Serious Question to anyone who works in retail

[SolidSnake84]

Working At WAL-MART

I meant to post this link yesterday. This was kind of a "social experiment", by a 23 year old college student named Joshua Adam, a.k.a. "Josh Smith".

After graduating with a degree in political science, he volunteered a year at Holy Cross working with the poor, and afterwards, he wanted to see what it was like working at walmart, so he got hired in the Augusta, ME store. His blog is supposed to help people realize that things are never so bad that they have to work at walmart.

It's a long read, but i find it answers all our questions we may have. he is specifically asked about the register situation, and he says that it is done intentionally. It is done to make the store look busier; which is a part of the psychology and marketing involved. They supposedly believe that if the average customer sees people jammed in lanes, with lots of items, that it encourages them to buy more. They've spent a million dollars in research about this stuff...

Please find the time to read this from the beginning. Josh tells it like it is and explains his days working there, and you get to hear how f'd up everything is. He comments on the obvious gender discrimination, the practice of "punishing" the elderly (ie making them be greeters during the winter time, and not allowing them jackets because they can't cover up the vest/nametag)..it sounds unbelievable but he worked there for 4 months, or as he put it, long enough to prove his experiment of how things worked.

Their "brainwashing", or anti union messages are very telling. Also the pre-hire questionnaire has flagged questions so that the manager may realize if someone is sympathetic to workers rights, and/or unions....please read.

[mooby]

Originally Posted by SolidSnake84

Working At WAL-MART

I meant to post this link yesterday. This was kind of a "social experiment", by a 23 year old college student named Joshua Adam, a.k.a. "Josh Smith".

After graduating with a degree in political science, he volunteered a year at Holy Cross working with the poor, and afterwards, he wanted to see what it was like working at walmart, so he got hired in the Augusta, ME store. His blog is supposed to help people realize that things are never so bad that they have to work at walmart.

It's a long read, but i find it answers all our questions we may have. he is specifically asked about the register situation, and he says that it is done intentionally. It is done to make the store look busier; which is a part of the psychology and marketing involved. They supposedly believe that if the average customer sees people jammed in lanes, with lots of items, that it encourages them to buy more. They've spent a million dollars in research about this stuff...

Please find the time to read this from the beginning. Josh tells it like it is and explains his days working there, and you get to hear how f'd up everything is. He comments on the obvious gender discrimination, the practice of "punishing" the elderly (ie making them be greeters during the winter time, and not allowing them jackets because they can't cover up the vest/nametag)..it sounds unbelievable but he worked there for 4 months, or as he put it, long enough to prove his experiment of how things worked.

Their "brainwashing", or anti union messages are very telling. Also the pre-hire questionnaire has flagged questions so that the manager may realize if someone is sympathetic to workers rights, and/or unions....please read.

Oh Target was the same way, one of the first things they do when your hired is try to brainwash you into thinking unions are a really bad thing lol and that you shouldn't want any part of them.

And I'm sure regionally it's all different, especially depending on location and other factors. The one I worked at, and some of the other stores in my region generally had the same pay scale though.