer, the class action would protect their rights without
those workers having to be actively involved in the lawsuit," according to
Piotrowski.
The lawsuit alleges that since the early 1990's, when Wal-Mart opened its
first stores in Oregon, employees have been pressured to continue working
after they clocked out or before they clocked in, that the times when
employees clocked in and out were altered to reduce overtime pay, and that
thousands of employees did not get paid for all of the hours that they
worked. The plaintiffs have asked the Federal District Court in Portland
to certify the case as a class action. Magistrate Hubel's Recommendation
will only be final if and when a District Judge approves it. "After that
happens, notices would be sent to all of the present and former employees,
advising them of the lawsuit and what they must do to participate," said
Piotrowski.
Piotrowski, along with the Albuquerque law firm of Youngdahl & Sadin has a
similar case pending in West Virginia. "In both states we believe that
off-the-clock work and improper alterations to time cards were commonplace,
" says Piotrowski, "if enough witnesses come forward, both of these cases
could be class actions." A final ruling on whether the Oregon case will
proceed as a class action is expected later this summer, in the meantime,
the Plaintiffs continue to investigate their claims and to locate other
workers who claim to have been cheated by Wal-Mart.
For Immediate Release: June 28, 1999
Contact James Piotrowski, (XXX)XXX-XXXX
If you have any Wal-Mart horror stories of your own, write me. My email address is Crawman2@Juno.com
Check out this hilarious page just sent to me by a former Wal-Mart manager!
The Handy-Dandy Wal-Mart Manager's Manual.
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