Either fat or force. Either is terrifying. Why Kali why? Was it then taken as a token of the destruction?
My porcelain. Let me show you it.
Showing posts with label miscellaneous. Show all posts
Showing posts with label miscellaneous. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
A new low
We have now reached a new low. Someone manage to BREAK one of the toilet seats in the mens' loo. Not the hinge. One of the arms.
Wednesday, October 03, 2007
Why won't Wal-Mart price-match another Wal-Mart?
It's turning into Wal-Mart 101 Week here at BTC. A consumer affairs segment on a Tulsa TV station ran a shocking expose on how one Wal-Mart won't price match other Wal-Marts - or walmart.com for that matter. Watch the video here. via Consumerist
Normal, intelligent, I-don't-shop-at-Wal-Mart (and wouldn't if you paid me and held my first-born hostage) human beings might have questions about this policy. After all, aren't the prices for cheap plastic crap controlled (just like the temperature and lighting in the stores) from Bentonville? And shouldn't it be the same from one sterile big box to the next?
Not exactly.
The base price for items does indeed come down from on high.
Then, prices are then checked against those at competing retailers within a certain geographic area (it varies by store and by market - ours is five miles because we have at six Wal-Marts in town).
Let's say the base price on Wal-Mart light bulbs was $1.60. If there is a Target within five miles selling the exact same light bulbs for $1.50, Wal-Mart marks them down to $1.48. If there's no competition, the light bulbs remain $1.60.
Our store has the issue of "Why don't you price-match other Wal-Marts" all the time. We have three Publix stores, an Albertsons, a Kash-n-Karry and a barely-hanging-on Winn-Dixie within five miles of us. Our grocery prices are somewhere below the floor because of all the competition. But there's no general merchandise or hardware store within our competition area - other than a Dollar General and a CVS drug store. Thus, no reason to discount toys, coffeemakers, tools, garden supplies, etc.
The Wal-Mart Supercenter across town - the one we get asked to price-match ALL THE TIME - has a Target right across the road. Another one of the regular Wal-Marts we get price-match requests from is less than a mile from a Kmart and a huge Bealls.
Those stores are dropping prices in response to sales at Target and Kmart. They are most likely taking a loss on a $10 coffeemaker to get you through the door of the Wal-Mart (and not the Target or Kmart) in the hopes you will buy something else.
The prevailing thought (if you apply that term to the logic coming out of Bentonville) behind the certain-stores-will-mark-down-certain-things strategy is that, essentially, consumers are lazy.
Wal-Mart's "saturation" plan can include as much as one Supercenter every five miles - thus limiting the amount of pavement the suburban hausfrau has to drive over to get her milk, bread, eggs and bad Metro 7 fashion. If you only ever go to Store A, you won't know that store B has coffeemakers on sale $10 cheaper.
Normal, intelligent, I-don't-shop-at-Wal-Mart (and wouldn't if you paid me and held my first-born hostage) human beings might have questions about this policy. After all, aren't the prices for cheap plastic crap controlled (just like the temperature and lighting in the stores) from Bentonville? And shouldn't it be the same from one sterile big box to the next?
Not exactly.
The base price for items does indeed come down from on high.
Then, prices are then checked against those at competing retailers within a certain geographic area (it varies by store and by market - ours is five miles because we have at six Wal-Marts in town).
Let's say the base price on Wal-Mart light bulbs was $1.60. If there is a Target within five miles selling the exact same light bulbs for $1.50, Wal-Mart marks them down to $1.48. If there's no competition, the light bulbs remain $1.60.
Our store has the issue of "Why don't you price-match other Wal-Marts" all the time. We have three Publix stores, an Albertsons, a Kash-n-Karry and a barely-hanging-on Winn-Dixie within five miles of us. Our grocery prices are somewhere below the floor because of all the competition. But there's no general merchandise or hardware store within our competition area - other than a Dollar General and a CVS drug store. Thus, no reason to discount toys, coffeemakers, tools, garden supplies, etc.
The Wal-Mart Supercenter across town - the one we get asked to price-match ALL THE TIME - has a Target right across the road. Another one of the regular Wal-Marts we get price-match requests from is less than a mile from a Kmart and a huge Bealls.
