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Quote:

Originally Posted by Stealhead (Post 2142407)

Actually you said "few" not three in you OP.:hmm2:

At any rate to me a 15 billion dollar profit sounds like a lot.Of course look at how massive the operation is all the properties all the costs in shipping all of that it must be pretty expensive even on their scale.

The way I see it Wal-Mart will either bring itself down or change for the better(likely not but you never know). Funny thing is Target also has not performed well as of late either and they are just about as "wonderful" as Wal-Mart.

My guess is that fewer people are doing all of their shopping at Wal-Mart or Target.They must be going to a regular grocery store more often(it would explain Wal-Marts vigorous add campaigns as of late). Also I bet people are buying electronics either at other stores or online.Of course the thing is many of Wal-Marts competitors treat their employees just about as well as Wally World does so in the grand scheme of things it likely is not improving the lives of most people that work in retail.

No, that 15.7 billion dollars in profit. That means that after theyve already paid for their employees and business expenses, they made 15.7 billion dollars. Where does that money go? Into the pockets of the people at the top. Instead of using those profits for the good of the whole company, and pocketing less, they take it all for themselves. All these insurance companies and banks and corporate moguls constantly talk about how hard they and their company have been hit hard by tough times when in reality the rich have never, ever been richer. Truth is, when the moguls cut corners, they don't do it for the corporation's (and everyone in it) well-being, they do it for themselves.

http://www.utrend.tv/v/9-out-of-10-a...-blowing-fact/

Sounds like a regression into the days of Rockefeller and Carnegie to me. Not only that, but the 1% of the 1% (.01%) gave 1.68 billion in campaign contributions in the last election cycle: nearing 30% of all donations given. Every single house rep and congressman that won an election in 2012 recieved money from the 1% of the 1%

What the heck are you trying to argue? I said in that post that 15.7 billion dollars is a lot of profit to me.It was meant as a joke myself having only ever had at most $8,000.00 in my bank account and the most money I ever held in my hands was $10,000.00 which was a loan for personal loan given to me in cash by a bank teller.

To me 15.7 billion dollars seems like a lot.I am aware that Wal-Mart obviously expends a huge sum of money to make that much and of course the lions share of that expenditure is not in payroll.

I understand what the term profit means.

@SailorSteve I'm not 100% sure the reasoning all of this happened to my cousin might have just been a particularly mean higher up.Also he assumed that perhaps this person was trying to judge how well the people handled their own area of responsibility and was displeased for this reason because in theory it was a "failure" on the other guys behalf.

Might have just been a grumpy person who knows some people feel that if they do not find something wrong they are not doing their jobs.Or like NCOs in the military one sits and yells all day and the other commands respect in a different way.

also I can only relay the story as my cousin told it to me.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Stealhead (Post 2142700)

I misread what you said, my apologies. The rest of my post wasn't directed at you, though, more of my take on it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Stealhead (Post 2142702)

@SailorSteve I'm not 100% sure the reasoning all of this happened to my cousin might have just been a particularly mean higher up...

also I can only relay the story as my cousin told it to me.

Sorry if what I said came out wrong. I wasn't questioning the story. As I said, I just found it interesting that different managers would be so different. I assumed that my experience was official policy, but maybe not.

No worries fellows. Wally world isn't worth fighting over.

I've worked more than my fair share of jobs where the owner/s reaped all the benefits and treated me and my fellow employees like we were dirt to be walked upon.
I had one owner chew me out for sending a customer to his cousins' business. When I caught my breath and explained the situation, he returned later and apologized. That kind of freaked me out.:huh:
Funny story about that boss...
One of his sons would work there during the summer break from college. This kid was a real piece of work. He would walk around the shop drinking soda pop. Not soda pop that he bought. It was usually someone else's or one that had been abandoned days earlier. When he walked, his head would snap back and look up every three or so steps. Like his legs were attached to his head with a rubber band that tightened up as he went along. He possessed that typical rich kid, silver spoon arrogance.

He nicked a drink of my Coca Cola one day and my co-worker saw him do it. So I hocked up a big old loogie, deposited it in the can and set it out for him to find. I checked it an hour later and it was empty.:haha:
One summer they put him in the service department to fetch customer cars after they had been serviced. He brought one out of the shop, scraping every guard pole on the way. He walked up to the customer, handed him his keys and took the mans' drink right out of his hand and took a swig, handed it back and told him what he had done to his car, shrugged his shoulders saying sorry and walked away.Three steps and snap, look skyward.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wolferz (Post 2142744)

Big plus on the lung button.;)

That guy sounds like a true definition of 'waste of skin'.

Quote:

Big plus on the lung button.;)

That guy sounds like a true definition of 'waste of skin'.

Oh, he was.
If I could have stabbed him to death with a rusty screwdriver in a restroom and gotten away with it, I would have.:D

Everyone that worked in upper management was related by blood or marriage. A totally nepotistic bunch.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wolferz (Post 2142763)

A totally nepotistic bunch.

