posted
has anyone here ever worked at walmart before?
i know several of us hate shopping there, but anyone know how good or bad working there is?
i am pretty desperate for work and they pay better than victoria's secret and i heard they had health benefits available for fulltime employees. it would only be for about four months or so, anyone have experience???
Posts: 3936 | Registered: Jul 2000
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posted
Well if you plan on only working there for 4 months you probably will not get the health care benefits. There is usually a period of time where you are not covered, along the line of 3-6 months. If you let them know you are just planning on working through the Christmas holidays, you could probably get part time work, but I doubt they will hire some one full time who is only going to work for a few months.
posted
I worked at WalMart for about a year and a half, and it was weird and brain-washy, but liveable. Just don't invest too much of yourself into it, learn when to say 'no' to your managers, realize that you are NOT going to get full-time or benefits, and don't take the job home with you. If they call you at home, tell them that they can talk to you while you are on the clock at work, that your personal time is your personal time, period.
IMO, I had one of the best jobs there. I worked at the jewelry counter. I didn't have to wear the goofy vest, and felt really kind of separated from the rest of the store. Cashiering was a real bear, up at the front, but it's fairly mindless and repetetive. *shrug* It's up to you.
My coworkers were/are great people, and most of the managers were decent, but WalMart does funny things with the schedules so that you end up working seven days in a row and even STILL don't have overtime/fulltime. It's all about where the pay period begins and ends. Most corporations teach that sort of scheduling to their managers, I think, so watch out for it.
A job is a job is a job, honey, just be aware.
Posts: 1545 | Registered: May 2002
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My mother is a cashier at Wal-Mart, and seems to hate it, though she never gets frustrated where I can see (about anything). They don't pay her enough and force her to eat at strange times.
OTOH, my sister decorates cakes in the bakery. Wal-Mart courted her really hard, because she was sort of locally famous for doing a really good job of it at the now-closed grocery. Sometimes they screw up her hours too, but she seems to be having an okay time, and she gets health care and other benefits.
Posts: 1041 | Registered: Feb 2002
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quote: WalMart does funny things with the schedules so that you end up working seven days in a row and even STILL don't have overtime/fulltime. It's all about where the pay period begins and ends. Most corporations teach that sort of scheduling to their managers, I think, so watch out for it.
Walmart has really developed this into a science to manage labor costs. Overtime gets managers demoted or fired.
Posts: 6316 | Registered: Jun 2003
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posted
Paul Ganssle works at Wal-Mart getting buggies in. You can often find him in the AIM chatroom if you want to ask him about it. Sounds like an OK gig from what he's said to me about it.
Posts: 968 | Registered: Sep 2003
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posted
There are probably worse places to work at, but for the most part it was a work environment that irritated me.
When I was hired, it was with the idea that I would only work 15-20 hours a week. I only needed and wanted part time. I also said that I would not be working on sundays. I made the mistake of saying "except in emergencies". This was put in my file. Gradually, my hours got more and more and working sundays became a regular thing. I'd said that there was no way I could work in the mornings on sundays. The manager knew that. But after a while, she started scheduling me during Sunday mornings. I also had it stated that I was unable to come in before 4 on weekdays. She started trying to schedule me earlier. I had to call several times telling her that I could not work before that time, because my husband wasn't yet home.
I was working nearly 35 hours a week. A lady who had been working there for 2 years and wanted full time was regularly working about 25 hours a week. So I asked for, and got, a transfer to a different department. The day my transfer was to go into effect, the department manager wrote me up for something completely stupid and at the same time told me that I wouldn't be getting transfered because of an 'emergency'. The emergency was a situation she'd known about for 3 weeks. She claimed she hadn't found out until that day, but I knew for a fact that she knew before.
The assistant manager over my department had regularly told me that he was very impressed with how I kept the department during my shift. Unfortunately, it wasn't him there that day when I went to talk to the a. manager on shift about the situation. That assistant manager began yelling at me as soon as I said that I needed to talk about what had happened.
So I quit. We'd moved into nicer apartments that were actually cheaper, but had higher income requirements. Vladimir had gotten a raise. The whole family was way too stressed for me to continue working there.
There is a lot of opportunity for advancement there. They give pretty decent raises to lower management. This means that once they get you to a certain point in hourly, they'll promote you to be an assistant manager. Why? So they can pay you salary instead. And once they have you on salary, you can expect to work for a minimum of 60 hours a week up to 80 hours a week. Now, 6 years ago, the starting salary for that was 24,000. If you do not work as many hours as they want you too, you start getting written up. There are many department managers that make more per hour than the assistant managers.
Because I worked after 4, I was lucky enough to usually miss the cheer. I hope they've stopped doing it. "Give me a W! Give me an A!...."