Those stores are dropping prices in response to sales at Target and Kmart. They are most likely taking a loss on a $10 coffeemaker to get you through the door of the Wal-Mart (and not the Target or Kmart) in the hopes you will buy something else.
The prevailing thought (if you apply that term to the logic coming out of Bentonville) behind the certain-stores-will-mark-down-certain-things strategy is that, essentially, consumers are lazy.
Wal-Mart's "saturation" plan can include as much as one Supercenter every five miles - thus limiting the amount of pavement the suburban hausfrau has to drive over to get her milk, bread, eggs and bad Metro 7 fashion. If you only ever go to Store A, you won't know that store B has coffeemakers on sale $10 cheaper.
Tuesday, October 02, 2007
Wal-Mart and the customer service problem
A Business Week story titled "Wal-Mart: A Snap Inspection" broke this morning. It analyzes the company's difficulties in growing market share and boosting a lagging stock price if its front-line workers are disinterested or indeed actively hostile to customers. You can read the full story here or by clicking the link above. Disclaimer: Behind the Counter was featured in the Dec. 11, 2006 issue of Business Week in the "Blogspotting" section.
The story lays out the facts that Bentonville's brain trust can cut prices all it wants but a bad store experience, poorly laid out, unattractive stores, out-of-stock merchandise and surly, unhelpful employees are going to drive shoppers away faster than "Save Money, Live Better" can reel them in.
Well, duh. That took an investigative journalist to figure out.
I'd like to address some of the things the reporters from Business Week either don't know or apparently forgot to find out while researching the article.
They repeatedly complain about store employees being unable to offer assistance in finding out if an item is at another store or if a shipment is coming in. Let's break down how this works at the Wal-Mart.
1. There exists in the Wal-Mart computer system a method of telling if an item is at another store. However, a member of management has to SPECIFICALLY give you the option in the computer system to use it. Regular sales associates DO NOT have those options and wouldn't know it if it slapped them. Plus, there are about 100,000 different items in the store. I need the 10-digit UPC code.
2. "Shipments" is a laughable term. We get two to three trucks a night. If Bentonville decides to send it, we get it. Sometimes, we don't even get bags to put the damn paid-for merchandise in and we have to GO TO SAM'S AND BUY BAGS.
3. The phrase I dread the most is "Can you call another Wal-Mart?" Yes. I can. I don't want to, because they are just as bad as mine.
4. The staff is hostile. Well, let's examine that for a moment. I'll tell you why the employees are hostile.
Two Sundays ago, I went in at 2 p.m. The "wonderful" magic scheduling computer had two people on the Service Desk from 7-3 on a Sunday and just me all night till 11 p.m. My first break was essentially long enough to buy a Coke and a bag chips and go to the bathroom. The registers literally lock you out after five hours and 45 minutes because federal labor laws do not allow you to work six hours without a lunch. I finished the customer I was working on and walked to the time clock.
They begged a girl to stay an extra 30 minutes and came and found me and told me I had to come back in 30 minutes because it was busy. I ate and went back and didn't stop again until 11 p.m. In the entire time I was there from 2 - 11 p.m. I had about 30 minutes off the clock, plus about 10 minutes for my break. I never snapped at a customer or lost my cool, but I can and will say that I probably gave less than my usual HAPPY-HAPPY as the night wore on.
5. Items are locked up or not available for touch-me-play-with-me displays. Please refer to the recurring "Five Finger Fridays" posts for why this is.
Look. It's a Wal-Mart. It is filled with the ghetto trash of humanity looking for a place to buy cheap plastic crap by the buggy-full. House of Wal shoppers are NOT discriminating customers. Until the people in Bentonville figure this out, nothing is going to change. Until they staff it and get better loss prevention methods in place, the computers, iPods and televisions need to be bolted down or they will continue to walk off.
Heck, we can't even leave our DISPLAY power tools out any more. The Hardware department manager got a new set of Black & Decker displays on Thursday and put them out. The displays have the cords cut off at an inch long and are attached to the shelves by metal and plastic security strips. She came in on Monday to find FIVE drills, saws and nail guns all gone. If it is not under glass, it is free for the taking.
