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Users Trash Wal-Mart On Its Facebook Site
hhavensteincw writes "Only two weeks after Wal-Mart launched its latest foray into Web 2.0 land, Facebook users have hijacked a page aimed at selling back-to-school supplies to college kids to instead post rants about the company's labor practices. Of the 100-plus comments, none relates to dorm decorating as Wal-Mart had originally envisioned."
When my girlfriend worked at wal-mart last year she made $8.50/hour, while the minimum wage was $5.15. Before that she worked for a small business downtown which paid her $5.50. Six years ago when I worked at wal-mart they paid me $7.50/hr. So yes, wal-mart does usually pay significantly better than other retail businesses.
One look at the YouTube video confirms that Penn and Teller have no interest in examining the Walmart issue. Might I suggest http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/walm art/ as a more reputable source?
There are so many things wrong and destructive about Walmart that it's hardly worth trying to communicate them.
If you can't see it, it can only be because you don't want, or are incapable of believing it.
Reactionary internet graffiti aside, the divisiveness of Wal-Mart signals a more complicated problem than the superficial split between the caring and the cold-hearted.
Wal-Mart's revolting nature comes on a gut level, and not a rational one. There are arguments against its existence for worker's rights reasons, for anti-globalization reasons, and for aesthetic reasons - but most people go looking for these reasons in the first place as a result of actual time spent in the store, and the feeling of sweaty, raw animal terror that the experience inspires in a person who has a choice to go elsewhere.
Should Wal-Mart be allowed to exist? Of course it should. It's a free market, baby, and they are PROVIDING. Jobs, cheap-ass crockery, optometry, etc. But that's no reason not to feel overwhelming pity for the people that are forced to shop and work there. It's a horrible place, but so is the overnight shift at a city hospital. You can't get rid of a place like that because it is ugly.
If anything, Wal-Mart does a public service for the impoverished of a community. It forces the middle-class to look at them -- under stark, neuron-scrambling fluorescents -- and see that they are neither institutionally lazy nor inhuman. They are falling apart, and the only people interested in helping are a corporation with a profit motive that panders to their every prejudice and weakness.
The first impulse is to trample that ant-hive. Find a reason to get rid of it. The ant-hive is the problem!
But Wal-Mart is a challenge. Can we do better to provide for the bottom of society? If not, then Wal-Mart is better than nothing. I think we can do better. I think -- in the same way that Scientology is challenge to scale down the state protections for religion -- Wal-Mart is a challenge to improve the quality of life of impoverished America. It is the natural outgrowth of the system that we have created. It is a website under construction that says "FIX ME."
So shop Wal-Mart, think real hard about how to make it better, and SAVE.
Perhaps you should go to the "Career Preference Dashboard" on the WIRE. It's easy: sign on to the WIRE, click on the green "Life" tab and finally click on "Career Preference" in the "My Career" box. Now research some of what you are saying. Electronics is not pay grade 6. Electronics salesfloor is pay grade 4. Electronics department manager is pay grade 7. Assuming you started as an Electronics salesfloor associate at $8.30, and assuming you had previous work experience for extra credits that bumped your pay (the difference between pay grade 3 and pay grade 4 is $0.20 or $0.30, so if you are making $8.30 per hour, you must have had some extra credits), then your cap will be higher than $10.00. I'm afraid I don't remember the exact formula, but the cap for pay grade 4 would be (for you) around $13.00 to $14.00.
As for promotions being handed out to friends, what happens in your store does not mean that it happens in all stores.
Another example of "what happens in your store does not happen in all stores": Remember your comment about management working "below their current rank", I've seen my store manager go outside and push carts numerous times when our store was low on carts. He started out in the company as a cart pusher, by the way. I've seen the front end assistant manager clean a bathroom. I've seen a grocery assistant manager mop the floor. Management expectations start with your store manager. One store manager is not a representative sample of all store managers.
Management (or anybody else) modifying the number of hours an associate works is a terminable offense. I am not salaried management, but I have the ability to edit an associate's time. If I modified an associate's time (either increased or decreased), I have no doubt in my mind that I would be terminated on the spot. There's a report that runs every Saturday morning called the "Time Clock Archive" that lists every associate's time and if that time was edited, it lists the name of the person who edited it. The information is also recorded in the SMART system under the program called "Electronic Time Adjustment" (select "Change/View Time Adjustment"). All associates are given access to the Electronic Time Adjustment automatically when hired.
The "Open Door Policy" is more than your local store management. Have you tried talking to your district manager? Your regional manager?
What Wal-Mart provided pamphlets? In my store, we're usually griping (under our breath) about the number of customers coming in to our store that do not have jobs and whip out their EBT cards- customers we are supporting with our tax dollars.