Harry_Knutts

So I go into work last night a few minutes early, sit down in the break-room to drink a pop, and look up on the opposite wall to see a new flat-screen t.v. hanging on the wall.  At first I think it must be hooked up to WM t.v. to fill our heads with more propaganda while we try to enjoy our breaks not thinking about the company.  So I look at the screen to see what's on it  and it just shows a screen with "My Share" on it, and then after a couple seconds it goes to a screen that shows a graph of, what I believe, is our store's current progress towards the three criteria: Sales, Profits, and whatever the third one is.  These two screens just go back and forth to each other.  I'm thinking to myself: there's no overtime, they keep talking about how important it is to cut expenses, and then they store use a several-hundred-dollar flat-screen t.v. to show us a graph, which is literally hanging on the opposite wall on a piece of paper showing the exact same graph.  Have any of your stores invested your profit-sharing in this wonderful idea as well?  People were opining that either there is a subliminal message being sent out through the speaker, or that there is a hidden camera inside it to watch what we are doing.  I tried to change the channel but it wouldn't let me.  I'm also thinking: how much electricity are we wasting on having this thing on 24hrs when we're supposed to be all about being more environmentally responsible.  I went up and turned it off as part of my PSP.  I'm sure an alarm was immediately sounded at the home office and when I come in tonight  I'll be fired. 

On a different subject.  In my almost ten years with the company, last week was the first time that I ever went into the bathroom and found that someone had shit on the floor in the stall, about a foot in front of the toilet.  That sure gave us something to talk about for the rest of the night.  We kept daring each other to pick it up with a dustpan and throw it down someone's aisle.  Numerous sophomoric comments (none of them by me of course)  were then made throughout the night:  "I new I'd have to deal with some shit when I applied here, but this is ridiculous".  "Well, it looks like the shit is finally going to hit the fan".  "Frank we know you've been working the shit out of this freight, but don't take it too far."  "Maybe it was an associate in there taking the edict 'Think outside the box'  (or shit outside the bowl?) a little too literally".  "Did anyone see the new manager sitting on the floor in the restroom.  That guy must think he's the shit".  "Does this classify as a code brown or a hazardous waste spill?"  "I'll give you $20 if you put that in the suggestion box".  "If it was a priest that did that would it qualify as holy shit?"  Could a customer take it up to the service desk and say, "I bought some chicken wings here yesterday that were terrible.  Here's what's left of them.  Can I have my money back?"  Would that then allow the service desk associate to respond, "Listen, sir, I don't have to take shit from you".  Or, "At Wal-Mart we don't take shit from anybody.  Take your shit and get out". 

 How we got rid of our Store Manager


   It really kind of came as a surprise because we'd had to deal with this guy for around three years.  The guy that we had before him was an absolute nazi.

    A little back-story on the first a-hole:  When I started, the manager we had was the nicest guy to everybody. Then he moved on to be a district TLE manager back in his home state.  So when the new guy came we were all kind of spoiled and just assumed that when Wal-Mart talks about how "Our people make the difference" they mean it.  So this new guy comes along and we quickly realized that the slogan should be changed to: "Our people need a beating".  He loved to go out onto the sales floor and yell at people in front of other associates, customers, crying children.  He was one of those megalomaniacs who believed that he was the only one capable of coming up with good ideas or solutions to problems, so any suggestion anyone put forth or anyone who dared to question his ideas was quickly reminded that he "didn't get to store manager by making bad decisions".  (He got to store manager by having incriminating pictures of Sam Walton and Ol' Roy in a three-way with a goat at a backwoods Arkansas petting zoo).

   I got talked into being team-lead of the unloaders after our current lead became a support manager.  Let me tell you, the last position you ever want is team lead of the unloaders.  This was a wonderful lesson to me that at Wal-Mart you do not want any position of authority whatsoever unless you love being blamed for everything.  We've discovered that at Wal-Mart shit rolls downhill and I constantly found myself at the bottom of the Grand Canyon clinging to a crap-stained umbrella.

STORE MANAGER "Only three unloaders showed up to unload three trucks?  And why weren't they done in two hours?"  

ME:  "We lost the two that were inside throwing the truck after you had one of your assistants stand at the end of the line and shoot them with a pellet gun to make them go faster".
 
