Originally Posted By: Johnny248
I hate Walmart....
There are two Walmarts within 5 Miles of my house. The older one which is a little farther away is really big. I don't know if it is a super center or something, but it is much larger than the newer closer one. There is a third Walmart about 10 miles away. Anyway...
I was at my closer smaller Walmart trying to grab a jug of QS UD 0w20. ( I already have a 5qt jug on the shelf, but my truck needs 7qts. Better deal to buy another jug for $21.xx than two quarts for $14) They don't have any QS UD in any flavor at this Walmart. I've noticed that they also have a smaller selection of other goods, such as groceries. Where as a Walmart may have one national brand item, and then their Walmart Brand item, this one will sometimes only have their own brand item. So my first hatred is that there isn't any consistency between the stores and what they carry. You would think two stores in the same market area would carry the same items.
So after my disappointment I make the drive back past my house and towards the bigger Walmart. Of course I get there and they have every flavor of QS UD except the 0w20. The tag is on the shelf, but the shelf space is empty. Really?? what the heck.... So I track down a Walmart employee (I use that term loosely since they generally don't do much work or even care) and politely say to them
"I want to buy a jug of this oil, however the spot on the shelf is empty for it. Is it possible that you could have some in the back that hasn't been stocked on the shelf yet?"
and without asking me which item I am actually looking for I get this....
employee : "I don't know, we probably don't have it if it isn't on the shelf"
me: "You probably don't have it? or you don't? So there is a chance that you might?"
employee : "I said that I don't know. We might but probably not"
me thinking thanks for telling me the same exact thing you did the first time, but you still haven't answered my question....
me : "Well, if I show you what I'm looking for, do you think you could check to see if there is some in the back"?
employee : "Yeah, not really. I don't work in this department. If you find one someone form this department, they might be able to help you."
me : "I've been looking for someone all over, and you were the only person I've found anywhere around here. Can you set me up with someone in that department, or have them paged or something?"
employee : "I'd have to go all the way up to the front to page someone. I'm sure if you keep looking around there will be someone there."
omfg... are to you kidding me??? At this point I'm about ready to say eff it, but I figured I'd try one more time to find someone....
me : "uhhh.... thanks"
so I look around auto, hardware, sporting goods/hunting, nothing.. I can see someone over in electronics but I figured that would be worthless to even try after this idiot I just dealt with.
so for the like the 3rd or 4th time I walk back through over to the tire and auto service center, and there is still no one around so I decided to walk out into the service bays. There I actually found a red neck looking guy (no offense to red neck looking guys) with tat's all up and down his arms and neck and a mini duck dynasty looking beard and yell across the shop
me : "Hey what's up, I've been trying to find someone out here but there is no one around"
new employee : "What can I do for you?"
thinking again omg I might get somewhere now
me : "I'm trying to buy some of this oil, but the spot on the shelf is empty and was checking to see if there may be some in the back that hasn't been put out yet."
new employee : "Oh yeah, I don't know. I just change the oil, and all we have in the shop is some of the stuff we sell for oil changes."
me : "Ok thanks. Do you know where I can find someone that can help me out to check?"
new employee : "There should be someone out there around that area that might be able to help you."
omg.... I'm doing circles here. So I tell myself I will walk through these isles one more time and try to find someone. If not, screw it. I'm just going to drive 10 miles to the other Walmart.
Well, I found someone. It was a dude in a wheel chair who is a greeter, and it turns out he is on lunch just looking around so he can't help me.
At this point my head is about ready to explode. If I didn't already have this oil I was trying to match, I would have just bought something else, but I figure if you have the choice, its a good idea to just keep it the same.
So I Walmart. I created a couple more stops that I could make to help justify my trip to the Walmart 10 miles away.
I get there, same story as before. No 0w20 on the shelf. This time I walked over to the tire / service center a nice guy actually came out to help me. I told him the same story. He didn't know what Quaker State 0w20 was and that they even sold it (that's a little scary since the guy works in the tire / oil change center) but anyway, he was actually nice enough to walk over to the shelf, look at the item and try to find it. BTW, you would think that their inventory system would allow them to type in the item number to view on IOH , but I guess not. So he went back in the storage room for the tire / oil change center and looked around but could not find it, and then called someone else who I guess stocks shelves to look and they said that they were out of it. So at that point I just decided to buy a jug of PP 0w20 since I've read that it is similar to the QS UD, plus I had a $5 off coupon that Sopus sent me. Though I was still [censored] off, at least one guy out of the place was somewhat helpful.
It just amazes me how useless some of these people are, and that they don't really care about the customer or their job as long as they get a pay check. Customer service is non-existent. From what I've heard, Walmart doesn't pay their employees very well, nor do they take care of them very well, and I guess you get what you pay for. It is just a totally different world to me though. I work for Costco, which is actually a decent company and takes care of their employees. I can't even imagine any of our employees being that lazy and not try to help out the customer. I can tell you that they wouldn't be working there very long.
There are some places that you can deal with bad attitudes and poor customer service because their product or service is that good. Walmart is not one of them. I know that I am partly to blame for the entire mess of Walmart, because I fall into that group of American's that demand or expect low prices and help drive the demand for low cost products from overseas that Walmart peddles better than just about anyone. If there was somewhere else that I could get 5qts of Syn oil for $20-25 I would go there, unfortunately it seems like all of the auto parts stores want to charge like $8-12 for a quart of oil, and I'm not a big fan of their oil change deals pushing which ever oil and filter they want to move. I prefer to buy the oil and filter that I really want. Anyway, I'm just starting to ramble but I really don't know if I can deal with another shopping trip like that... I need a Walmart replacement...
Before you enter Walmart lower your expectations several notches with respect to the shopping experience.
Remember their employees are the ones Target did not hire, but were over qualified to work at Family Dollar.