And yet there are good things. Get in on their stock sharing, and if you keep on working there you'll be doing pretty good if you work there only about 15 years, I think. And if you work well there, you do get good raises. The enjoyment or not enjoyment of working there has a LOT to do with your management. You have to either be not showing up for work or stealing things to get fired. That is probably because the turnover rate is so high to begin with that they really can't afford to fire folks that don't do their job very well.
Posts: 3495 | Registered: Feb 2000
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posted
well i definitely wasn't looking to work there for over a year, so i think i may be looking elsewhere. right now i just need a job to pay off my car insurance, get my student loan managed, and hopefully get back into school. i plan on moving in with a friend in LA early next year, so i just need enough to take care of things while i am looking for work there. gah, i dunno, everything is just really up in the air r ight now, but i know i need money. and medical benefits is a big deal because i am asthmatic and have been without health insurance for a year. i've been surviving on donations of medication for several months now, and holy crap i'm scared for when i run out. i've got a couple other prospects, so we'll see. oh, and for those that know, victoria's secret finally got back with me YESTERDAY (yes, over a month. doesnt make them look good at all.) and offered my pitiful wages for pitiful hours. no thanks, i make almost as much doing the paper route a couple nights a week. bleah.
Posts: 3936 | Registered: Jul 2000
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posted
I have two relatives who have worked at Wally World. One got to be mostly at the jewelry counter and in pharmacy. The other worked the snack bar for about a month . The one in pharmacy had worked at a walmart in another state, and was easily able to obtain a transfer to our store. Then, a year later, she went back, still to work at walmart. Each time she transferred, she got a nice raise. And from her I know that if you make nice to the Little Debbie guy, he will drive his Little Debbie truck over to your house and drop of all the not-quite-expired goodies. And probably a few other things... .
posted
you could try to work at Vons in S Cali. They're the bane of my existence (stupid orders! ), but from what I've heard, they offer some pretty decent benefits. I don't think they're paying for lasik anymore, but I'd have to check up on that.
Posts: 851 | Registered: Oct 2001
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posted
I've had two good friends who worked at Walmart - one as a cashier and one at the photo center. Both had awful awful experiences with scheduling. Both were told when they were hired that they wouldn't have to work Sundays, and both were repeatedly scheduled on Sundays. The cashier, who was my roommate, worked there for over five years and kept getting promised promotions and decent schedules that never came. Even thought she was promoted to purple-vestedness, they still scheduled her for eight-hour shifts starting at 4 pm when she told them she needed a regular work-hours type of job.
Never work for a big corporation is what I say, and at the same time I look up to people who can handle that kind of crap.
Posts: 8504 | Registered: Aug 1999
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I think the important thing here is if you are considering Victoria's Secret, remember that at Wal-Mart, you probably won't have to help ladies (and sometimes even men) try on lingerie. Posts: 264 | Registered: Jan 2002
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My husband worked at walmart before I did, as a department manager. can't stress enough how much the management has to do with the enjoyment of the job. The general system is set up fairly well, though sadly it has been worse since Sam Walton died. Vladimir first worked under a great manager that even knew MY name (I wasn't working there at that time). He enjoyed working there. And he worked under a manager that treated him like dog poop. He asked for a transfer to a different store, where he got one that was a little better.
I knew someone who went in straight from college as an assistant manager. She hated it. I would actually say that middle management is far worse than peon. Vladimir was a department manager of electronics. When they wanted to transfer him out of the electronics department and into cards and foods, he actually asked to stay in electronics and be demoted. This didn't involve a pay cut, and they let him do it. He was a much happier person. One thing that was funny: during his period in the electronics department, that store sold the most computers of any Walmart nationally (I think it was nationally. It was at least regionally). They also had the least number of ripped off returns (computers that someone opened up to take parts out of) because he told the returns desk to make sure he inspected all the computers before the store took them back.
posted
actually maureen, i was rather looking forward to that aspect of the job.
of course if i had told them that, they probably wouldn't have asked me to work for them.
i might be getting a job doing what my mom current does, as an assistant photographer or a photographer with lifetouch. the good thing about that would be that i could probably transfer to another territory in socal once i moved without losing benefits. good grief, sometimes i really wish i had never left school. Posts: 3936 | Registered: Jul 2000
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. The one in pharmacy had worked at a walmart in another state, and was easily able to obtain a transfer to our store. Then, a year later, she went back, still to work at walmart. Each time she transferred, she got a nice raise. And from her I know that if you make nice to the Little Debbie guy, he will drive his Little Debbie truck over to your house and drop of all the not-quite-expired goodies. And probably a few other things... ![[Eek!]](eek.gif)
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