   "If they were working fast enough they should have been able to dodge the pellets".
   "One of the pellets hit one of them in his glasses, sending tiny shards of broken glass into his eyeball".
   "Did you have the spotlight aimed into the truck so he could see better with his other eye?"
   "When he went out to turn the spotlight on, the assistant shot the light bulb with another pellet, causing it to explode in his face, sending shards of glass into his other eye".
   "Unloading trucks is about feeling the boxes, not seeing them.  Don't you remember how Luke Skywalker trained with his lightsaber with that helmet on so he couldn't see?"
   "I couldn't find the CBL on "Using 'the Force' for a more productive workplace".  I don't think R2D2 downloaded that one into the system yet".
   "So then what happened to him?"
   "He went over to the Dark Side".
   "What...?"
   "He went and applied at Target. He said if he was going to get shot at he might as well get paid to have a bullseye on the back of his vest".
   "So what happened to the other guy?"
   "You know how, since the warehouse people load the trucks by putting the lightest boxes on the bottom and the heaviest ones on top and stacking them as precariously as possible, so that throwing a truck is like playing a game of Russian Jenga?  And that with two people in the truck placing boxes on the line alternately, they can usually warn each other if one sees a wall of boxes about to come crashing down on them?...Well, since he was in there alone in the dark, he didn't realize that a wall of twenty microwaves was being held in place by the box of cotton balls he had just grabbed.  After crawling out from under the microwaves he yelled out that he was only paralyzed below the waist so he could still try to throw the boxes from the floor onto the line if that wasn't too much trouble.  The only problem with that situation was that he was now a sitting duck for the assistant with the pellet gun.  After taking about five or six direct hits to the back of the skull, he muttered something about seeing his deceased grandmother at the end of a tunnel of light telling him to walk toward her.  Then he passed out.  The doctors say if he ever comes out of the coma he might be able to do the Wal-Mart cheer again with the help of a $60,000 robotic wheelchair--which isn't covered by Wal-Mart insurance--and--something that the health insurance is willing to cover--a discount helper monkey with ADD."
   "But that still left YOU to be able to unload the trucks.  You accepted the position of Team Leader didn't you?"
   "Yes, and that extra 50 cents an hour will help me support the crack habit I picked up after I decided to come to work sober for once and was notified that I had accepted the position of Team Lead."
   "So, then.  Why aren't the trucks done yet, Team Lead?"
   "Well you know how your Department Managers have absolutely no discipline when it comes to ordering, so that when I punch in and come back to receiving there's enough pallets of overstock freight to support a small third-world-country?  Well you see, it's very difficult to unload the freight of three trucks when I only have enough open space to lay down four empty pallets.  So after conferring with the assistant over receiving, you know the one that on his job application in the place where it asks 'When are you able to work?', he put 'After my mommy finishes dressing me'?  Well he decided that the best solution would be to pull a bunch of the overstock pallets outside along the fence across from the TLE to make room inside to unload the trucks.  And, you know how it's winter and there's four inches of snow on the ground out there? Well after spending an hour and a half slipping and sliding twenty pallets out there while the TLE techs asked me if I was trying out for 'Sesame Street on Ice', one of your Jiffy Lube dropouts took a wrong turn pulling a customers' brand new Cadillac out of the bay and tried to drive it in through the open back door of receiving.  The building wasn't damaged too much.  I happened to be in the doorway yelling: 'Hey dipsh-t, you don't drive the customer's car back through the store and park it next to their shopping cart when you're done!', and luckily my internal organs absorbed most of the impact.  After removing the customers' car from the doorway, the techs' head from his a**, and my spleen
from my small intestine, we were able to start unloading the trucks."
   Then he took a long pause and replied, "This goes against every urge in my body, but because I ran over a homeless man on my way to work today I'm in a good mood, so I'm not going to fire you.  But after you get done finishing the trucks, pulling all the freight to the floor, sweeping out the trucks, and taking a DNA sample of the turd someone left in the suggestion box so we can find out who left it and have them shot as soon as they cross the Wal-Mart property line, go home because I'm giving you a D-Day."
   "Don't I get a verbal and a written coaching first?"
   "Here's your verbal: You suck.  Here's your written"--he then took out a sharpie and wrote 'You suck' on my forehead.  "Any questions?"
   "You forgot to sign it".

   We put up with that guy for three years until the week before inventory we came to work to find out that he had called the District Manager and told him he was leaving to go manage the nearby Best Buy.  No two-week notice, just "Screw you and goodbye".  We couldn't have been happier.  Although, I wasn't happy with the fact they wouldn't let me wash my written coaching off my forehead until six months after the date when it could officially be expunged from my record.  So I shaved my head, wore a bandanna, and told everyone I was getting chemo for testicle cancer.  I then took the turd out of the suggestion box and mailed it to him at Best Buy with a note saying, "Here's your share of our bonus from inventory".  Inventory was sure fun that year.  I think we shrunk out about fifty million dollars. 


   Okay, back to getting rid of our last manager.  He was a complete a-hole too (if there's one benefit of being 3rd shift it's that your exposure to upper management is limited to you trying to run out the door before they get there in the morning and you saying, "Sorry me no speaka Engleesh", if they happen to come in a little early, catch you as they come in, and ask you how the night went.  I heard most of the horror stories about him from day people who said that he just couldn't get his day started properly without bringing at least a few people to tears.  The ironic thing was that, a couple hours after tearing someone a new a-hole, he'd come back and talk to the person like the previous abuse never happened.  Sometimes he'd even apologize.  He didn't seem to understand that apologizing after ramming your foot up someone's a** doesn't make the swelling go down any faster.  We were convinced that there were two of them.  The apologetic one who hid in the office most of the time, and the evil one who lived up in the ceiling and came down through a ceiling tile in the bathroom, then ran around screaming at everyone.  Those who didn't believe this idea just believed that he was bi-polar (no offense to anyone who suffers or has loved ones who suffer from this illness) and thought that if we could just get the pharmacist to give us some Lithium, we could put it in his coffee and maybe he would even out and only beat us on Mondays and Wednesdays.  When approached with this idea the Pharmacist replied:
   "I didn't go to pharmacy school for eight-plus years so that I'd could lose my license after getting caught giving you unprescribed pills. Although, that a-hole did come up and yell at me because I'm not pushing the Sam's Choice Anal Lube that he made me put on feature, as it is his Volume Producing Item"--(an item that department managers and managers can pick and win some kind of prizes or something if their store sells the most of that item)--"So if I happen to turn around and this bottle of Lithium, that I just happened to have left right here on the counter, disappears, then I guess I can't be held responsible.  I take my oath of ethics very seriously remember.  Also, I'll give you guys all the generic Ritalin you want (only $4 dollars now!) and forget we ever had this conversation if you'll each buy twenty bottles of that anal lube so that a-hole will stop bothering me."
   The other three with me chickened-out and said, "Sorry but we don't hate him that much.  It's not like we've worked here for nine years and can't afford to get another job if this guy plans on staying here forever.  What about you...?" they said, looking at me.