6. Lack of service in some areas. I'll second that.
Our electronics department is now empty after 9 p.m. every night of the week now, because hours were cut across the board at our store. Last month, all full time employees got 38 hours. Three weeks ago, they got 36 hours. Two weeks ago, they got 32. Last week, they got 29. They will continue to get 29 until our sales go back up and they can justify giving them more hours. Well, the Catch-22 is that the service our customers are getting is so bad our sales are going to stay down. Typical Wal-Logic.
7. The "do you have this?" question. Look. I know. You're in a store looking to buy something. We're a Customer Service slave. We're there to help.
However, you need to understand. You're in a Wal-Mart. I'm making less than $9 an hour and I probably don't speak real good English. Nor do I have affordable health insurance.
Also, whoever you asked that question gets asked some variation thereof at LEAST 200 times a day from people who are completely incapable of looking three feet to the left for the shampoo or the coffeemakers or the blue shirts.
MY RECOMMENDATION TO WAL-MART:
If Wal-Mart wants to cater to the upscale target demographic, it needs to hire better employees, train them better and pay them enough to care. Telling them to care simply isn't going to do it.
The story lays out the facts that Bentonville's brain trust can cut prices all it wants but a bad store experience, poorly laid out, unattractive stores, out-of-stock merchandise and surly, unhelpful employees are going to drive shoppers away faster than "Save Money, Live Better" can reel them in.
Well, duh. That took an investigative journalist to figure out.
I'd like to address some of the things the reporters from Business Week either don't know or apparently forgot to find out while researching the article.
They repeatedly complain about store employees being unable to offer assistance in finding out if an item is at another store or if a shipment is coming in. Let's break down how this works at the Wal-Mart.
1. There exists in the Wal-Mart computer system a method of telling if an item is at another store. However, a member of management has to SPECIFICALLY give you the option in the computer system to use it. Regular sales associates DO NOT have those options and wouldn't know it if it slapped them. Plus, there are about 100,000 different items in the store. I need the 10-digit UPC code.
2. "Shipments" is a laughable term. We get two to three trucks a night. If Bentonville decides to send it, we get it. Sometimes, we don't even get bags to put the damn paid-for merchandise in and we have to GO TO SAM'S AND BUY BAGS.
3. The phrase I dread the most is "Can you call another Wal-Mart?" Yes. I can. I don't want to, because they are just as bad as mine.
4. The staff is hostile. Well, let's examine that for a moment. I'll tell you why the employees are hostile.
Two Sundays ago, I went in at 2 p.m. The "wonderful" magic scheduling computer had two people on the Service Desk from 7-3 on a Sunday and just me all night till 11 p.m. My first break was essentially long enough to buy a Coke and a bag chips and go to the bathroom. The registers literally lock you out after five hours and 45 minutes because federal labor laws do not allow you to work six hours without a lunch. I finished the customer I was working on and walked to the time clock.
They begged a girl to stay an extra 30 minutes and came and found me and told me I had to come back in 30 minutes because it was busy. I ate and went back and didn't stop again until 11 p.m. In the entire time I was there from 2 - 11 p.m. I had about 30 minutes off the clock, plus about 10 minutes for my break. I never snapped at a customer or lost my cool, but I can and will say that I probably gave less than my usual HAPPY-HAPPY as the night wore on.
5. Items are locked up or not available for touch-me-play-with-me displays. Please refer to the recurring "Five Finger Fridays" posts for why this is.
Look. It's a Wal-Mart. It is filled with the ghetto trash of humanity looking for a place to buy cheap plastic crap by the buggy-full. House of Wal shoppers are NOT discriminating customers. Until the people in Bentonville figure this out, nothing is going to change. Until they staff it and get better loss prevention methods in place, the computers, iPods and televisions need to be bolted down or they will continue to walk off.
Heck, we can't even leave our DISPLAY power tools out any more. The Hardware department manager got a new set of Black & Decker displays on Thursday and put them out. The displays have the cords cut off at an inch long and are attached to the shelves by metal and plastic security strips. She came in on Monday to find FIVE drills, saws and nail guns all gone. If it is not under glass, it is free for the taking.
6. Lack of service in some areas. I'll second that.
Our electronics department is now empty after 9 p.m. every night of the week now, because hours were cut across the board at our store. Last month, all full time employees got 38 hours. Three weeks ago, they got 36 hours. Two weeks ago, they got 32. Last week, they got 29. They will continue to get 29 until our sales go back up and they can justify giving them more hours. Well, the Catch-22 is that the service our customers are getting is so bad our sales are going to stay down. Typical Wal-Logic.
