Overstuffing Item Homes

Let me preface this post by saying that some of my favorite coworkers are overnight associates. With that said, some overnight associates are my worst enemies. There are a select few overnight associates that have a tendency to ignore shelf caps and stuff as many items on a shelf as they possibly can. Sometimes there is stress from management to overstuff homes because it eliminates or reduces the need to bin overstock. Binning, although time consuming, allows merchandise to easily be found in the event that the shelf becomes empty.

To be fair, too, overnight associates are not the only ones guilty of overstuffing homes. My department manager has a really bad habit of overstuffing item homes because she has some weird notion that more merchandise on the shelves equals more sales; this is true--to an extent-- studies show that empty shelves are not as appealing to customers and can cause a decrease in sales. However, the same is true about overstuffed shelves. If a shelf is overstuffed and appears cluttered it can cause slight discomfort and anxiety for some customers, which in turn decreases sales.

Shelf caps exist to keep shelves neat and easily accessible to customers. Caps also make it easier to zone a department because merchandise isn't intruding the next item's home or falling off of the shelf/peg. The frustrating part about overstuffing homes is that 80% of the time someone ends up having to repackage the overstock into a new box and binning it anyway. The new box is typically larger than the original box which wastes our already limited bin space.

Not only does overstuffing homes waste bin space, it also is counter productive. Rather than the overnight associate marking a case as overstock and moving on to the next one, they waste time putting product that is not needed onto the shelf. Then during the day time someone else has to spend unnecessary time finding a box that is an appropriate size for the merchandise and then they have to take the time to bin it.
In the image above, you can clearly see a peg that has been overstuffed. There are about 36 of these toy gliders on the peg. The image to the right is a closer look at the shelf tag-- we can see that the cap is actually 12, which is 1/3 of the amount that is actually on the peg.

In a typical shift I find between 3-5 homes that have been overstuffed but I rarely end up having time to bin the overstock. And on the days when I do end up binning the overstock there are still more productive ways that my time could be spent.

If managers would stop stressing the need to reduce overstock and encourage associates to listen to shelf caps the store would look a lot more orderly and it might even have a slight effect on sales.

Thanks for reading my rant! I look forward to reading your comments.

Walmart said to Raise Minimum Wage in April

Many Walmart Associates have been fighting for higher wages since around Black Friday in 2014. This morning one of my coworkers shared an article from Blue National Review and it appears that these associates' hard work has paid off. The article says Walmart has announced that it will be raising its minimum wage in the U.S. facilities from $7.25 to $9. This would appear to be good news, but for associates like me it leaves room for some skepticism.

Image courtesy of Tumblr

Currently job titles are associated with a pay level ranging from one to seven; the more difficult your job, the higher your level. Each level is a $0.20/hr base-rate increase. On top of an associate's base-rate annual raises can be added. Each year associates are evaluated by the assistant manager over their area. If the associate receives a below average evaluation, he or she will not receive a raise. If the associate receives an average evaluation he/she receives a $0.40 raise. In some rare cases associates receive an above average evaluation and receive a $0.60 raise. For a hand-full of associates that have been with the company for 10+ years the annual bonus adds up to be quite a lot.

The Walton family isn't a family that has given me much faith though. They have a history of screwing over associates so they can have a greater benefit. For example, during the first quarter of each year, stores are told that they must cut labor costs so severely that many part-time associates go from working 32 hours each week to as low as 12 hours a week. I understand that Q1 has a tendency to be a slow time for retail companies, but many of Walmart's competitors don't cut labor costs nearly that much. I have a strong feeling that with these new company-wide raises are actually just a PR scheme that will get the media off of Walmart's back for a while. I wouldn't be at all shocked if the company did away with annual evaluation raises, cut the level pay differential, did away with quarterly bonuses, or cut insurance benefits in order to prevent the Walton's from "losing" too much money.

With that said, I could be wrong, the raise in minimum pay could actually be a good thing. It might not just be a PR scheme. The Walton's may have actually realized that forcing associates into federal assistance programs when they're the richest family in the world is highly unethical. Who knows? I guess time will tell.

