Pepsi Santa

I saw this display at Walmart in Zebulon, North Carolina. The picture is a little bit blurry due to the fact people were lining up to take pictures with them and/or their kids in front of the display. By the time I took this photo with my phone camera, a bunch of kids behind me ran up to pose for their parents.

Wal-Mart Achilles ’ Heel

To be fair Wal-Mart did revolutionize many things that people today take for granted. But that has led to a major fault in the way they do business. One of the obvious signs is when there are many people waiting to be checked out but with only a couple of registers open. And one of them is for ten items or less. All the while a cashier manager is walking around while talking into a walkie-talkie to see if someone can come up front to pick up some return items.

The one that is not so obvious is going on in the back of the store, particularly the receiving area. Many of them are great to work with but there are a few you wish you’d never met. As many vendors have to wake up around 2 to 3 AM in the morning to get ready for work, pick up their products from their factory and wait for the Wal-Mart receiving area to open up by at least 4:30 AM(ish).

At one local Super Wal-Mart there are two receivers who can’t decide whether they want to work or not. For that matter what mood swing they’ll be in. If they like you then you can be in and out very quickly, But if they hate you, well you can be there for a very long time as other vendors come and go until one of them gets around to checking you in. The threat of being kicked out of the store indefinitely for violating their company policy is forever flaunted about.

One morning as four vendors, who had been waiting since 4:30 AM for the receiver to open up, were told by 6 AM from the store manager that both receivers had called out sick. Someone else would arrive by 7 AM to check in the vendors. The manager couldn’t open the door because of company policy or even check them in because she doesn’t know how to do it. By then more vendors showed up as many simply left to work their other stores.

But the biggest headache comes when trying to do anything within the store. You can get permission for a display in the store but a day after you build it, they take it down to put one of their store brand items in its place. Or you get permission for a display from the store manager but nobody else working there knew anything about it. You end up taking the whole thing to the back until someone can verify you had permission. All the while the receiver is complaining about you having too much product in the backroom.

On another note; not at this store but in a few other Wal-Mart’s, when their delivery truck arrives, they will block the entire backstock area for the vendors so no one can get to it until the next day. Between 2 to 3 PM pallets are everywhere in the backroom as many vendors are unable to properly service the store will end up going home for the day or to work their other stores. All the while knowing they will be lectured the next day for not servicing the store properly.

Wal-Mart seems to forget that the vendors who service their stores are customers too; or were.

Wal Mart

Lets play a game. The first person who does not understands this situation wins.

For two days I was to work at a local Super Wal Mart store near Zebulon, NC. Everything is going great with people buying items and I’m keeping everything filled up with an occasional check on the toy department for Christmas shopping. (Safe than sorry.) Monday morning at 6 AM I receive a phone call from my supervisor to remove a weekend display from the front of the store by 8 AM. No problem, I just grab a pallet jack and within a few minutes everyone is happy.

Then reality sets in rather quickly. Which display? I called back my supervisor to find out which one to which he wasn’t sure himself but would try to get the merchandiser for that store to clarify which one while I would ask the store personnel the same question. So at 6 AM in the morning I find the night time manager who didn’t have an idea what a weekend display is which led me to the store receiver who played dumb and told me to wait for the Grocery Dept Manager who was coming in at 7 AM. By 7:30 I learned that the Grocery Manager called out sick but as luck would have it, the Store Manager and Assistant Manager both show up for work at the same time. Oh the joy.

So I see both the Manager and Assistant Manager who both knew what a weekend display was but had no idea which one until they did a store walk at 8AM. To put it simply, I cannot use a pallet jack after 8 AM in this store, The Manager and Assistant Manager have no idea what display needs to come off the floor until they do an 8 AM store walk with their checklist of approved display list, a list she was not allowed to show me unless my display was still on the sales floor after 8 AM and no one else in the whole store does not have an idea what the person in the next department is doing or required to do.

Meaning at 8 AM if the Manager sees the display on the sales floor, my company could and would lose the opportunity for future weekend pallet displays in all Wal Mart putting me in hot water with my boss and his boss and my boss’s boss boss. You get the idea. I’m screwed over more than the San Francisco treat. And at 7:50 my supervisor calls. The display to which I was supposed to remove from the sales floor by 8 AM was never placed on the sales floor. So he basically told me I didn’t have to worry about it. And 15 minutes later the Store Manager and Assistant Manager walked by and as they were looking at their notes, told me the weekend pallet display was never placed on the sales floor because the Wal Mart Grocery Manager left early Friday and never informed anyone were to place the pallet.

This was one of those rare moments of my life that my contemplation of thoughts was greatly enjoyed.

Wal-Mart policy

Wal-Mart for years have been offering low prices on many products and giving jobs to people ranging from teenagers to senior citizens. The chain store has a lot of pros and cons dealing with their business practices with most of the complaints coming from the Unions. Nevertheless, after what happened the other day, I was sure Wal-Mart practices were becoming more unionized.

Any vendor knows that if you have a lot of shelf space and displays in a store that it will take a while to make sure everything is full before you leave the store. When I serviced one of the many Wal-Mart’s in Cary, little joke there, I had a huge wall display by the customer service area, a pallet display, the main shelf area, a four foot section near the garden center plus registers displays. With so much to do, I started on the area’s that required to most attention first.