7. The "do you have this?" question. Look. I know. You're in a store looking to buy something. We're a Customer Service slave. We're there to help.
However, you need to understand. You're in a Wal-Mart. I'm making less than $9 an hour and I probably don't speak real good English. Nor do I have affordable health insurance.
Also, whoever you asked that question gets asked some variation thereof at LEAST 200 times a day from people who are completely incapable of looking three feet to the left for the shampoo or the coffeemakers or the blue shirts.
MY RECOMMENDATION TO WAL-MART:
If Wal-Mart wants to cater to the upscale target demographic, it needs to hire better employees, train them better and pay them enough to care. Telling them to care simply isn't going to do it.
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Why are some retail places retentive about proving your age?
Prompted by this story out of England, where supermarket staff refused to sell alcohol to a white-haired 72-year-old man, I thought I might give some background on why we ask for ID and why some cashiers are more firm about following policy than others. Because with Baal as my witness, I can see the Consumerist headline now - "Cold-blooded Cockney cashier denies good-time Gramps his booze!" Next on Sick Sad World!
Now, in the specific case above, they should have given the old coot his liquor - even if they had to brain him with a bottle and give him a Cabernet Sauvignon enema. With a Turkey Blood (Wild Turkey & tabasco) chaser. Which is exactly what he deserved for being a contrary old fart. But enough about him.
Nearly everyone who works a register and is faced with the prospect of selling tobacco and alcohol ought to be very, very afraid. Why?
Because the federal government is watching you and will deliberately try to bust your Wal-Mart khaki-clad behind!
That's one of the single most vivid things I remember from the endless hours of computer training I did - a video of a cashier in a hurry who sold cigarettes to an underage teen. The cashier gets hauled into the office, is fired and taken to jail. A friend of mine who worked at a convenience store actually had that happen to him because he wasn't paying attention on a holiday weekend and sold a pack of Marlboro Lights to a kid that looked 25 but was really 16. The episode cost him his job and almost $4,000 in attorney fees and fines. They don't play.
Every single time anyone who does not look old enough to have fought at Normandy tries to buy tobacco or alcohol from me I feel an icy stab of fear grip my chest. "Is this the one? Are there agents watching? Is this a sting?" We've had the ID traps run at our store. Cashiers have been fired and arrested. I still get queasy trying to figure out,
"Now, what does the date thing on the register mean again?" Give me the mean people any day. Cops, the law, all that mess freaks me out. I need a Cthulu-serious nerve pill just thinking about it.
There's another thing we have to worry about too. "Service Evaluators" or what most people know as "mystery shoppers." Yes. Wal-Mart is worried about quality control. They are given a specific checklist of items to grade a transaction on, such as "Did the cashier greet you?" and "Did the cashier ask for identification if purchasing an age-restricted item?" I've seen some of the scorecards and watched cashiers get called on the carpet for "not being friendly" or not checking the ID on a credit card. One person actually put on the sheet "cashier did not smile enough." Because God knows no one is allowed to have a bad day after standing on their feet for nine hours.
I've been "mystery shopped" at Customer Service. If you know what sorts of questions they're supposed to ask, you can sort of "smell" them, I guess is the best word. They usually ask too many questions and wait to see if you follow specific company-dictated procedures, like taking down the information needed for a Code Adam (missing child).
I always try to be extra-friendly and remember to go slow, explain what I'm doing, smile and make eye contact frequently, use the person's name (they're supposed to buy something with a credit card so we have a chance to find out their name) and ask at the end of the transaction if there's anything else they need today.
What I'm trying to get at is "You never know who the person on the other side of the register is." I once asked a man for another form of identification because the address on his check and his driver license didn't match. He pulls out a badge. And then I see the gun.
OK. You're a sheriff's deputy. Cops don't list their home address on their checks for the safety of their family. The address on the checks is actually the local substation. I'm down with that. He actually thanked me for noticing and said that most people don't. But you never know.
What's my point? Not that I really have one. Lots of bad things can and could happen to cashiers who don't ask for the IDs of their customers. They don't know you from a four-legged Martian sand rat with with diseased fleas. Nor do they care. They do care about keeping their job.