   I'll never forget the look on that cashier's face when I went through her line and bought 80 bottles of anal lube.  That's what you call taking one for the team.

   It all came to a head when a bunch of Market Managers came into town and were holding an open meeting at a conference room in a local hotel for all hourly associates to come in and talk openly about what they felt was wrong with their store, or the company as a whole.  I was interested in going, but noticed on the sign-up sheet by the time clock that only a few of our 500 associates had signed up to go.  I wasn't interested in sitting in a conference room at the local Easy-Rest Motel (hookers located around back!) with four or five Market Managers and only ten or so associates, so I didn't sign up.  I can just imagine sitting there trying to hide in the back row like a kid in school hoping to avoid being called on by the teacher to come up and answer the question on the blackboard, because instead of reading the textbook the night before, he spent the night downloading porn.
   "So", they would say, looking at me.  "Tell us your feelings about Wal-Mart and your store in particular.  How's everything going there?  Any complaints or issues you want to bring up?  Don't worry, the fact that we took your picture after you entered, fingerprinted you, got a copy of your DNA, and have your personnel file right in front of us, is all just a formality.  Feel free to speak freely."
   "Uh, I just came because on the sign-up sheet it said something about free donuts."
   So, I didn't go. Plus I had a prostate exam scheduled for that morning that I really didn't want to miss.  It turns out that so few people signed up that they ended up not having the meeting that day, and after a disapproving phone call from the Market Managers, the store manager ORDERED people to go and freely express their feelings or he would kill them.  So, numerous day shift people went, with a lot of Department Managers, and it turns out that the Department Manager of Electronics mentioned something to them about the store manager having the kindness, understanding, and open-mindedness of Atilla the Hun.  So after the meeting was over everyone comes back to the store and somehow the store manager found out about the Department Manager's unkind words in regard to him. (Imagine: spies, narcs, and back-stabbers in Wal-Mart? Oh my!).  So instead of accepting this as just part of the wonderfulness of an open company with the benefits of a Slamming-Door Policy in which associates can feel free to speak their minds, he pulls that associate into his office and tears him a third a-hole.  (He'd already gotten a second the day before).
   This associate had finally had enough and after leaving the manager's office called up one of the Market Managers from the meeting and told him what his reward was for being encouraged to speak his mind.  As an unbelievable surprise, the Market Manager actually felt the associate had been wronged, and when we came in that night we heard through the grapevine that this was the straw that broke the camel's back that had already been loaded with previous complaints about our store manager.  The store manager was called by the Market Manager and told to go home and was not allowed to set foot in the store until the matter was settled.  We all were stunned.  We felt like the munchkins after Dorothy's house had landed on the Wicked Witch of the East.  But we were guarded in our optimism.  He might just as easily come back, situation being resolved, and get us and our little Toto too. 
   So our store went on day by day without a store manager and us clamoring for any new information.  The assistant managers played dumb and told us only that, to their knowledge, the store manager was on a Leave of Absence.  He was still our store manager and we were to conduct ourselves as if nothing had changed.  Every day for days, then weeks, then two, then three months we came to work asking if there was any news.  The assistants finally told us to stop asking about it and when they knew something, we'd know something.  Every time that we'd get giddy with the idea that he was never coming back, someone would mention a rumor that "He's coming back next Monday".  We would then beat the crap out of the person that said that and go back to believing we'd never have to see him again. 
   Then one day after about five months, at the nighttime meeting, the assistant manager notified us that we would be getting a new store manager.  He was never coming back.  It was like walking downstairs on Christmas morning and finding out that your older brother hadn't yet opened all the presents with your name on them and thrown them into the fireplace, where a yule-log burned like a big flaming elephant turd.
   We all breathed a collective sigh of relief and a few of us even crapped our pants with joy.  As impossible as it seemed, the little guy (and girl) sometimes did win the fight.  Maybe a whole bunch of little voices can overpower one big loud one.  Do we dare dream?  Do we dare believe in ourselves?  Can we finally photocopy his "Store Manager" picture a hundred times and wipe our butts with it?  Sure, why the hell not?  I mean, it is OUR store right?  We're the little worker bees that keep the hive running aren't we?
  Damn right!
  I guess that old saying is true:

   It may be a crazy dysfunctional nuthouse. 
   But it's OUR crazy dysfunctional nuthouse.
 

    Since communication at our store is crystal clear and perfectly efficient–like it is at every store–there’s never any need for questioning or second-guessing when management makes a decision.  I often wonder how history would be different if only our management was working naval intelligence on the morning of December 7th, 1941, the day Japan bombed Pearl Harbor.

