Covid 19 has made the legendary bad service of Wal Mart only much, much worse. Where to begin: Entering Walmart parking lot is often an exercise in emergency avoidance maneuvers. A good percentage of drivers drive way too fast through parking lot, and put people, bicyclists other motorists at extreme risk. Recently I had 3 instances of getting almost run into while driving, parking and walking thru their parking lot. They have some sort of older woman (security guard?) who is blind as a bat and didn't see a person in pickup truck almost Tbone my car (maybe 30 feet from where she was sitting watching the parking lot!!) as I carefully drove past the store. I've seen much worse: people drag racing thru lot, and making everyone run (for their lives) out of their way. I think a lot of these drivers think walmart is a NASCAR track and they drive it accordingly.
2nd) Very understaffed and you usually have to have someone paged to most departments to help you. Those employees usually take their sweet time to get there (what everyone's on break at the same time?) and when they get there they usually don't know much (0r anything at all) about the equipment you want to look at and check out. It makes you wish that all the sporting equipment depts were self serve (honor system) and you could have open access to the stuff you are considering buying with a self serve computer on which you can look up the item and find the specs and relevant info on it. It would make it a whole lot easier for customers to find, check out, and decide on what they want to buy, and it would save on your personnel costs too.. A win-win situation for buyer and seller...and isn't that the way a store should be run??? In fact you have a model for this in the Automotive dept when people look for car filters and other parts there is a big book, and/or a computer into which you put the year, make, and model of your vehicle, and you get the part # for the particular filter you need for your car, etc. You should adopt this procedure for all (in locked cases) high end sporting equpment: binoculars, spotting scope, riflescopes, fancy camping gear, and other non-gun related stuff in locked cases. There are a lot of people who don't have time to waste with the lackadaisical, couldn't care less attitudes of low wage walmart workers, and (like me) have gone elsewhere for their sporting equipment needs!!!
3rd) so much of the merchandise on the shelves is mismarked or unmarked and it is a time, energy, and patience consuming experience to fine the correct prices on scores of items. Or items on a shelf have the wrong tag on them which is a PITA when you get to the checkout line! From the retail environment I worked, and retired from the issue of mistagging or misshelving items was cause for serious discipline leading up to suspension, and termination of responsible employees!!
4th) The women they have manning the return counter are usually (and it is the same two usually) are: slow, rude, gabby, and seem not to care how much of your precious time they waste in their consistently slow, inefficient, and often contemptuous treatment of customers returning items (for whatever reason). One day one of the staff women took umbrage at my complaining (to a fellow shopper at the end of the line, about how poor the return service was last time I was on return line--and I spoke this softly--so I don't know how the return woman heard this complaint) and so when it was my turn to approach the returns counter this rude employee took (or made) a phone call, and a young man went behind the counter and waited on me (as well as the people in line behind me) and he was competent, very courteous, and handled my returns very quickly and efficiently-and I had 3 return items from 3 different receipts! He was so efficient and pleasant....I can not recall a similar level of prompt, competent, and courteous service from any of the women in the returns dept for as long as I can recall. I can recall a lot of bad to horrible service from the older women who always seem to be working this returns counter. Why don't you recruit a lot more young, courteous men to Man this counter, and save on the unnecessary customer aggravation, and lost business that results with the current crop of return counter employees?
4th) While shopping in private stores I very rarely see people wearing offensive message T shirts and the like; not so Walmt : people wear clothes with most partisanly nasty, and insulting messages on them. Everyone has a right to their opinion, and also to not be publically villified for that opinion! The SCOTUS has ruled that the free speech enjoyed in totally public venues (streets, public plazas, and buildings, etc) can be limited (as to offensive, controversial content) on private property (people's homes, private stores, and malls, and organizations). Wal-mart should also adhere to a: civil clothing standard for the customers in their stores! read more