For the past few years, a growing number of Walmart customers have complained about threadbare shelves, while Walmart workers say it’s a result of being understaffed and mismanaged. Now the nation’s largest retailer is admitting that it’s losing billions of dollars by trying to be cheap.
According to a recent BusinessWeek story, Walmart execs announced at a company meeting earlier this month that improving the level of merchandise that is in-stock and available for customers to buy is a top priority.
As Walmart workers told us last year, a number of Walmart stores have plenty of inventory in the back of the building, but some of it never reaches the floor because there are too few employees — or too many employees being directed to do non-shelving work — to keep shelves stocked.
Last fall, Walmart finally began to add some hours for employees to do more stocking work, but complaints from customers have not stopped.
At the company meeting, executives said they will add more hours in an effort to improve “in-store execution.” If it fails to make a change for the positive, the company figures to lose $3 billion a year.
Whether or not that works will likely depend on who they hire and how they treat the new hires. One Walmart worker told Consumerist that her store has a way of overwhelming new part-time hires with too much work, leading to a high level of turnover, meaning time is wasted training people over and over again.
Over the last five years, Walmart’s workforce has decreased in size, while the company has continued to open up stores in new locations around the country. We’ve been told that workers get a higher hourly wage to stock, but that many cashiers and other employees have been drafted into shelving duty during their regularly scheduled hours and without any bump in pay for that time.
Right now it’s a wait and see if Walmart’s latest plan will work. The condition of its shelves is one of those few things that a retailer can’t hide from consumers’ eyes.
Who do you think of when you imagine the chatty kind of person who might want to make phone calls in the middle of a crowded airplane, mid-flight? While your mental picture might land on a businessperson in a suit yelling something about mergers and Hong Kong markets and getting that deal done before they close, a trade group representing business travelers has come out against the idea.
The Global Business Travel Assn. submitted its official opposition to the Federal Communication Commission’s plan to possibly lift the ban on voice calls on planes, reports the Los Angeles Times.
That group represents about 6,000 travel managers and pegs the idea of calls on planes as “detrimental to business travelers.” And because everyone loves the late folk singer Pete Seeger, the group quoted him by saying “there is a time to keep silence and a time to speak.”
And while the average traveler certainly has a right to peace and quiet, business travelers carry a lot of financial heft and could have the power to sway any change in regulation: Business travel accounted for $491 billion in spending in 2012, the LAT reports, or about 3% of U.S. gross domestic product.
Both the FCC and the Department of Transportation closed commenting on the cellphone ban in mid-March, and looking at a survey of the DOT’s comments, it appears that most travelers loathe the idea of anyone gabbing in mid-air. Because whether it’s a conversation about the mergers and acquisitions or the guy next to you repeatedly cooing to his lady love that she’s his only iddle biddle pumpkin facey-wacey, no one wants to hear it.
Opponents of allowing cellphone calls on planes gain powerful ally [Los Angeles Times]
You can follow MBQ on Twitter and read any tweets quietly on a plane if that’s what you’re into: @marybethquirk
It probably isn’t necessary for us consumers to test the structural integrity of our condoms, but this video published last week features a bold Italian experimenter doing just that.
Yes, the man’s running commentary is in Italian, but you don’t need to understand every word in order to get what’s going on here.
What we’re not clear on is what Nutella adds to the fizzy reaction. We won’t argue that everything is better with Nutella, but we don’t really see what that adds, other than adding something Italian to the mix. Which it does, sorta.
Thanks to the magic of Google, you can watch the video with real-time subtitles here.
Coke + Nutella + Mentos + Durex ITALIA world record [YouTube]
Bananas thrive in a subtropical climate: a place where the temperature is warm, the humidity is high, and there’s about twelve hours of sunlight per day. You know, like Ohio.
Like many people, Rob prefers to buy locally-grown produce when possible. “I was very excited to see that my local Wal-mart is now offering Ohio grown bananas,” he wrote to Consumerist. “At least I assume they mean that, given the ‘Ohio’s own’ sign.” Somehow, he thinks that these bananas weren’t grown right down the street.
Isn’t it because Chiquita is based on Cincinnati? Well, no: they took off for the warmer climate of Charlotte, North Carolina a few years ago. Not that you can grow bananas in Charlotte, either.
Banana Cultivation Guide [Helpful Advice]
See, the thing about retail stores is there’s usually some kind of record of its inventory, you know, the products it sells. Which is why employees eventually realized that a man who’d returned six pairs of sunglasses with Kohl’s price tags on them for $109 in cash wasn’t on the up and up — those glasses weren’t even sold at Kohl’s, reports KMOV.
Turns out the suspect allegedly bought six pairs of sunglasses at the Kohl’s store, then police say he went back to his car, took the price tags from those glasses and stuck them on five pairs he already owned.
He’s then accused of going back inside and returning the glasses that he hadn’t purchased there and getting the money. It was only a matter of time before employees realized “Hey, these aren’t our glasses,” and called the police.
It seems the suspect is still out there, perhaps returning more sunglasses he doesn’t own for more cash that’s not his. Be on the lookout.
Clever thief sought after scamming Arnold Kohl’s store [KMOV.com]
