When will you get more in stock?

Being a sales associate means that you frequently have customers asking you to check in the back for an item. What customers don't understand is that the back room in most stores is incredibly small and departments have limited space for overstock. This means that most of the time, if the item is not on the shelf, it's not in the back room either. When I inform the customer that I don't have an item in the back, the next question is usually "When will you be getting more?". This is a fair question. However, what most customers don't understand is that most people don't understand is that the warehouse seldom gives us any sort of idea of when we'll get a certain item in more than 48 hours in advance. Delivery estimates from the distribution center would be incredibly unreliable because so many factors change what freight is loaded onto a truck.

My handheld terminal will only display to me the number of an item we have on-hand, if the item is in the back room, if it's on order, if it's in the warehouse, and if it's in transit from the warehouse to our store. I don't mind explaining this much to a customer, what gets frustrating to me though, is when a customer complains about how dumb it is that our technology is that limited. You think I don't agree with you? I work for a company that makes billions of dollars each year, but we're still running Windows 95 on most of the computers in the store. I know how stupid it is. But that doesn't change the fact that I can't tell you when we'll have more in stock. When I offer the solution of checking another store for their item, most customers scoff at the idea of having to drive to another store. I understand the customer's frustration, but I'm literally exhausting all of my options to get the item in your hands today. I wish customers were more considerate.

Procrastination Nation

T'was the night before Easter and all through the store parents were frantic. "Do you have anything left?!?" No. No we do not. You waited until less than 12 hours before Easter morning to shop for your child's Easter presents. This sort of situation happens before holidays and birthdays. I might sound rude for saying this, but I have a really hard time feeling bad for parents that wait this long-- especially when they take out their frustration on me. If your child absolutely had to have a specific toy for the occasion, why the hell did you wait until the last minute to buy it??

Last night I had a parent scream at me because we were out of Easter grass. My only response was "you could try Dollar Tree".  We've been out of Easter grass for almost a week.

The thing that people don't understand about seasonal items (Easter, Halloween, Christmas, Valentine's, St. Patrick's Day, etc.) is that we don't reorder these items. So once we run out, we've run out. That way we avoid losing money when we have to discount the product after the holiday.

Rude Customers

When you work with the public it is inevitable that you'll deal with a few customers that are less than ideal. Normally I'm able to resolve customer issues or at least better explain a situation to them. However, the other night I experienced a customer that really got under my skin.

I was in the backroom binning some overstock when another sales associate came and got me because there was a frustrated customer in my department. So I made my way back to the sales floor and introduced myself to the customer. After introducing myself, I asked her to explain the situation to me. In her high-pitched squeaky voice, she yelled "All of you guys are just incompetent fools. I hate shopping here, I don't know why they only hire high school drop outs. The shelf tag says this item is $13 but then when I went to the price checker it rang up as $34.99"!. My first thought was that the overnight stockers had stuffed this item in an incorrect home. However, after scanning the item I noticed that the item was in the correct home.

After digging a little bit deeper I found out that the item had gone on rollback about two weeks ago and when the rollback price fell off, my department manager neglected to change the shelf tag back to the regular price. I explained everything to her and told her that we would still honor the $13 price, I would just have to escort her to the register and verify the price change for the cashier. Unfortunately, for some reason, that wasn't the answer she wanted to hear. She then proceeded to make personal attacks on me and caused a scene. I let her tire herself out like a screaming toddler and then asked her if there was anything else I could help her with. She rolled her eyes and I walked away.

As much as I tried not to let her personal attacks get under my skin, they really did. She had said some really hurtful things about me personally. Even though she was probably the worst person I'd ever encountered, I maintained a professional demeanor and gave her good customer service. I don't get paid enough for this kind of bullshit. I really don't. For a final thought, I'll leave you with this Tumblr post. It's the most accurate post I've ever seen in my life.

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.

What's the Cost of Low-Price?

Walmart is one of the largest corporations in the world and is based in Arkansas. In 2013 the company’s gross revenue was $473.6 billion (McGrath, 2014). Many Americans believe that Walmart is such a strong business because they’ve got a great business model— they would be wrong. Walmart appeals to many Americans because they’re able to beat their competitors’ prices. However, these massive savings often lead to the company cutting corners in other areas.

For example, in order for me to sign up for health coverage through the company this year I would have had to deduct roughly $75 per paycheck. A deduction like this doesn’t sound too bad for health coverage until you take in to account that my average paycheck is about $400. Luckily for me I’m under age 26 and am still covered by my parents’ insurance because I’m a student. For many of Walmart’s employees the health coverage is just unaffordable. Because Walmart’s health coverage for hourly associates is so expensive, many of them have turned to the government for assistance. Walmart associates cost taxpayers $6.2 billion dollars each year in Medicaid, Food Stamps, and other government assistance programs (O'Connor, 2014). Statistics like this should infuriate the general public because shopping at Walmart is actually costing them more money than they think. Their tax money is being wasted to pay for benefits because Walmart is too greedy to pay them for their associates.

Another way that Walmart cuts corners is by intentionally understaffing its' stores. As most business people will tell you, labor is one of the biggest costs that a company can face. January happens to be the end of Walmart's fiscal year. So many store managers cut hours in an effort to help them achieve a nicer bonus. The store manager of a facility ranking in a similar division to mine typically earns a bonus of somewhere between $100,000 and $150,000. This amount is given to them as a lump-sum and is on top of their annual salary, which I have been told is around $120,000.

I'm not complaining that store managers receive that level of compensation because they do work long, hard hours and they have earned it. What I find frustrating is that in order to help them get a few extra thousand dollars on their bonus they are cutting hours so severely that people's families are going hungry. For example, one of my coworkers who is by definition, a part-time associate, is regularly scheduled 32 hours each week. During the first week of February he was only scheduled 12.5 hours. That adds up to be about $170 of wages that he usually takes home but won't take home that week. Many people don't seem to think $170 is much money, but when you're living off of less than $900/month that's quite a loss.

Cutting hours to this extent means that there are long stretches of times where departments are unattended by an associate, often leaving customers without anyone to assist them, for extended periods of time.

I hope this post has opened your eyes a bit and has encouraged to make an effort to shop at your local grocery store. I hope you have a great week and I'll talk to you later! :)