What not to wear, even in Wal-Mart

This has been the week of amazing apparel -- not ours, but the stuff coming in the door. First, there's a large conference in town, so each evening, we get a flood of folks coming in the door for food, dressing very well. Suits, shirts with ties, dress pants, even down to little ones. It's nice to see families so dressed up.

They make a wonderful contrast to our usual crowd. OK, this is a store. Not a street corner, not a bedroom, not the beach. A sign to that effect might be a good addition to the entry.

If you were a parent, bringing your little ones into a store where we sell chemicals, automobile batteries, items in glass bottles, etc., wouldn't you insist that they wear shoes? I thought so. Still, every day, parents bring in little ones, barefoot, throw them into carts and start their shopping. Halfway through the store, little ones get restless, beg to get out of cart, and parents forget "no shoes, no shirt, no service." Better yet, put them in skate shoes so they can fall on hard concrete.

There's the usual mob of kids straight from the pool, still in suits. And in the evening, kids in pajamas and slippers. Sometimes not just kids -- it's a college kid thing, too. And occasionally adult women. Apparently, "I forgot something, and it wasn't just milk. It was too much effort to make myself socially acceptable."

None of them even draw a double take anymore. But a couple of folks did. The first were three sets of two girls who came through self-check. All about 19-22, with large hairdos, wildly-colored overdone makeup and odd layered dresses and heels. By the third set, the "Grease" track "Beauty School Dropout" was firmly planted in my head as I bit my lip to keep from laughing out loud!

But the week's badge went to the mom who was wearing green stretch shorts with purple flowers on the leg, about 3 sizes too small. They were so tight they outlined her crack and every wrinkle of varicose veins and cellulose. She was with a teen daughter. Now most teens are pretty oversensitive about appearing in public with their parents. If this one was, I give her an "A" for not keeping a 30 foot barrier between her mom and herself.

The circus is in town. It isn't at Wal-Mart. But it seems that way.

Monday, Monday

I'd take any Monday like this.

Would you rather be slammed until you can't breathe, or so slow you have to find something to look busy? Slammed is good.

For whatever reason, the moon's cycle, post-holiday, a church conference, whatever, the fates collided to make the post-July 4th weekend Monday a very busy night. Fortunately, regular registers all night. When the belt is full, I'm happy.

Six hours passes like a dream when you don't have time to think. That doesn't mean you don't have oddballs. Crying children, communication issues, strange questions. Last night must have been a record for "where do I find large packages of candy?" Past the cards and stationery. If you get to the bikes, you went too far. Imagine directions in real life like that:

• Past the school and the church, if you've come to the road construction, you've gone too far (Road construction in northern Arizona is just atrocious this time of year. 14 miles of hell on Interstate 17 yesterday, but I digress).
• Past the terrible twos and kindergarten. If you get to graduation, you've gone too far.
• Past the receptionist and two offices. If you get to the boring guy with the droopy mustache, you've gone too far (and Lord help you!).

Old guy brings a bunch of things to the register, including cheapo brand oil. At $145 a barrel, he's worried about the cost of a quart? But he was. It was stocked in two different places with two different prices. Difference, about 8 cents. But he wanted the cheaper price. As he's rambling on about oil and store pricing practices, the next gaggle of girls are chattering in Spanish. They don't notice their chocolate bars have fallen over their clothes, over the divider, into oil man's order. I've already completed his sale when I realize that chocolate bars are now on his receipt. Since I can't do a refund at my register anymore, I have to send him to customer service for his $2 back. If either group had paid any attention to their purchases, it wouldn't have happened. And if I had been any more comatose, oilman would have ended up with chattering ladies' PMS remedy!

Bags. Not paper or plastic, but cloth. From any store, but the common denominator is, they don't fit our bagging stations. So you try setting them up, wrapping the handles so they stay. They set off the self-check alarms because of their extra weight. They slow down the cashiers. The only way they work is if customers assist.

Wal-Mart brains could have devised a way to make this work before pushing an earth-friendly initiative. I hear we're gaining little flowery design logos and losing the hyphen/star in Wal-Mart. Frankly, lose the flowery stuff, the slogans, the marginal ... just keep focusing on saving people money.

Answers, please

It's bad when a customer can't find a product. It's worse when they can't find someone in a department to help them with an individual service. Worst -- long lines at the checkout.

I hate being compared to K-Mart, because it's so far from the truth. K-Mart -- few customers, one checkout and every 10 minute announcements of "you can also check out at the service desk." Wal-Mart -- lots of customers, lots of help, but sometimes more customers than help.

Welcome to the pre-holiday.

There are guests stocking up for the holidays. Guests who want to stay away from stores on the holidays. And the regular crowd. That made for a busy Wednesday. Guests think we're understaffed. And we are. But there are crowd management skills. Send CSM's to registers. Send back-up "service" cashiers to registers. Call managers to registers. And this is on top of 2 express lanes, 2 sets of self-checks, registers in jewelry/sporting goods/electronics and a half dozen regular registers. It takes the CSM's hours to figure this out, and by then, some of our guests are spitting mad.