Hot Wheels Treasure Hunt

The Hot Wheels treasure hunt is probably the thing I hate most about being a toys associate. For those of you that don't know- Hot Wheels inserts "highly collectable" cars into random cases before they leave the warehouse. There is about one collector's car per 10 cases. These cars are valued anywhere between $10 to $50 and only cost the original consumer $0.97. The idea of the treasure hunt itself isn't bothersome at all. It's the vultures (customers) that come searching for collector's cars that get under my skin.

I have about three customers that come in weekly looking for collectable cars. Two of them I have absolutely no problem with; they are respectful and clean up after themselves for the most part. They also don't make any special requests-- like for me to check the back room for new freight that may contain Hot Wheels.

However, there is one customer in particular that I absolutely despise. He's been given the nickname Hot Wheels Guy. He always comes in around 8:30 pm because he knows that's when freight starts being pulled to the sales floor. As soon as he sees my pallets on the floor he begins circling them looking any box that looks like it may contain Hot Wheels. Once he finds a box he's interested in he'll begin to down stack the pallet until he has access to the box. After getting the box he takes it to a semi-secluded area (usually behind the bike racks) so he's less likely to be caught. He then rips open the box and digs through it, usually to be disappointed at the lack of a collectable car. After riffling through the box he usually doesn't clean up any of his mess and just leaves the carnage on the floor.

Photo courtesy of The Elkhart Truth

The problem has actually gotten so bad that certain members of management have given me permission to intervene when he touches the pallets. Unfortunately for me, one night after I'd returned from my lunch break he had already started going through the pallets. When I intervened I explained to him that I've been told that customers must wait until merchandise is on the shelf-- that way all customers have an equal opportunity to shop the merchandise. He then asked to speak to a manager and I happily paged one for him. Earlier in the day one of our assistant managers informed me that we'd be receiving Hot Wheels on the truck and told me that it was okay for me to say no to the Hot Wheels Guy.

The manager that showed up to talk to him is relatively new and hadn't been briefed on the new policy for Hot Wheels Guy. So following his training he wanted to please the customer and basically told the customer that he would have me stop zoning my department just to stock the Hot Wheels for him. Essentially my manager made me look like the ultimate jackass. So I did my walk of shame and walked over with 5 cases of Hot Wheels. I was already a bit behind that night so I was trying to hurry and throw the cars on to their pegs as quickly as possible so I could resume my regular work. However, the Hot Wheels Guy was actually pretty rude and hovered over me as I was stocking the shelf and would grab cars out of my hand before I even had a chance to put them on the pegs.

Overall the Hot Wheels Guy is so disliked among my store because he lacks certain common etiquette. He's actually made me dread Hot Wheels shipments and made me wish that Hot Wheels would do away with the treasure hunt altogether.

I'm not your damn babysitter

Parent's often think that it's acceptable to dump their children off in the Toys department to entertain the kids while they go do their shopping. NEWS FLASH: I'm not a damn babysitter; in fact, I actually despise the children that belong to Walmart shoppers. Normal children are fine, but typically (not always, but 90% of the time) Walmart shoppers lack some serious parenting skills.

Image courtesy of Pinterest.

If I were a babysitter, I'd be charging at least $12/hr rather than struggling to survive off of $8/hr. I don't get paid enough to deal with your snot-nosed little brats running through my department ruining my freshly zoned aisles.

People often think I'm exaggerating when I tell them horror stories of kids that I've had to deal with-- I'm not. The other night I had a group of 3 kids ranging in age from 5 to 9 that ran down one of my aisles throwing Barbie dolls at each other. I was up at the service desk and when I returned (I was gone a total of maybe 5 minutes) they had completely destroyed the department. There were at least 30 barbies on the floor; some of the dolls were actually broken and no longer able to be sold. I can't imagine what their home must look like if their parents let them go around throwing crap at each other there too.

That's about it for this rant. Thanks for reading!