ABOARD THE USS WAL-MART...BATTLESHIP...SOMEWHERE OFF THE COAST OF HAWAII:

    Ship’s Captain/(Store Manager): “Okay men” (things were different back then, unlike today when women get treated as exact equals as men at Wal-Mart and don’t have to file class-action lawsuits to get equal promotional consideration...Oh wait).  “We’ve just received a coded message from Headquarters (Home Office).  Since the only person on board who can decipher the code is on board the USS Bentonville helping with a remodel, and we didn’t feel it necessary to train anyone else to learn the codes, we’re just going to hope it’s not anything real important.  They’re probably announcing the finalization of something I heard about last week.  It seems they’re coming up with a new dress code.  They’ve determined that the enemy will find us more professional and intimidating if, instead of wearing our blue life-vests with the ‘Smiley Sailor’ on the back, we just wear generic grey and blue uniforms.  A small problem that has been mentioned regarding this is that, if a sailor falls overboard, it will be very difficult to differentiate between him and the gray and blue sharks that roam these waters.  Most likely we’ll end up throwing a life-preserver to one of the sharks that will quickly be attacking you instead of you yourself.  Since the life-preservers we ordered from China haven’t arrived yet, we’ll have to just try and harpoon the sharks to keep them away from you.  So make sure that while you’re  treading water and fighting off the sharks--we hope to get the learning module on shark defense tactics into the system by early next year--that you calmly and clearly announce to the harpooner: ‘I’m not a shark.   I’m a human being.  The one with my leg in his mouth is the shark’, so that the harpooner knows where to aim.  You’ll then need to recite your fifteen digit military identification number to prove you’re who you say you are.  Intelligence has found that the sharks may adapt to this verbal identification tactic and say that you are the shark and they are the human being, and then we’d end up shooting you and giving the shark your quarterly bonus. If it’s the middle of the night and you didn’t request a flashlight before you fell over the harpooner may have trouble seeing you; so it may be best if you just swim the twenty miles to shore and we’ll pick you up when we go back  to get the supplies that we forgot to remember to bring.  If you’re not going to arrive within twenty four hours or more of us reaching shore, or you die, make sure to notify the communications officer or you’ll receive an un-excused absence.  Any un-excused absences or deaths that are not approved in advance will result in you going on report.  Three un-excused absences or deaths will result in you being sent to Normandy for D-Day.  
    “We want to recommend that all sailors also take this step to cut down on preventable injuries:  do warm-up stretches before you fall overboard,  because we’ve had a lot of men  who were rescued after going in the water complain of lower back pain, as well as irritation in the area where the shark bit off their leg.  Those back injuries cost us a lot in medical expenses and lost time off work.  The Pentagon notified me that for every month we go without a medical claim my officers and myself will earn a hundred dollar bonus.  You men will each receive a cookie of the chocolate chip or peanut butter variety, as long as the officers and myself haven’t already eaten them--or they were not among the aforementioned items that we forgot to bring along.”
      “Sir?”, spoke one brave sailor, who was trained at the academy to maintain the ship’s engines, so was therefore job assigned to instead spend his tour making and hanging signs to put at the end of ship’s cannon that say: “Don’t stand in front of barrel during firing.  If you do, make sure you’re wearing protective goggles”.  
    “Yes, sailor?”, replied the Captain.
    “I received a little training in code deciphering, Sir.  Perhaps I could take a look at the message?”
    “Then who’s going to hang the signs, sailor?  The Tooth Fairy?”
    “No, sir.  The Tooth Fairy is also aboard the Bentonville  helping with the remodel.”
    “Damn, and I’ve got a molar that’s just about ready to come out.”
    “Perhaps I could work on the code on my fifteen minute break, sir.”
    “Okay, but rules dictate that no one is allowed to do any work while on break.”
    “What if I just skipped my last break and instead worked on the code, sir?”
    “Sailor you know that the Pentagon orders you to take two fifteen minutes breaks during your shift; unless you fall overboard during your shift which counts as a break.  I’ll tell you what.  You go jump overboard, and if you’re not harpooned or eaten by a shark, when you get back onboard you can work on the code.”
    The sailor then proceeded to jump overboard.  All the men who were on rescue duty were then immediately called below-decks to label boxes of suntan lotion for ship’s inventory.  At the evening’s role call it was discovered that the sailor who had jumped overboard was not present.  The captain duly noted his un-excused absence in his personnel file.
    The coded message from Headquarters, stating that a squadron of Japanese fighter planes was spotted by reconnaissance aircraft on a direct path to Pearl Harbor, was thus never deciphered.  The sailor in charge of scanning the area around the ship with binoculars for any threats was legally blind and his seeing-eye dog was in the ship’s sick bay with motion sickness, so the Japanese planes were almost on top of them before anyone spotted them.  
    “Captain!”, shouted the Second Officer  upon seeing the approaching planes.  “There’s a whole squadron of enemy planes approaching!  Maybe this was what that secret message from Headquarters was about.  Do you think we’re under attack?”
    “No, they’re probably just coming for the show.  I heard the Pentagon hired Don Ho to perform at the annual War Bonds Holders’ meeting.  They tried to get Garth Brooks but he won’t be born for about thirty-five more years.  This is probably a good time for us to polish up on the U.S. Navy cheer.  Give me a ‘U’!”
    “Sir the lead plane is breaking off and is diving straight for us!  Should I sound the alarm for all hands on deck?”
    “No.  Having everyone put their hands on the deck won’t do any good unless we’re getting ready to play a game of Twister, and now is not the time for that!  Tell the helmsman to submerge us to 200 meters and load the torpedo tubes.”
    “Sir, this is a battleship, not a submarine.”
    “No wonder I couldn’t find the damn periscope.”  The Captain then picked up the ships’ intercom.  “Attention all personnel.  This is the Captain speaking.  We’re either about to be attacked by a Japanese squadron, or a flock of very large geese is heading south for the winter.  Man all battle stations and be prepared to fire.  I’m going to go relay a message to Fleet Command to let them know what’s going on.”
    The brave sailors all quickly manned their battle stations and antiaircraft guns were soon firing at the approaching planes--or geese.  A few moments later the Captain returned to the bridge.  
