Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Cthulhu]

What's wrong with Walmart?

[Duke 2.0]

What's wrong with Walmart?

I'm assuming whatever corporate drama people hate Walmart over. I think the most prominent is that it takes the jobs of local small-business workers.

 Although I don't know if it has quite as much a negative history as MacDonalds. I eat/shop at those places nevertheless.

[ToonyMan]

What's wrong with Walmart?

I'm assuming whatever corporate drama people hate Walmart over. I think the most prominent is that it takes the jobs of local small-business workers.

 Although I don't know if it has quite as much a negative history as MacDonalds. I eat/shop at those places nevertheless.

I don't like Wal-Mart or McDonalds.  Hence, I don't do anything involving them.

[JoshuaFH]

I feel bad about shopping at Walmart because of the things Bromor Neckbeard told me some time ago, and he PM'd me the details.

It took me a minute, but this was the conversation:

http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=31292.285

It'll take me a bit longer to sift through my absolutely gigantic pile of PM's to tell you what he told me.

[Lord Dakoth]

Do tell.

[JoshuaFH]

Found it, turns out I have a "search messages" feature, which made finding it easy.

Wow, that got a lot more interest than I thought it would.  Okay, off the top of my head, if somebody works forty or more hours a week ("full-time"), then they're eligible for a lot more benefits than somebody who works less than forty hours a week ("part-time").  So if you get hired as a "full-time" worker for Wal-Mart, it's just standard practice to schedule you for 39 and a half hours.  Management gets full-time, regular employees only get full-time if that particular Wal-Mart is severely understaffed.

"Hey, we're not screwing you out of the benefits we're legally required to offer you, we're letting you go home a half-hour early on Friday!  Of course, this isn't optional."

Rather than pay benefits for their own workers, Wal-Mart passes the cost on to the taxpayers.  This link is not exactly unbiased, but I don't see a thing in it that doesn't jibe with my own experience.

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Corporate_Welfare/WalMart_Welfare.html

Wal-Mart is a tireless foe of labor unions.  When you get hired at Wal-Mart, they'll make you watch a half hour of safety videos and three hours of videos about how unions are the Devil, Osama, and Fred Phelps put together.  That tells you where their priorities lie, doesn't it?  If you're ever heard discussing unions in a positive manner by a member of management, you're fired on the spot.  Of course, they make up something to fire you for, they never admit why they're really firing you.

Finally, Wal-Mart deliberately encourages employee turnover to keep salary costs low.  After six months you're supposed to get a raise automatically.  However, in most cases, just before you're supposed to get a raise, you find yourself written up for a bullshit violation of the rules that didn't actually happen.  If you're on "disciplinary probation" as they call it, you're automatically ineligible for a raise.  Another way they increase turnover is by screwing with your scheduling.  When you first start work, you're told you will only be hired if you put down that you're available to work 24 hours a day.  For the first five and a half months, you can be fairly sure of working a consistent schedule.  When it's almost time for your raise, you will find that your schedule suddenly becomes inconsistent, they'll have you working the day shift one day, the night shift the next day, the afternoon shift the day after that, and so on until you get frustrated and quit.  If you don't quit at this sort of treatment, you'll find that when you come in to pick up your paycheck and check the schedule (which you're required to sign each week to show that you've read it), somehow between the time you look at the schedule and the next time you show up to work, the schedule has changed, but it still has your signature (or a scanned copy) on it.  So no matter what you do, you're either late for work or just didn't show up for your shift at all.  This is either grounds for termination at worst, or at best, you're on disciplinary probation and therefore you don't get your raise.

This happened to me and to a friend of mine who worked there last year.  Also, this bit is anecdotal evidence and nobody would take it as proof, but when I was in the store manager's office (the big man, the highest-ranking dude in the store) to discuss why I was late for my shift (which had mysteriously changed from the afternoon shift to the morning shift since I signed the schedule), I saw a letter on his desk from the district manager stating that employee turnover at his store was too low, and that he needed to take whatever measures were necessary to increase it.

Hardly any of these practices are entirely legal, but when a $7/hour stock crew member takes on a multibillion-dollar corporation with an army of high-priced lawyers, the corporation always wins.  Every once in a while, the little guys win, and then we see cases like when the Wal-Mart cashiers successfully sued Wal-Mart for forcing them to work off the clock, or when the cleaners sued them for locking them in at night.

I was never forced to work off the clock, by the way.  I was once required to clock in halfway through my lunch break to clean up a pallet of ice cream that had fallen over in a truck en route to the store.  Of course, the next day, I was written up for failing to take the required lunch break and working overtime without permission, since the extra fifteen minutes I worked that day caused me to get over forty hours that week by a couple of minutes.  The fact that I only did it because my supervisor ordered me to (and refusing would have been grounds for being written up for insubordination) never entered the equation.

[ToonyMan]

Yeah, my Dad says the same thing.

[Lord Dakoth]

Wow. Some of that stuff is pretty intense. As a political conservative, I can't blame them for dodging government-imposed costs and hating unions. They are trying to make money, not create jobs.

However, if all the rest of that is true, the part about promising a raise and then screwing with your schedule, that's deceitful and just plain messed up.

[ToonyMan]

Messed up does not make illegal unfortunately.

[Cthulhu]

That's what I call dastardly.  I envy them.

[ToonyMan]

That's what I call dastardly.  I envy them.

You are not worthy of your tag!

[Cthulhu]

I totally am.

[Alexhans]

*gasp

Josh... man... you CANT use sleeping pills!!!   

They will make you a zombie... 

and the worst thing is... They won't work when you most need them because eventually your body gets resistant to them.  That's why many people end up over-dosing themselves.

There are several techniques that work wonders for those who have insomnia or trouble sleeping.

Once you're ready to sleep, lay confortably, close your eyes (duh!) start couting inside your head from 3 to 1 making a deep breath each time.  Those deep breaths will help you reach a relaxed state.  Now picture yourself in front of a blackboard.  Draw a circle on it and write the number 99 (it can be higher or lower depending on your needs).  Then erase it and repeat the last steps (circle and numbre) but this time substract one.  Etc.  You'll fall asleep. 

The trick is to relax and bore the mind.  It will then shut down.  You will sleep well.  Relaxation before sleep is vital.

See ya.

[Footkerchief]

Alexhans, not everyone has the same neurochemistry and general good fortune as you.

[Alexhans]

whatever man... I've seen this work in people who had very bad insomnia problems. 

If you just stubbornly sit on your behind and keep thinking you can't.  You won't.