I am a retired manager and service tech on exotic cars of 40 years. The below has not happened nor effected me but I have observed the events and felt complelled to stand up for the people who can't.
I am a part time associate who works for the simple reason to get out of the house and to be with fun people and to make the people I work with laugh.
At Wal-Mart most everyone is hired as part time with the promise of full time if they want. It is very hard to become full time. A manager will say your getting full time then not follow through. I have seen it take a year for one to become full time even though they were promised full time months ago.
Wal-Mart has been raising hourly wages to meet industry standards but only to new hires. They hire an 18 year old off the street for 2 dollars more on the hour than the older hires. Guess who gets to train the new 2 dollar more on the hour new hire? You guessed it, the one who has been dedicated and hard working for years. A lot of the people work 2 jobs to feed their families and new people getting paid more to do less is a slap in the face and cause's animosity in the work place. 99% of the time over time is a big no no which can get you a verbal write up. At wally world they call it coaching. To keep full time associates from getting overtime they will call part time people to come in on their off days. There are times they have paid me more money than a full time person would have gotten paid for overtime because I make more than they do. Can you say "where is the bookkeeper?' At the store where I work upper management are great people. I can't say the same for most of the middle management want a be's. They bring in 25 year old people from college and make them managers over a department while having no people skills, I doubt they get along with their parents either.
They make demands that they can't and or won't do themselves. If people call off from other departments they will take you from your's and have you work 3 departments at a time and complain loudly with the threat of termination because you didn't get your first job done. In the department that I work at it is always understaffed because not many people with a skill will work for the money they pay. When someone is hired who will work, a particular young manager from another department will come in and brow beat them. The last new hire lasted 4 days and we are already 3 people short. The record to quit in my department is 3 hours. Where I work the temperature can get to 100 with a humidity to match. We have always worn T shirts in the summer time to try and reject some of the heat. This is my 3rd summer there. A new young college graduate manager came in and said policy is you will wear uniform shirts, mine are long sleeves. I guess he forgets that there is a OSHA out there and I have read their policy very carefully.
The associates who are paid the least are the ones on the front lines, the cashiers. Wal-Mart caters to the lower income people and the cashiers have to take the abuse from people to whom are proving they are lower class. If a associate makes a decision and the customer calls a manager the manager will side with the customer and give them a gift card. One is trying to save Wal-Mart money and the other is giving it away. Some customers do this over and over, can you blame them?