    “Okay I got word out to Command and after conferring they sent a reply.  The District Commander wants us to head away from shore to try to draw the enemy away from our ships that are docked in port.  The Regional Commander wants us to head to shore to assist the ships in dock.  The Pentagon wants us to reassure the public that the Navy is not a big evil entity that is trying to take over the world while putting all the smaller Mom and Pop naval groups out of business.  The Navy offers a competitive salary with decent health benefits and there’s absolutely no reason for us to unionize.  The Navy saves the average American family $2500 a year by delivering cheap goods from China on our transport ships.  Also, we protect people from giant sea-monster attacks.  And another thing...”
    Just then a Japanese fighter dive-bombed onto the deck of the ship, exploding in a huge fireball.  Luckily no one was hurt because that part of the ship was closed off for waxing.  
    “This is the Captain speaking!  I’ve just received word that the Don Ho concert for tonight has been postponed, so stow your grass skirts in your footlockers and prepare to lower the life-rafts.”
    Seconds later another plane, flying just feet above the water, crashed into the side of the ship, breaching the hull, resulting in the ship beginning to take on water.  
    “Sir!”, cried the First Mate.  “The ship is now slowly sinking.  Should you make the call to abandon ship?”
    “I”m not allowed to make any major decisions like that without first consulting Headquarters.”
    Okay, sir.  You go make the call to headquarters, I’ll help all the men into the life-rafts.”
    Due to their diligent training, while the officers were busy having meetings about whether it was too early to put up the Halloween decorations, the men were all able to safely get aboard the life-rafts and paddle away from the sinking ship.  As they got farther away the First Mate spotted the Captain rushing out onto the foredeck, which was now pointing up at a forty-five degree angle as the aft part of the ship was now quickly disappearing below the surface.  A few moments later, as the Captain clung to the front railing of the ship, the First Mate thought he could make out the Captain yelling something just before the Bentonville sank to the bottom of the ocean:
    “Headquarters says not to worry.  They’re working on the problem.  They’ve got everything under contr...”
                        *   *   *
    I’m sure there’s numerous times that we all feel like we’re on a sinking ship being captained by The Three Stooges (store manager and two co-managers).  Oftentimes it seems like communication is passed on to us like a game of drunken telephone.  The store manager tells something to the co-managers, who pass it along the assistant managers, who pass it on to the support managers, and by the time we get the message--“Make sure that there is absolutely no overtime this week”, turns into: “Make sure to order more limes for that priest.”   Nary a better example of the tangled lines of communication could be found when it comes to risers.  I can’t count the number of times that we’ve been told to put risers up on the 3rd shift, only to come back the following night or week to find that they had them taken down during the day, because it turns out that the Regional came in and said, “The risers need to come down because they make the store look cluttered”.  Never mind the fact that the store looks cluttered because it’s always dirty; never zoned; never fully stocked; most of the aisles look like a troop of monkeys-in-heat ran through them playing hide the banana; most of our customers aren’t familiar with modern plumbing so they shit on the floor and piss in the garbage; the homeless people setting up tent-communities in the back of sporting goods; well you get the point...
    So instead of focusing on these problems which are much more apparent to the customer’s eye, let’s not have freight stacked on shelves which are above the freight that is on shelves.  God forbid a customer would crane their neck back and see a line of coffee makers above them.
    “Dear, god.  Look at them all up there!  Looking down on me like that.  What’s that Mr. Coffee?  Today the risers, tomorrow the world?  In the name of all that is holy what have they done?  And what’s that up above behind me...a row of ‘Tickle Me Elmos’ all lined up like Hitler’s Stormtroopers?  No I won’t tickle you.  You can’t make me!  You think you’re better than me because you’re up there and I’m down here?  We made you what you are!  I will tickle you straight to hell.  All of you!  Dear lord, I’ve got to get out of this aisle.  But wait...above the next aisle...Dora the Explorer sleeping bags all lined up to comfort the tired bodies of the Children of the Corn at a Satanic Slumber Party.  And the next aisle...dozens and dozens of 24-packs of Quilted Charmin..  What are you doing up there?!  No one should have to climb a ladder to wipe their ass!  What has become of this place?  Stacking their merchandise like a Tower of Babel reaching for the heavens.  God will smite thee oh unholy ones.  Confess thy sins and exalt no more these idols you have risen up, lest on the Day of Judgement you find your salvation above a sign that reads: ‘Ask for assistance for items on this shelf!’  And you will find no assistance, because all of the Angels in Heaven will be on break!”
    So maybe it is a good idea to take them down.
    It got to a point that we were putting the risers up and taking them down so often that it actually culminated in one fateful night where one manager told an associate  to put the risers up, and another manager told another associate to take them down.  Of course neither knowing what the other was doing.  The associate putting the risers up had gotten to the other side of the store before the other associate went to where they had begun and started taking them down.  Neither associate was in eyeshot of the other.  Shortly thereafter most of us stockers discovered what was going on and it became like watching an epic battle.  People chose sides.  Those wanting the risers to go up so they could get rid of all their overstock, and those wanting them to come down so they wouldn’t constantly have to pull freight down and work it.  It was a truly tragic sight.  People that had worked alongside each other for years in harmony soon became bitter enemies.  Shouts of “Dirty riser-lover!” and “Closed-minded riser-hater!” could be heard echoing throughout the store.  I tried to intervene and begged my fellow associates not to let something so insignificant create a rift between us.  Then I noticed it was lunch-time and figured I could try and broker a peace deal after I ate my sandwich.  Alas, if I would have paid attention in history class instead of writing “I love Debbie Gibson” all over my history folder I would have remembered that Jimmy Carter stopped to go eat a sandwich during the Arab/Israeli peace talks, and when he returned he discovered that the negotiations had broken down so severely that a week later both sides went to battle in what was later referred to as: “The Turkey Club on Rye War”.  To this day President Carter can’t walk into a deli without being yelled at and having mayonnaise packets thrown at him–which, by the way, is a federal offense.
