“…she doesn’t work here any more – she was the organizer…” – overheard at Walmart between two employees speaking outside of earshot of their managers, pretending to be working.
Long time readers know from time to time I stop in at WalMart to take the pulse of the economy and society. Walmart recently reported a drop in “same store” sales. That matches what I’m seeing. Close to dinner time on a Monday, there were 4 registers open and no waiting. This store has a food department, but isn’t a full grocery store.
Shelves seem to still be showing more tight inventory management – nothing was out of stock, but lots of items only had a few items. Is it to reduce inventory or save labor? A lot of items in your grocery store are actually stocked by route people for the vendor, not employees of the store.
Spanish speakingi shoppers have virtually vanished – their presence used to be very obvious. Housing construction is way down here – that might be related.
Prices seem to be going higher than they used to be – that’s probably partly the minimum wage increases, and maybe WalMart getting us used to when they get taken over by the union thugs.
Speaking as someone who worked at wal-mart I can add few things to this. Now I should say it was nearly 10 years ago but I suspect more has stayed the same then has changed. When I worked there inventory control was always pretty tight. Humans rarely did any ordering it was all done by computer inventory. The ideal count on most items was 3 to 4, though some items if it was higher volume sale items would have more. You can read on the tag how many a give item should have shelved if you know how to read self tag. They seem to be still using said system, I still have habit of reading them. Also still have habit of straitening or facing products much to my husbands amusement. The reason this was so if you as human operator noticed a slot staying empty for more then week could check on the status of item with hand held unit called a Tel-zan. I am stray off point , the point being is seeing only few items on the self is pretty standard by the book practice. Now I should point out you will always have your over zealous dept. manager that forced orders for more product but that eventually would get them into trouble or the lazy one not watching close enought to issues with the auto-orders.
Next point diner time is actually a down time at front end for cashiers, it’s also shift change time as well. Wal-mart was also very big (As in obsessive) on sending cashiers out to dept. on down times to help face products. Four cashiers up front not particularly odd in general would be my feeling from my experience. There were most likely some working on the floor waiting for a call to the front if there was a pinch. So there little more insight for the of the inner workings of wal-mart to figure into your observations.
Here some things I did learn while watching shopping patterns. These are pure opinion and pure observations with no claims of scientific clout take it how you will.
What I found tend to indicate some general state of affairs of the economy was this. 1. How busy is the electronic dept? If it’s packed and no one is buying usually meant to me we are either heading up or heading down but we had ways to go and we on the move, people are lamenting or dreaming about what they’d like to buy. If it’s packed and lot buying is going on things are doing good. If it’s empty, people have given up lamenting and dreaming and are sticking to basics, it’s bad.
A far simpler test is this…It’s what I call the romain noodle index. If we couldn’t keep romain noodles in stock then things aren’t going well. As things get better romain noodle selves remain barely touched. I personally have seen lot bare romain noodle selves of late.
Food for thought….
That was a lot of interesting information – thanks for taking the time to write it.
I’m mostly comparing current state with what it was like a couple years ago – but it’s also necessary to factor in that Walmart continues to open new stores. The change in the minority customer mix may just be that those same people are now shopping at a newer store closer to their home.
Now this unrelated observation could be weather related – we had a nice warm day last weekend – every restaurant (especially the high end ones) had overflowing parking lots. Since it is the restaurants that have been hardest hit, I’m trying to decide if this was a sign that the “recovery” is real or if this was one last final meal people were splurging on before ObamaCare was passed.
In the beginning a year ago, people said WalMart was doing a good business, and certain products like Spam and KoolAid were selling briskly, hinting that people were doing things to save money. When the announcement hit that WalMart had lower same-store sales, I was undecided if that meant people no longer felt a need to save money, or if it meant they no longer could even afford walmart.