Wal-Mart vs. Target vs. Mom-and-Pop Stores
Wal-Mart: Almost 75% of the Walmart store management team started as hourly associates.
From the article "Life at Wal-Mart": Everyone [co-workers at Wal-Mart] agreed that Wal-Mart was preferable to the local Target, where the hourly pay was lower and workers were said to be treated with less respect (an opinion which I was unable to verify). Most of all, my coworkers wanted to avoid those “mom-and-pop” stores beloved by social commentators where, I was told, employees had to deal with quixotic management policies, while lacking the opportunities for promotion that exist in a large corporation.
7 Comments:
"Everyone [co-workers at Wal-Mart] agreed that Wal-Mart was preferable to the local Target, where the hourly pay was lower and workers were said to be treated with less respect"
So Mark, why would you post that statement (and the other one in bold below it) knowing that it clearly is not a random sample?
Without appropriate randomized samples, the validity of the above statement is of serious concern.
These may indeed be the case, but one cannot determine it in any reliable way based on Mr. Platt's methodology.
--Pingry
How did you spend your Sunday morning? For Sam's Clubs employees it was at a mandatory meeting. At the Sunday morning gathering employees were told 10,000 of them will soon be let go.
Sam's Club is part of Wal-Mart and named for Sam Walton.
Walmart: everything you want under one roof at low prices, open 24 hours in many locations, with free and available parking. Transportation costs and emissions are minimzed by large scale, just in time shipments.
Mom and Pop: Limited choice, high prices, expensive and hard to find parking, close at 6pm before you even get home from work. Inefficient, costly, polluting frequent small scale restocking.
Historically it has been the case that many Wal-Mart employees have done very well. (As usual it is if you got in early and were able to ride the stock up). Today that chance is of course not so great as Wal-Mart is more or less constrained to grow at roughly the pace of the economy.
Wal-Mart by combining its stores with a web-site that can ship to store for free, is able to undercut others because the differential cost of adding a box to a truck is very small.
The mom and pop style of store, in many respects faces as much competition from Amazon as Wal-Mart, as Amazon moves into more and more areas. Amazon, manages to cut their inventory costs to a minimum by having to have it in only 5-6 places in the US.
My son is an assistant manager at Wal-Mart and is just finishing his master's degree (on his expense) to get into healthcare management.
He's fed up with Wal-mart, not so much of the company, but because he's had a series of bottom-rate managers that have made his life hell. Large retail businesses that are open 24 by 7 are very hellish on assistant managers.
In short, a company is no better to an employee than his manager.
As for Pingry's comment, several of my son's associates have said exactly the same thing about Target.
Another true story about mom and pop stores - my wife is director of a non-profit assisted living facility for seniors. When the building was nearly done and it was time to order appliances for the 24 units, she went to the local hardware store first. They gave her no discount and refused to deliver them.
She went twenty five miles away to a big box store - they offered a large discount, free delivery and free installation. So the 24 sets refrigerators, cooktops, ovens and dishwashers arrived on time without difficulty.
And the local hardware store owners not only didn't get the business, they were angry because they felt they were owed the business. They also insult my wife, me and my son at every opportunity. I told them that a) with their attitude they should get out of the business and b) neither me nor my family would never darken their door or spend a dime in their store again.
The moral of the story is that regardless of the store's size, the business goes to whichever can offer the best value.
Long live Wal-Mart.
Sam's Club is part of Wal-Mart and named for Sam Walton.
...who eventually passed it on to the Benedict Arnolds in the family. They in turn passed it on to the Third World. What exists now is what is left.
Mom and Pop: Limited choice, high prices, expensive and hard to find parking, close at 6pm before you even get home from work.
That isn't so much a claim as much as it identifies the speaker.
He's fed up with Wal-mart, not so much of the company, but because he's had a series of bottom-rate managers that have made his life hell.
When the canary in the mine dies, get out of the mine - don't kill yourself trying to make quota. Wal-Mart's scale allows them to export the same lack of respect found in China straight to the US-side employees. Get out, stay out, and don't give them any business again.
Then again, Wal-Mart is the mine owner that seals the exits. Those 10,000 people are people they could "write off" with no fear of reprisal.
--
Does the word "company town" mean anything to you, especially with regards to Wal-Mart? They seem to act like one; they should fall like one.
Sams Club fired 10,000 demo sampling workers. They then hired another company from Rogers, AR to do demo sampling. In net terms, it probably is a wash. In addition - since the contracted company obviously is more efficient, we will reap the benefits with lower prices at Sams! Yea! My kid is going to college; I appreciate the fact that they offer lower prices than Mom and Pop.
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