Ever wonder why the service at Wal-Mart is so awful despite the fact that Sam Walton used to say the customer always come first? I'll let BBCAmerican, who mans the customer service desk at a Florida Wal-Mart,
explain it all for you:
We at the Courtesy Desk are under strict instructions NOT to call a member of management for routine customer complaints. Of course, they don't know that, but we have standing orders to "deal with the problem." If we can't handle it, call one of the supervisors over. This used to be me before I stepped down. Now I take particular delight in tormenting people, because several people who used to NOT take responsibility were promoted, and I can, in all honesty, pass the buck like they used to do.
Here's some more tormenting:
This man comes in today, raises his voice, doesn't wait for anyone to ask if they can help him and says, quite loudly, "I want the store manager."
ME: "Is there anything we can help you with sir?"
HIM: "Are YOU the store manager?" and he points at me rudely.
ME: "No sir, but we are trained to handle customer service issues. Is there something you need?"
HIM: "You don't have enough registers open. I complained about this last weekend. And the weekend before. He said it would change. I wanted to talk to him again. Why do you have signs up that say "ALL REGISTERS OPEN 10 a.m. - 10 p.m. Saturday & Sunday" if they're not open."
ME: "Sir, I'm sorry you had a bad experience. I can tell you we're hiring more people every week, but right now we don't have the staff to man the registers. If there's no one to run the register, we can't open it."
HIM: "So that's your answer?"
ME: I just quit at this point, because he was obviously about to try to get me in trouble.
I was telling the truth. A Wal-Mart SuperCenter is supposed to have 125 cashiers to be fully staffed for full-time and part-time shifts. We have a grand total of 57, and every one except those with religious reasons works on Saturday and Sunday. I know. I make out the schedules for them. We can't hire them fast enough to keep up with the rate of quitting, firing and not showing up.
And really. The median house price here is $490,000. You're not going to survive running a register at Wal-Mart for $8.50 an hour. Who does he thing works there? This isn't a college town either.
Now, we do have those signs up. Look the next time you're in a Wal-Mart SuperCenter. But until they commit to hiring more staff, "ALL REGISTERS OPEN" ain't going to happen.
And the old fool, he just walked off.
I do like this guy's blog, but if you ask me everybody looks bad in that story.
JR
