Wal-Mart doing more with less, and struggling, relatively speaking

No other (hidden) costs associated with all this WalMart efficiency?

 

Not to get in the way of this week's Walmart bitchfest, but many of the weeklies in our chain are getting consistent Walmart advertising. Weekly inserts. Not ashamed to say that Walmart was a big reason most of those papers made budget last year.

That said, I stopped shopping there because nothing is more frustrating than going to the store for six things, finding that three of them are out of stock, and then having to wait in line for 20 minutes to purchase the three you can find.

 

Inserts don't make that much money for newspapers. They're printed off site and newspapers handle the end of the process. Sure, they make money (and that always should be lauded), but Sunday inserts aren't pushing us over the top.

 

The Walmart we go to has cut back checkout registers considerably. There are quite a few more self checkouts, which are fine if you have 10 items, not so fine if you're shopping for the week.

I do our grocery shopping pretty early on Saturday mornings to avoid lines and crowds and I still had to stand in line for almost 15 minutes to check out because they had two checkout people working for the entire store.

I would love to go to other stores for grocery shopping, but I would estimate that we save at least $20-$30 a week by going to Walmart for the main items...

 

The recent absence of greeters and checkers would seem to argue against this being only a "supplier" restocking problem.

jobs.aol.com/articles/2012/01/27/walmart-greeters-will-no-longer-greet-at-the-door/

Maybe they're looking to wring a little more efficiency out of the customers as well. Self-checkout replaced by self-checkout?

loganville.patch.com/articles/checkout-via-smartphone-you-can-now-do-it-at-walmart-in-loganville

Maybe they'll start letting customers do the restocking, too.

Efficient!

 

The race to the bottom gets you in good shape, no doubt.

 

The greeters always creeped me out. I remember when my oldest was 3 and the greeter, who was probably pushing 90, tried to give him a sticker and my kid ran screaming down the aisle.

 

That's OK. Grandpa's all alone in the back now with a box cutter, trying to unload a truck full of Huggies from Bentonville for $7 an hour.

 

On the self checkouts, I saw them taken out a few years back at one WM. I asked the manager why and he said loss prevention issues. I laughed and said, "given the client demographics, did this possibility ever come up in the meetings?"

Whenever I see a "Speedy Checkout" sign in front of a supposed express lane, I keep thinking there has to be a class action case in there. Ain't never been a speedy checkout at WM.

 

You go, suppliers!

 

In the early '90s when I worked for a trading card company, getting retail product into Wal-Mart was a constant challenge for the sales/marketing folks. The lovely people down in Arkansas would squeeze you on price, negotiate the right to return unsold product and demand completely different products, including cards per pack, packaging, etc. Because they could. Maybe those days are coming to an end?