One of the best jobs I ever had was at a warehouse for an international book distributorship. Great because of the way we were paid, the days off, the free books, the guaranteed raises and more. They were absolutely anti-nepotism, which is a good thing but made me a little sad. One of the team leaders was the stepson of the manager, so even though he was one of the best they had and very much deserved to move into management, he never could, at least until his stepdad retired. A good policy, to be sure, but sometimes I think a good thing can be carried too far.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wolferz (Post 2142763)

Everyone that worked in upper management was related by blood or marriage. A totally nepotistic bunch.

The thing about that is family are not always the best workers of course people with that mind set never realize it or they just assume that non-relatives would be worse and less trust worthy.

Some people are the exact opposite my uncle owns a machine shop and some of his sons and other relatives have worked for him.Only he never showed any favoritism towards family.Of all the management only one of them is a relative one of his daughters actually and he actually fired one of his sons.

In the town I live near there was a very popular diner well the place went out of business here about a year ago.The was the daughter who was in charge of the servers and the front of the house well she was stealing money and had been for years her parents did not find out until it was too late apparently she had been doing so for years and the parents never suspected it of course until it was too late.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Armistead (Post 2142614)

Some manager would gather them all up, get them in lines and do exercises while spewing some motivational speech.....

"OK, you guys can do it, 20 jumping jacks..yay Walmart employees"..

What utter BS........

Yeah, I worked for WalMart for almost 4 years. They were the longest 4 years of my life. We would start our nights about 10 o'clock at night, in the Subway area, doing stretches and what not...doing a "cheer" for Walmart. The real motivation though was purely of the negative sort. The managers frequently made threats of "accountability", and reminders that we were in an "at will" state; meaning the company could fire us at will, for any reason, and that there were plenty of potential replacements applying for the jobs. Basically, we were expected to work at 110% every single night. Needless to say, morale was rock-bottom.

About the profitability; one of the managers there told us that while Walmart was making a profit things were not well in the company. Most of the profit and expansion was due to overseas stores, and that in the US profits were not very good. He also said that they had recently closed some warehouses and distribution centers in our state, and thinned out some of the management ranks. It became obvious Walmart was not a happy family.

Some of the people in management were ok, but even if they liked you, there wasn't anything they could do for you. From what they old timers said, years ago, if you worked hard, you could get a raise and a promotion to a better job. By the time I started, those things were long past. The corporate heirarchy dictated that the rules be mindlessly and rigidly enforced, whether they made sense or not. They had computer generated printouts outlining how much freight we had to work in each department, and God help you if you didn't reach their holy targets. Naturally, these targets did not take into account the facts on the ground. One night manager, was famous in our store, for being a world-class SOB. Sometimes, he could be reasonable, but when things didn't go well, he would threaten, harass, and demand. He made our lives a living hell. I used to pray he would be transfered to another store (or be hit by a truck), and I'm sure I wasn't the only one. One of our night-shift associates called him Dr. Jeckell.

We had two assistant managers on nights. Sometimes, one of the day managers would come in to help out, or set things up. Nobody really wanted the job, the night managers were the ones that lost the coin toss. Some of the better ones probably would have been reasonable, if it was their store, and they had the latitude, but they didn't. Turnover among the associates was very high.

From my perspective, Walmart made it's own problems. We had between 12 and 18 associates on the night shift, to stock the store. This number was marginal, at best. We might have been able to do ok with this number, but management seemed wholly unable to manage the freight and make rational decisions. We were chronically short of space in recieving, and therefore, extra pallets had to be worked just to consolidate them and free up space. This was a very inefficient way to do things, and we were in a constant state of exhaustion. It only got worse during the holidays. In my opinion, we had just enough people to stock the store, not enough to stock the store, work all the overstock, clean up the store, and pander to corporate whims. They kept saying there was going to be a new system implemented that would eliminate the overstock problem, but whatever changes they were making seemed to aggravate the situation. Having the shelves completely full was a corporate fetish.

We were told, that in the future, we would scan in and out of our departments with our badges, so management would be able to track us every minute to make sure we were "productive". It was as if the suits sat around trying to think of ways to make our jobs harder and more unpleasent.

I delivered a load to a Wal*Mart warehouse distribution center once. Their rules were just as inane. We weren't allowed to sit under the trailer while it was being unloaded. We had to drop the trailer and place load jacks under the nose, then go park our tractor in a designated area.

Wal-Mart thy name is inefficiency and unnecessary work:down:.

Quote:

Originally Posted by TorpX (Post 2143320)

Yeah, I worked for WalMart for almost 4 years. They were the longest 4 years of my life. We would start our nights about 10 o'clock at night, in the Subway area, doing stretches and what not...doing a "cheer" for Walmart. The real motivation though was purely of the negative sort. The managers frequently made threats of "accountability", and reminders that we were in an "at will" state; meaning the company could fire us at will, for any reason, and that there were plenty of potential replacements applying for the jobs. Basically, we were expected to work at 110% every single night. Needless to say, morale was rock-bottom.