    So like President Carter I returned from my lunch to find that all hell had broken loose.  The riser-lovers had fortified themselves between Hardware and Sporting Goods, while the riser-haters set up camp in HBA, Cosmetics, and Pharmacy.  Housewares and Stationary in between were considered neutral territory where scouts would be sent out on reconnaissance missions to spy on the enemy.
    The riser-lovers hoped to put to use paintball and pellet guns, as well as hunting knives to aid in  storming the other side, but they were locked up and the 2nd shift sporting goods associate had accidently taken the keys home again.   They resorted instead to using tennis rackets to launch balls of catfish stink bait across enemy lines in hopes of stinking the riser-haters into surrendering.  But as soon as the balls of stinkbait landed inside their perimeter, the associates there quickly neutralized them by dousing them with apricot-scented douche.  The battle went on like this for an hour, with riser-haters rushing to the opposite action alley, firing suppositories with a slingshot made out of hair scrunchies, and the riser-lovers beating them back by throwing “Jeff Foxworthy’s Comedy Hunting” DVD’s like saw-blades-of-death at them.  It all became too real when one of the riser-lovers had a seizure after staring too long through a night-vision scope under all those florescent lights.  As a neutral party I was the one designated to call his wife and tell her that her husband was wounded in battle.  I think that was probably the most difficult phone call I’ve ever made.  Accept maybe for the time I called a phone-sex line and my ex-girlfriend answered.    She wouldn’t even give me a discount.
    The delirious and injured associate got up and ran before his squad-mates could stop him, him yelling something about seeing Osama Bin Laden in Housewares getting a lint roller for his turban.  Before he could be stopped he was quickly captured by a group of riser-hater scouts, secured with Ace bandages, and threatened with repeated enemas if he didn’t agree to film a CBL in which he would denounce his allegiance to the riser-lovers.  He endured their torture with clenched teeth and a clenched sphincter.  He would divulge only his name, rank, and the number of his proctologist.  He was later awarded the Purple Butt Plug.  
    It was the power going out that finally put an end to the madness.  The driver of a grocery truck was pulling away from the dock when he accidently jumped the curb and crashed into the power transformer, sending everything into a darkness pierced only by the dim emergency-lights scattered throughout the store.  Everyone groped around their respective areas searching for the store flashlights that were kept in every department in case of such an emergency.  The riser-lovers could find no flashlights because the associate on the Safety Team responsible for distributing them to that part of the store  was in the hospital after climbing up the side of the bins and falling, instead of using a ladder.  The riser-haters had plenty of flashlights but all the batteries were dead.  The batteries they needed for their flashlights were, of course, located in sporting goods.  I was able to enact a temporary cease-fire after I got on the intercom and said, “This is Osama Bin Laden.  I just purchased a lint roller in your Housewares department.  It is the most wonderful thing I have ever seen.  It picks the camel hair out of my turban like magic.  When I looked closely at this product I noticed something written on the label.  It says: ‘Made in the USA’.  If your country can make such a wonderful product, I can no longer justify saying: ‘Death to America’.  Yes we may have our differences, but we can all agree on the discomfort and itching caused by camel hair.  I haven’t felt this good since I ordered the killing of an infidel for listening to Britney Spears on their Ipod.  It’s time we all laid down our arms and begin a process of peace.  I would like to invite you all to Chuck E. Cheese.  On me.”
    The riser-lovers and riser-haters all met in the center of housewares, exchanging batteries and flashlights.   They realized that when looking at the situation as a whole, risers up or risers down didn’t really amount to much.  They knew their decision was the right one when they noticed two people over in the magazine aisle.  They walked over and saw the associate who was putting the risers up and the associate who was taking them down, sitting side by side, reading Hot Rod magazine by candlelight...and sharing a sandwich.  When asked whether they felt angry about being tasked with a project that turned out to be completely futile, they responded: “At first we were, when we each realized what the other was doing, but just before we were about to get in an argument over it we heard  Osama bin Laden over there using the intercom.  So we went over there and took turns beating him with a riser.  I lifted the riser up.  And he brought the riser down–on Osama’s head.  Over and over and over.  So you see, in the big picture, sometimes risers going up and risers going down can both lead to a satisfying outcome.”
    They all smiled and nodded, recognizing  the wisdom in the two associates’ conclusion.  They may have been surrounded by darkness;  but at that moment they all saw the light.
    I on the other hand, after being mistaken for Osama bin Laden, and beaten nearly to death with a riser, suffered temporary blindness, along with some temporarily permanent brain damage.  But after a week in the hospital and a twelve-hour interrogation by the FBI to prove that, no, I wasn’t actually Osama bin Laden, I was released to go back to work.  Upon approaching the time clock on my first night back, I noticed a note pinned on the bulletin board addressed to the overnight stocker in TLE.   Since that was me I opened it, seeing that it was a message from the store manager:
    “Come see me when you clock in...I just got an email from the new  Regional Manager.  It’s a project I’m going to put you in charge of.  He’s got a new plan in regards to the risers.  Take them all down we’re not going to use them anymore.  We’re going to have all the overstock freight floating above the top shelf sitting on air mattresses filled with helium.  Make sure you calculate the amount of helium needed based on the cumulative weight of the boxes, so they all float exactly 11 3/4 inches above the top shelf.  And it needs to be done by tomorrow morning.  We forgot to mention that the entire Board of Directors is coming tomorrow for an inspection.  If you could float down from the ceiling on an air mattress doing the Wal-Mart Cheer  when they walk through the doors, that would be very helpful in selling this new program to them.  I want to thank you for all that you do for the store, being a team-player, and all that other bullshit that you guys like to hear.  Thanks again, Jim.
    (My name is Jon)
    “Also, build a feature of lint rollers.  All of a sudden those things are selling like crazy.”
    