Everything was going great. I was lucky to find a decent cart to quickly do my job but as I was preparing to finish up within the next 30 minutes, union style management started to step in and make my nearly completed task drag on forever. I was filling up the one pallet display we had and then I just had the register displays and the garden center display to take care of. Two more minutes and I would be heading back to the receiving area to load up the last cart for the store and then it happened.

I work the store from time to time so I have gotten to know a few people who work there. The pallet display was close to the register so I easily notice one of their many assistant managers go and call someone on the phone. This person walked pass me saying hello and I greeted him as well as he continued to head to the register area and call someone from within the store. After he got off the phone, I heard a page over the intercom paging me to go back to the receiving area. Upon arriving and speaking with the receiver, I couldn’t believe our conversation.

She said she was called by the assistant manager, the same person who I exchanged greetings with, to ask if I was going to take care of the display in the garden shop. I told her that as soon as I finished with taking care of the pallet display that the garden shop display was next on the list along with the register displays as well. She said OK and she would let the assistant manager know. After she called him and gave a reply I then left to continue to work. As I finished the pallet display within one minute, I was heading to the backroom with the now empty cart the assistant manager came and spoke with me.

Now, this is the same person I exchanged greeting with, the same one who called the receiver and received a reply from her. This same person walked up to me and asked me the same question he asked the receiver and already knew my reply. He was now talking to me as if he owned the place. Like he was the sheriff and I was under arrest kind of conversation. I repeated the same response I gave the receiver and then I said something that he did not like.

I asked him if the receiver had contacted him already with my response. It was one of those situations where I knew and he knew that I knew. He made it clear that if the display wasn’t taken care of then I would have to take everything off so they could make room for something else. I almost laughed in his face but I was able to compose myself, somewhat.

First, that display is a paid display so he couldn’t do anything anyways. Second, two cases filled it back up. I could have easily fronted it up to make it look full. Technically it did look full. Third, I was having a kid with more pimples on his face than on my but talking to me as if my life was in his hands. Being on an airplane in South America and having a run-in with Peruvian officials carrying automatic rifles informing me to not exit the plane which didn't work, experiencing the military in Korea, nearly getting killed by a Native American in upper California for video taping a sponsored Native American event just to name a few experiences in my life. To basically put it in a nut shell, his shit didn’t stink.

He did inform me that he would have asked me personally instead of calling the receiver but he didn’t want to bother me. He was followed policy and contacted the receiver so instead of me finishing within 30 minutes, I spent an extra 15 minutes going though company policy sounding like an infomercial when the one guy who started it all could have just simply have spoken with me to begin with. Even the garden Center cashiers were asked me about the display while I was filling up the display by the resgister. This is the same Wal-Mart that years ago once wanted credit for a pallet of damaged 12 pack can drinks that they put outside in the rain to make more room in the receiving area.

Wal-Mart new Policy

Wal-Mart is trying a bold move to keep customers shopping in their stores instead of going to Target. Many of their new store policies are actually Target policies that Wal-Mart has modified. Case in point; all Targets have a cut off time of 8 AM for pallet jacks on the sales floor. Wal-Mart has taken this policy and has banned all vendors from using the pallet jacks on the sales floor. That means for all those displays of soda, chips, beer etc… that are placed throughout the huge Wal-Mart Super Centers, are been placed there using nothing more than a hand cart with multiple trips from the backroom to the sales floor.

A few weeks ago I was helping a Pepsi vendor work his store in Smithfield, NC. It took us seven (7) hours to work the store. That was filling the drink isle, building 2 pallet displays near the other end of the store, fill up 2 other pallet displays and end caps plus build 2 end cap displays. We only had one 15 minute break, no lunch and a Wal-Mart manager tour constantly hovering over all the venders like Freddy Krueger in your dreams.

In an effort to keep their stores from being littered by pallets all over the store, Wal-Mart will eventually do away with pallet displays and set up end caps similar to the Target end caps by 2010. The Clayton, NC Super Wal-Mart is undergoing a remodel of this type now. One of the main reasons for doing away with the pallet displays was an incident at one of their Wal-Mart stores in Cary, NC that cost the company $5,000.

It seems a local Fire Marshal was helping his wife with her shopping when he began to count all the Wal-Mart freight, many of the nearly 100 pallets still shrink wrapped and spread left throughout the store. He then excused himself from his wife to take a look into the backroom area. There he found pallets throughout the backroom area that one had to walk almost sideways to navigate around them. As he and his wife finished shopping he drove behind the store to see a multitude of shrink wrapped merchandise on pallets in a makeshift corral by the receiving area. Needless to say an official visit was immediately made to the store.

Needless to say the store Manager had to make a trip to the main headquarters which over time the store eventually received a new store manager. Especially after 5 truck loads of merchandise were removed from the store. Wal-Mart did take this message to heart and decided they do not want a repeat of this incident. So by adopting new policies Wal-Mart is cleaning up all their stores in a series of steps.

Those being as follows:
1. It is the Vendors fault
2. Make it harder for all the Vendors to service the stores
3. Keep non-Vendor items empty or nearly empty on the shelf.
4. Take away Vendor displays, without any notice, especially if it is selling better than the Wal-Mart brands.
5. Forget that Vendors are or were customers
6. Copy Target