About the profitability; one of the managers there told us that while Walmart was making a profit things were not well in the company. Most of the profit and expansion was due to overseas stores, and that in the US profits were not very good. He also said that they had recently closed some warehouses and distribution centers in our state, and thinned out some of the management ranks. It became obvious Walmart was not a happy family.

Some of the people in management were ok, but even if they liked you, there wasn't anything they could do for you. From what they old timers said, years ago, if you worked hard, you could get a raise and a promotion to a better job. By the time I started, those things were long past. The corporate heirarchy dictated that the rules be mindlessly and rigidly enforced, whether they made sense or not. They had computer generated printouts outlining how much freight we had to work in each department, and God help you if you didn't reach their holy targets. Naturally, these targets did not take into account the facts on the ground. One night manager, was famous in our store, for being a world-class SOB. Sometimes, he could be reasonable, but when things didn't go well, he would threaten, harass, and demand. He made our lives a living hell. I used to pray he would be transfered to another store (or be hit by a truck), and I'm sure I wasn't the only one. One of our night-shift associates called him Dr. Jeckell.

We had two assistant managers on nights. Sometimes, one of the day managers would come in to help out, or set things up. Nobody really wanted the job, the night managers were the ones that lost the coin toss. Some of the better ones probably would have been reasonable, if it was their store, and they had the latitude, but they didn't. Turnover among the associates was very high.

From my perspective, Walmart made it's own problems. We had between 12 and 18 associates on the night shift, to stock the store. This number was marginal, at best. We might have been able to do ok with this number, but management seemed wholly unable to manage the freight and make rational decisions. We were chronically short of space in recieving, and therefore, extra pallets had to be worked just to consolidate them and free up space. This was a very inefficient way to do things, and we were in a constant state of exhaustion. It only got worse during the holidays. In my opinion, we had just enough people to stock the store, not enough to stock the store, work all the overstock, clean up the store, and pander to corporate whims. They kept saying there was going to be a new system implemented that would eliminate the overstock problem, but whatever changes they were making seemed to aggravate the situation. Having the shelves completely full was a corporate fetish.

We were told, that in the future, we would scan in and out of our departments with our badges, so management would be able to track us every minute to make sure we were "productive". It was as if the suits sat around trying to think of ways to make our jobs harder and more unpleasent.

Much of what you describe is pretty common at many companies sadly. When I got out of the Air Force I took a job at a call center just to have some income while I weighed my options and found a better job.The place was terrible one serious problem was that there where hardly any lower level management "team leaders" whose primary job was to actually make sure that everyone was doing the job and actually logged into the the system answering the phones.As a result the more lazy workers would simply sit at their desk and log themselves into an auxiliary that was only observable by the team leader on their computer.

The morale was pretty low as it was made pretty clear that there where few chances for advancement.You where always getting talked to by QA for something no matter what it was impossible to satisfy them.Luckily at least this was not a sales type job it was customer support for Verzion DSL(a contract though we where not employees of Verzion). Still though the "metrics" where down right ridiculous and nearly impossible to meet and as a result about 90% of the employees where constantly being leaned on.

We had the ID cards and you had to swipe them as you went through different areas in addition security had cameras all over the place and they would catch anyone who had not swiped their cards.This place had a ridiculous turn over rate I bet easily 5 or 6 people quit each week of course every two weeks they would hire about 25 new people most times a month later only a handful of each new batch would still be there.

The only thing I liked about that job was the 1 hour long lunch break I'd go out to my car and listen to the radio and take a little nap that was the highlight of the day.

I worked there for about 8 months before I found a better job and I have to admit that call center is the only place that I outright quit without giving any advance notice they did not deserve that respect and I had no intent to put them on my resume or use them as a reference.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Stealhead (Post 2143449)

That sounds like Convergys. A call center outfit based in Cincinnati Ohio.
They opened a call center near my home and the wife and I both worked there for awhile. Started out with customer service for DirectTV. The Hughes people didn't like the way the center was managed so they left. We went through DSL customer service afterward. I got sick of their pandering and quit mid shift one night. The place is closed now.:O:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wolferz (Post 2143695)

I got sick of their pandering and quit mid shift one night.

That is the way I quit places that I hated working at. I left one place and dropped their loaded trailer on its' nose for them.

Quote:

Originally Posted by swamprat69er (Post 2143704)

That is the way I quit places that I hated working at. I left one place and dropped their loaded trailer on its' nose for them.

Go find Hercules to crank that sucker up again.:rock:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wolferz (Post 2144211)

Go find Hercules to crank that sucker up again.:rock:

When they phoned me to tell me to crank it up I told them to 'Go' (but finding Hercules wasn't in the response) and the rest isn't printable here.

Quote:

Originally Posted by swamprat69er (Post 2144246)

When they phoned me to tell me to crank it up I told them to 'Go' (but finding Hercules wasn't in the response) and the rest isn't printable here.

LOL:haha:

It would have been extremely poetic if the dollies had pierced the pavement. :up:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wolferz (Post 2144421)

LOL:haha:

It would have been extremely poetic if the dollies had pierced the pavement. :up:

I haven't been back on the property since. That was over 40 years ago at the start of my driving career.