                                   

                   

                   

    Hello all, I'm new to this site and must say I absolutely love it.  It's amazing that everything you guys are saying is stuff that I've been wondering when I say, "Is every Wal-Mart like ours?  Can they all be this bad?  I spent around an hour reading posts and it's like we all work at the same store.  I've been at my current store in Iowa for nine years.  Yes, that's a very depressing thought, but I know that when I get up to heaven St. Peter will be like, "Tell the Pope to wait in line, this guy worked at Wal-Mart for over nine years???  He's already been through hell, let him go right in I say!"  I've spent most of those years on the 3rd shift , now currently in the automotive department.  Compared to other departments I've worked in:  Housewares--absolutely hated it.  At least ten pallets a night and no help?  Well sign me up!  I had nightmares that when I died I'd be buried in a 50 gallon Sterilite tote (don't forget the lid!).  HBA--wasn't bad at first, but this old b*tch who worked there hated anyone who wasn't as angry and miserable as her (or had more teeth than her remaining five).  No matter what you did it was always wrong in her eyes, and management was afraid to deal with her because they believed the story that she never actually applied at the store, but that when the construction crew was building it, she crawled out of a hole in the ground and decided to curse everyone for eternity for disturbing her slumber.  Any new manager that came to the overnight shift was quickly told to always wear a crucifix, carry a little bottle of holy water in their pocket, and never look her directly in the eye or she'd be able to steal their soul.  When she finally retired a couple years ago they had a priest come in and bless the department.  Every once in a while when you're in one of the aisles you'll feel a chill come over you and swear you can hear a voice saying, "Zone the tampons or I will kill you..."    I was finally transfered out of that department after a manager caught me smelling the feminine deodorant spray.  Chemicals: it wasn't bad at first when they had two people working the department and we only got about four pallets a night before going Supercenter.  After that when my help transfered to another department, and of course why then replace them and pay two people to now work eight to ten pallets a night when you can get one to do it if you go over to them every half-hour and beat them with a garden hose to make them work faster.  I finally got out of the department after bringing in a doctor's note saying I was allergic to the hypo-allergenic detergent and putting apple juice in an empty Pine-Sol bottle and drinking it in the break room and saying, "I can't help it I'm addicted to that pine fresh taste!"
    The good thing about the automotive department is that I only get two or three pallets of freight a night, although I have to also work the TLE stockroom because the department manager can't climb a ladder or lift anything heavier than his telxon or the box of cookies he keeps in his office.  I also have to set the mods because he has eye problems and can't read the small numbers on the mod sheets.  To test this, I wrote at the bottom of a list of things he was to do from management, in really small letters, "Be less of a worthless sack of turds and see how that works" at the bottom of the page.  I haven't noticed any improvement so maybe he really can't see very well.  Another good thing about automotive is that I get to listen to the display car stereos all night when the punk teenagers aren't over there pulling the knobs off all the stereos or trying to poke holes in the speakers.  The stockers in the departments next to me especially love it when I bring in my Greatest Hits of the Carpenters CD and rock out to that all night.  Customers love it when I say, "I'll make a copy of your key as soon as Rainy days and Mondays is over".
    Others of you have talked about under-staffing in your stores and I can say that's it's definitely a problem in our store.  There's almost no 2nd shift people on the floor so when we arrive at 10:00, as soon as we punch in and walk out of the back room we get gang-tackled by customers as soon as we set foot on the sales floor.  I now climb down a rope ladder from the roof into the TLE stock room to avoid much of this onslaught.  Then from about 10:30 to at least 1:00 a.m. the CSM's constantly page for all backup cashiers to the front.  Thank god I never allowed myself to be register trained so can avoid this, but of course now that everyone else is up on a register I have to help customers in every department on my side of the store.  I tried to alleviate this problem by putting "Sorry, I'm retarded can't help" on my name badge, but management quickly made me switch it back to "Customers' Bitch".  They've threatened over the past few years to force all overnight stockers to be register trained and some have fallen for it, but the rest of us have refused saying we weren't hired or job coded as cashiers, and so far it has worked.  I'm not sure if they can officially force you to do a job you weren't hired or job coded for, so so far we've one that battle.
