Wal-Mart Exposed! Undercover Writer Reports Store Not the Evil Ogre Portrayed
Posted By Vicki McClure Davidson on February 11, 2009
By Vicki McClure Davidson * Frugal Café Blog Zone
Wal-Mart's Smiley Icon
How many horror stories on the Internet have you read about Wal-Mart? And, how many positive ones have you read? Are there any positive ones out there? Not many.
Nearly 50 to 1 (the “1″ being the good reports) is what I’ve come across. Seems that the behemoth chain of value-minded stores has been maligned and attacked by the media far more often and maliciously than others for many years.
But I’ve always noticed how friendly, and dare I say it, HAPPY the people who work at my local Wal-Mart seem. Is it all an act? I always feel when I’m there, I’m the purpose of their work, not an interruption of it — can such caring be play-acted so convincingly and consistently by such abused, unappreciated, poorly paid, discriminated employees?
Bargain stores are my haunts. I have always loved shopping at Wal-Mart and I can’t recall one single negative incident while there. So being told I was wrong to shop there bothered me.
On the flip side, I’ve always hated shopping at K-Mart, even though there was a store just up the road from our house. K-Mart never made me feel important (or even visible), that my patronage or my money or my overall shopping experience was non-consequential to them. Lazy and flaky attitudes every time. Wal-Mart employees always greet me with a smile and a bit of friendly banter. At K-Mart? HA!
K-Mart always had pricing/scanning problems (always that the register rang up something higher, not lower, than the stated price), and inventory was never neat and organized. If the register charged me too much, rather than voiding out the error and hand-entering it, the cashier filled out a form and I had to go stand in a customer “service” line to be reimbursed for their error. Not so at Wal-Mart.
Wal-Mart also had better bargains more often and more choices. So why would in the world would I shop at K-Mart? Thousands of other people probably felt the same way; hence, the company’s financial problems long before this current economic crisis.
However, I’ve read time and time again that I shouldn’t shop at Wal-Mart, that I should be aware of all the abuse the company has inflicted on employees, communities, and goods providers overseas. That the value provided at the sinister Wal-Mart was ill-gotten gain — at the expense of other people’s welfare. I was supporting the enemy just to save a buck. *shudder*
In a nutshell, Wal-Mart is one of the only retail businesses that is growing and SHOWING PROFITS. How can that possibly be, when everyone says how horrible the company is?
Easy answer. It isn’t horrible.
Writer Charles Platt, who went undercover to find out the get-down-dirty truth, reported today in the New York Post that the horror stories about Wal-Mart simply are not true.
During his undercover experience, he found Wal-Mart to be consistently efficient, courteous, respectful, empowering its employees, and pays its people a slightly better wage than similarly unskilled jobs at Target or fast-food joints or other mom-and-pop small businesses. New-hired employees are trained (paid 2-day training) throoughly, with the key element to the company’s success: how important each customer is and that service is the company’s Number 1 mission. The company wants the very best people possible to work there and expects them to give their all and to follow a handful of rules.
In any customer’s lifetime, he/she will potentially spend $200, 000 at Wal-Mart. Alienating, ignoring, or upsetting a customer could cost the company nearly a quarter of a million dollars in lost business, so customer service is taken very seriously. And it shows. Employee screw-ups are handled fairly, respectfully, and efficiently, but they boil down to “three strikes and you’re out.” A smart, sound business policy, and one of many policies that upsets union leaders (and likely a handful of employees who were fired for their screw-ups). Unions don’t like people to lose their jobs, even if they are under-achievers or malcontents.
Wal-Mart is not part of any trade union, and that apparently is what is driving so much of the negative press. Granted, every business has its problems and wrongdoings. Wal-Mart is no exception. But for Wal-Mart, it seems that far too often, the metaphorical magnifying glass has mico-analyzed and publicized its flaws with the purpose of destroying its reputation so as to decimate its customer base. Union thuggery, perhaps?
To read Platt’s excellent article in its entirety, FLY ON THE WAL — UNDERCOVER AT WAL-MART, THE HEARTLAND SUPERSTORE THAT MAY SAVE THE ECONOMY, click here.
Here are a couple of paragraphs from the article (all emphasis in the paragraphs is mine; I’ve bolded up a few key phrases to thrust them forward):
Some people, usually community activists, loath Wal-Mart. Others, like the family of four struggling to make ends meet, are in love with the chain. I, meanwhile, am in awe of it.
As for the horror stories: Let’s take a couple of random examples. Unpaid overtime? Maybe it happened at some stores in the past, but an instructional video warned me that if anyone in management ever encouraged such a heinous transgression, I should report him to his superiors immediately. Illegal aliens? That particular news story really referred to a cleaning company retained by Wal-Mart. The cleaning company hired the illegals.
You have to wonder, then, why the store has such a terrible reputation, and I have to tell you that so far as I can determine, trade unions have done most of the mudslinging. Web sites that serve as a source for negative stories are often affiliated with unions. Walmartwatch.com, for instance, is partnered with the Service Employees International Union; Wakeupwalmart.com is entirely owned by United Food and Commercial Workers International Union. For years, now, they’ve campaigned against Wal-Mart, for reasons that may have more to do with money than compassion for the working poor. If more than one million Wal-Mart employees in the United States could be induced to join a union, by my calculation they’d be compelled to pay more than half-billion dollars each year in dues.
Anti-growth activists are the other primary source of anti-Wal-Mart sentiment. In the town where I worked, I was told that activists even opposed a new Barnes & Noble because it was “too big.” If they’re offended by a large bookstore, you can imagine how they feel about a discount retailer.
Wal-Mart has an impressive track record, a frugal mentality with its upper management. It serves as an enviable business model and has a macro-management approach with employees. Its simple mission statement and genuine desire to give customers the best value for their money is paying off during these bleak economic times. The company has demonstrated how important it is to train their employees to “walk the walk, talk the talk” of excellent customer service. Wal-Mart follows good, solid business practices that would make Ronald Reagan proud.
No wonder it’s driving the union leaders and zealot hate-mongers crazy.
Too bad.
Additional reading:The LRC Blog: Who’s Hiring During the Bush-Obama Depression? and The “Evil” Walmart
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