I've seen it before. Anyone else?
10 replies (most recent on top)
I agree, I've experienced this in Walmart. They got rid of their night stock shift. Now when I go in to shop the aisles are full of those trying to stock and associates picking for their online orders. I've actually gone back to doing my groceries elsewhere.
Common sense & the most basic form of logic does not exist with the "bosses" at Sam's.
From HO exec's, to VP's, to regionals & market managers. Just a line of scarecrows that sing along with each other: "If I only had a brain".
@1zuv - Believe me, in my mind, ineptitude has been sitting prominently in the middle of the table for quite a long time. As long as they're relying on people who appear to have ZERO experience working in these clubs to create these ignorant processes for them, ineptitude figures heavily into the grand scheme of things. I was just hypothesizing as to what could it possibly be, aside from that?
I think there's a few things they can do to reduce the chaos these changes have created. One of them is obviously getting a better handle on the ordering that you pointed out. That's been out of control for years now. Every club I've ever been in has very little room in the steel with so much of it occupied by product that really doesn't need to be on hand in such ridiculous quantities. They go overboard and then use the clubs to store the surplus. Anyway, in order to reduce the amount of time it takes to run all this freight that's coming in, we have to have a reasonable amount of space to accommodate it. Part of that is dropping freight that needs to be stocked and refraining from creating so many partials. But a lot of those problems are also caused by not having enough time and personnel on the floor. If you're going to reduce staff AND available time for stocking, but not reduce the influx of freight, you're going to have problems.
I've been saying this from the very beginning of this whole debacle: The removal of the overnight shift will be a disaster unless the company decides to change the hours of operation. It is altogether asinine to continue to open at 7AM every day. Change it to 10AM and bring in an appropriately staffed, early morning crew at 3AM. That gives them 7 hours to get the store set. Close the stores every night by 8PM, too. Have an appropriate number of people out on the floor zoning, pulling cardboard, and maybe even dropping freight in several areas and stocking out paper, possibly water, and get everyone off the clock and out by 11PM. Early morning crew and receiving come in at 3AM - appropriately staffed - and get busy. Of course, it's readily apparent that not all clubs can be operated like this, but a good number of them should. For the really high volume stores, with enough business traffic at 7AM to justify it, run those stores the way it was being done prior to the changes. There's no reason they should treat the high tier and lower tier stores equally where it pertains to all these issues. For example, there are a fair number of Walmart stores that are NOT open 24 hours. They should be smart enough to read their metrics and determine which locations demand one or the other and operate them accordingly.
I've been shopping at Costco for over ten years and from what I am able to gather, they have none of these issues. They have processes that work for them and they stick with what works. Over all this time going into any of their stores, everything is virtually the same as it was in 2009. Anything that they have done internally has never managed to affect my shopping experience over there. If anything, I envy their consistency on a stupefying level and I'm embarrassed at what it makes us look like. I'm not saying that they don't have their own problems but if you look at their entry on this site, there's precious little activity. That alone says something.
Very well said. Echoes what I've seen across many clubs in my market too. Well, what is the intention then? Membership is up 3m members over last year, BUT, that was before this change... I think ineptitude should be left ON the table. Walmart is the king of out of stocks, second to dollar general... but I still shop there, because there are many alternatives if "my" item is not on the shelf... Sam's is different, a building with limited skus and catering to a niche clientele. Out of stocks are unacceptable in this model... hence why there is so much freight constantly. They are petrified of running out. I still dont understand why the purchasing is so over the top, sometimes weeks and weeks on hand, while.getting 2-7 trucks a week...? This slows down productivity. Imagine if replenishment sent just what was needed until the next delivery??? For the current failure of a labor model, JIT ordering (replenishment) would solve the current issue... and also eliminate the need to write so many large purchase orders... So, no, leave ineptitude on the table...
True words wish someone from Home office would listen! Just sayin
As long as members continue to shop they will not change and when they stop shopping it will be too late. The last numbers I saw on membership were slightly in the positive so they are still tolerating the nonsense this company is doing. Same at Wal-mart. customers b–ch and complain but they still shop there so why would the company change if people are still going to spend there money in there stores.
@eth - I just point out what I see. I've been around the company long enough to remember when they did seem to be interested in at least trying to compete with Costco. It's clearly obvious to me that those at the highest levels of our leadership, are willing to concede whatever share of the warehouse channel Sam's still has, over to Kirkland, WA, and redefine this side of the company as something else. Pretty soon all the club's will have the same aesthetic characteristics to those of a backwoods, rural, flea market or maybe one of those old Dollar Tree stores that only gets tidied up once every two weeks.
I have never responded to a post before but the above post says it all! We all scratch our heads daily trying to figure out what they want....
Sounds like you are articulate in expressing the thoughts of many of us! It is incredible to watch the demise in action of a billion dollar corporation. The majority of people I come in contact with oppose making changing to eliminate the human interaction. Many many valuable associates have been let go and the members are the ones paying the price.
Well at this point it has to be. What other reason could there be? Someone posted something regarding the company trying to reposition itself and uttered many of the customary things I've heard over the years which attempt to rationalize the internal moves made by the Home Office. The company's pursuit of value, convenience, targeting smart saving families, etc.... don't you think that they could still have done that without making such constant reductions in personnel? It seems like such an easy equation to figure out in my own head but maybe I'm missing something here. Why would a company get rid of an entire production-oriented shift, redistribute the entire workload across two grossly-understaffed shifts, cut the actual hours where that production is most possible, and NOT expect huge negative impact across virtually all 599 locations? Why does HO, by all appearances, seem to find this acceptable? Why would you reduce personnel in receiving, cut claims out, and redistribute claims responsibilities to whoever is left in receiving? Why would you outsource personnel and create incredible levels of confusion over the entire door-to-floor process for new hires? Why would you remove the audit team and redistribute their responsibilities to the department leads, who already have too many tasks on their collective plate? There are probably dozens of other examples of this kind of decision making that have still not been smoothed out and readily dealt with across the company. At the end of the day, the stores themselves look absolutely horrible and physically reflect all these changes, yet the leadership stays the course and imposes more modifications which further strap everyone on the floor. But you know who really sees and feels the changes in the end? The members themselves. Where is the value and convenience now? If you go shopping, how do you process the lack of availability of store associates? How about finding numerous items you're looking for not being out for sale because there isn't enough time or people to stock everything anymore? What impression are you left with when you see empty cardboard boxes piled up all over the place because no one is looking after the area? Would it frustrate you having to weave around an obstacle course of pallets dropped or left in the middle of aisles? Are you inconvenienced by aisles being roped off due to constant forklift activity causing you to have to wait while they're running freight into the steel and all you're trying to do is get your shopping done so you can get home and eat dinner or pick your kids up from school? Why would you continue to shop at a store that ran things that way? Bare shelves everywhere. Empty pallets in the run of numerous aisles. Debris everywhere. And we haven't even gotten to the backroom areas. I see clubs - including my own - that are such remarkable disarray, I can't even begin to comprehend how much further this can fall before someone finally tries to right the ship. For things to get this bad across the board, there can be no other reason than intention, as long as ineptitude is off the table.