    In reference to it being hotter than a volcano researchers' asshole in your stores I can definitely sympathize with that.  When we went Supercenter and they put new air-conditioners on the grocery side, they still kept the old shitty air-conditioners on the GM side that were there when they built the store twenty years ago.  I think the air-conditioner over the TLE came out of one of Sam Walton's pickup trucks.  We've complained to every manager we've had on nights about this for years and they keep saying that the home office says it's set at 72 degrees.  It may be 72 degrees in Sam Walton's coffin but it's like 90 in the store.  To deal with the fact that the company won't spend money to get the air-conditioning fixed/repaired we go over to the hardware department and store-use about twenty fans every summer, without actually getting managements' permission.  "I don't know where that fan came from, it was here when I came in, sir".  Now with the fact that we can't wear shorts on nights anymore it's become absolutely brutal.  It's so hot that on first break I put an egg in my underwear, and by lunch it's hard-boiled.  If I forget to pour baby powder on my crotch before work, by the end of my shift I have to walk like Franensteins' monster because my balls are welded to my thigh.  Not to mention the fact that, wearing khaki pants while you're opening dirty and dusty boxes all night, by the morning time you look like you just crawled out of  dumpster.
    We recently got a new store manager after we were finally able to get rid of the last one.  I thought the one we had before him was an asshole, but this guy was an absolute mental case.  Next to this guy Hitler would win Miss Congeniality.  No one ever taught this fart-swallower in the management/brain-washing training program that you don't get the best out of your employees by insulting and deriding them at every chance you get.  This guy had no problem yelling at management or associates out on the sales floor (yeah, real professional).   It didn't matter if every other associate in the store called-in sick with flaming diarrhea the night before;  why doesn't the store look absolutely perfect?  He would walk the maintenance crew around and yell at them if he found dirt in a corner on the floor, or a picture of him with "asshole" written above it hanging in the bathroom.  A couple years ago we had a huge mouse problem in our back room.  I told him just to have the ladies in fabrics knit little blue vests for them and he could have them run around the store and bite associates so he could spend more time in his office assaulting employees with a pipe wrench.  He said it sounds like a good idea on the surface, but if one of those mice were to get stepped on, Wal-Mart would then have to pay the surviving family members life insurance benefits since they would technically be considered employees.  And as we all know, Wal-Mart is in the business of taking money in, not giving money out.  So to deal with the mouse problem he put up a challenge for us all.  If we were to catch fifty mice he would give us a pizza party.  Of course Wal-Mart wouldn't allow us to use the standard wooden mousetrap that snaps and instantly kills the mice, because if an associate accidentally  set off the trap on their finger or accidentally left a set trap out on the sales floor on the shelf in a PDQ box of little Nerf balls, Wal-Mart would be sued for a billion dollars.  So we had to place a thousand glue traps all over the back of the store so that when mice got stuck on them we could all listen to the sound of them squeaking in agony as they chewed their own legs off to try to free themselves.  A guy on maintenance who didn't know what we were doing walked around with a bottle of WD-40 because he "heard all this squeaking and thought the pallet jack wheels needed lubricating".   When we finally caught and killed 50 mice we put them all in a box in the pets claims bin with claims tickets that said, "defective cat toys".    The claims guy had to take a leave of absence after that.
    Our new manager seems like a nice guy, but they all due until their contract with the devil is finalized.  He's instituting a new policy, which I actually wholeheartedly support, in regards to peoples' availability to work.  We have far too many people who have shined managements' ass with their lips so that they can get weekends off, and so of course on the busiest nights of the week we have no one there (accept me and the few who see it as our responsibility to be there when the store needs people the most.  Also, we refuse to kiss ass).  I'd love to have weekends off too like everybody else (do you know how hard it is to find a prostitute on a Wednesday night?), but we chose to work in retail (don't ask me why) and the weekends are when you have the most customers.  So if you don't want to work weekends, then find work giving hand-jobs at the bus station Monday through Friday (feel free to use me as a reference).   So they've said that if you're not willing to work weekends then there is a good chance that you won't get scheduled for forty hours.   I understand those that have kids that they may only get to spend time with on the weekends or people who need their weekends free so they can go out, get drunk with their friends, and come home wasted and beat their wife/husband, which you just don't have time to do during the week.  (Just kidding, folks.  My ex-wife used to beat me every Tuesday).   But the fact is you work retail and the weekend is the busy time.  So hopefully that will help a little with coverage, but management in their wisdom will probably now schedule everyone  but the door greeters off on Monday nights.
    So anyway, I'm glad I found this board and look forward to hearing many wonderful stories of Life Behind the Wal.   Just remember, you're not alone out there, and when it comes to management, they'll always be more of us than of them.  Take care and remember to always practice the ten-foot rule.  If you let a customer get closer than ten feet to you, you're not walking away fast enough.