If someone told you that your ability to put food on your table and gas in your car and clothes on your kids' backs depended on asking people to produce proof that they, I don't know, COMPLIED WITH FEDERAL LAW, and were legally able to purchase the products they wanted, don't you think you'd be asking "Could I please see your ID sir/ma'am" all day long too?
Welcome to the House of Wal. Do you want to return that?
Now, in the specific case above, they should have given the old coot his liquor - even if they had to brain him with a bottle and give him a Cabernet Sauvignon enema. With a Turkey Blood (Wild Turkey & tabasco) chaser. Which is exactly what he deserved for being a contrary old fart. But enough about him.
Nearly everyone who works a register and is faced with the prospect of selling tobacco and alcohol ought to be very, very afraid. Why?
Because the federal government is watching you and will deliberately try to bust your Wal-Mart khaki-clad behind!
That's one of the single most vivid things I remember from the endless hours of computer training I did - a video of a cashier in a hurry who sold cigarettes to an underage teen. The cashier gets hauled into the office, is fired and taken to jail. A friend of mine who worked at a convenience store actually had that happen to him because he wasn't paying attention on a holiday weekend and sold a pack of Marlboro Lights to a kid that looked 25 but was really 16. The episode cost him his job and almost $4,000 in attorney fees and fines. They don't play.
Every single time anyone who does not look old enough to have fought at Normandy tries to buy tobacco or alcohol from me I feel an icy stab of fear grip my chest. "Is this the one? Are there agents watching? Is this a sting?" We've had the ID traps run at our store. Cashiers have been fired and arrested. I still get queasy trying to figure out,
"Now, what does the date thing on the register mean again?" Give me the mean people any day. Cops, the law, all that mess freaks me out. I need a Cthulu-serious nerve pill just thinking about it.
There's another thing we have to worry about too. "Service Evaluators" or what most people know as "mystery shoppers." Yes. Wal-Mart is worried about quality control. They are given a specific checklist of items to grade a transaction on, such as "Did the cashier greet you?" and "Did the cashier ask for identification if purchasing an age-restricted item?" I've seen some of the scorecards and watched cashiers get called on the carpet for "not being friendly" or not checking the ID on a credit card. One person actually put on the sheet "cashier did not smile enough." Because God knows no one is allowed to have a bad day after standing on their feet for nine hours.
I've been "mystery shopped" at Customer Service. If you know what sorts of questions they're supposed to ask, you can sort of "smell" them, I guess is the best word. They usually ask too many questions and wait to see if you follow specific company-dictated procedures, like taking down the information needed for a Code Adam (missing child).
I always try to be extra-friendly and remember to go slow, explain what I'm doing, smile and make eye contact frequently, use the person's name (they're supposed to buy something with a credit card so we have a chance to find out their name) and ask at the end of the transaction if there's anything else they need today.
What I'm trying to get at is "You never know who the person on the other side of the register is." I once asked a man for another form of identification because the address on his check and his driver license didn't match. He pulls out a badge. And then I see the gun.
OK. You're a sheriff's deputy. Cops don't list their home address on their checks for the safety of their family. The address on the checks is actually the local substation. I'm down with that. He actually thanked me for noticing and said that most people don't. But you never know.
What's my point? Not that I really have one. Lots of bad things can and could happen to cashiers who don't ask for the IDs of their customers. They don't know you from a four-legged Martian sand rat with with diseased fleas. Nor do they care. They do care about keeping their job.
If someone told you that your ability to put food on your table and gas in your car and clothes on your kids' backs depended on asking people to produce proof that they, I don't know, COMPLIED WITH FEDERAL LAW, and were legally able to purchase the products they wanted, don't you think you'd be asking "Could I please see your ID sir/ma'am" all day long too?
Welcome to the House of Wal. Do you want to return that?
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Not everything has to be about the House of Wal
I love music, although my tastes are wildly, wildly eclectic. This artist - Sonny J - remixed rapping French schoolchildren and old cabaret songs for his first album "Disastro" - which drops on October 1. There is a little more and a sample at music blog arjanwrites.
Here are some YouTube videos of what will probably be the first song off the album - a trippy nunber called "Can't Stop Moving."
Here are some YouTube videos of what will probably be the first song off the album - a trippy nunber called "Can't Stop Moving."
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