A cart full of groceries in the self-check is a pretty good indication that things are backed up elsewhere. And it multiplies. When a guest takes a full cart into self-check, three more guests that could have used these "fast lanes" wait, vent and start looking for options. "Can I check out here (the pay station)?" Nope -- My job is to watch and assist the four customers having issues at these registers. And they had issues.

"This barcode won't scan." Nope, because it's a shipping code. The regular UPC is here."Where's the ice?" Both doors. "Do you carry comforters?" Yes, in domestics, but comforters in THIS weather? What are you thinking? "Do I have to lift this 50-pound bag of dog food?" Fortunately, not. Pull the sticker and scan it, then hit "skip bagging." "Why does the machine keep locking up?" "Because you keep hitting "skip bagging," then put the item in the bag.

I know when a self-check won't read my associate barcode, it's equally stubborn about reading any UPC. So while I'm watching all the registers, I'm especially attentive to that one. Which either pleases or annoys the guest, depending on his/her level of independence. I've even gotten a "am I doing something wrong?" comment for hovering around them.

I can't say it, but "not yet" comes to mind. Give you 30 seconds. I agree with a handful of our guests who tell me the best move Wal-Mart could take is to remove the self-checks. Get back to real customer service. One guest told me his friend was waiting in line at another store that has self-checks and a manager came up to him and suggested she go over and use the self-checks. Her reply: "I suppose you want me to stock the shelves and sweep the floor next?" I wish I had heard that. I would have been on the floor!

Like Money in the Bank...sort of

Credit cards. Hmm. No real surprise here that financial overlord Wal-Mart would get into a plethora of financial services. There are Discover cards, regular Wal-Mart cards, and several types of reloadable debit cards, as well as money orders and wire transfers. But cashiers are now a strategy for marketing these services.

For years, the registers have had signage and fliers for our credit cards. But they always advocated for applying at a kiosk or online. Now, go ahead and hold up our cashiers and the five guests behind you by applying during your checkout. Just go through these easy 15 steps and you too can have instant credit.

Apparently, each store was to try to market the cards. Some bright store got the idea of putting up a gazebo on the main aisle and pushing cards. That probably sold more gazebos than credit cards. ("Look, Henry, we need one of those." "No Martha, we don't need another piece of plastic." "No, Henry, the blue gazebo. Wouldn't it be wonderful for the backyard?") Our store put up the gazebo and put forms on a table, but forgot one important piece of marketing -- the salespeople. I would be surprised if it netted one application. It came down about a week later.

Now, besides the "get $20 back" (by mail, not at the register) and "no interest for one year" (if you buy $250+ in one trip), each register has a little reminder: "Ask every customer if they would like to apply for a credit card." Sure -- every cashier does this just like every cashier asks guests if they would like to buy a Children's Miracle Network balloon.

Imagine a Sunday afternoon, your line loaded up, and you try to sell those young parents on instant plastic. "You need this, you want this. I know when I was your age, we screwed up our credit badly by having these and not paying them. Every young parent should have some." If Wal-Mart wants to push plastic, they can hire some sales pushers to hawk them at the door. Why do the cashiers have to assume one more job?

Then there are reloadable cards. I'm not sure everyone understands the temporary card, the permanent card, and the reload options. I tried to reload one some time ago, and it wouldn't work. A few weeks ago, I tried another one. It worked, I gave him the receipt, and the guest looked at me like something was wrong. "Where's the card?"

"I gave you back the account number and scannable code. There wasn't anything else."

"Don't I get a card?

Oh, boy. He had a temporary card, never got the permanent one and now I've put hundreds of dollars on an account that I can't refund.

I called a customer service manager, and she took him to the courtesy desk. Later she came back and tried to cancel the original transaction -- which failed miserably. They headed back to the courtesy desk. I never heard what happened. Easiest options -- get a checking account with a Visa or MasterCard debit card or buy a gift card.

Ghost in the Machine

Well, the good thing is, they've stopped sending me to departments unknown. No, no one paid attention to my complaints or got a clue. The real reason? The "scorecard."

The scorecard is the computer in Bentonville trying to determine what stores thousands of miles away are doing wrong. How many cashiers? What registers? What time? How fast did they run from the timeclock to the front (hmm -- why isn't there a timeclock in front for cashiers)? A perfect score is 100. Our store wasn't perfect, but now, pleasing the Bentonville data cruncher is the most important goal. No matter what.

No matter that no one is using any of the four self-check registers and there are lines six deep on the most popular cashier-staffed registers. Bentonville says keep the fast lanes operating from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. No matter than the express lane cashiers are twiddling their thumbs -- we will have great customer service if we have the "correct" number of those lanes open. The daily staffing chart tells exactly how many of each kind of register should be open, every hour. Even if we don't have that many cashiers -- we solve that problem by pulling people from the rest of the building.

Ingenious managers solve the issue by having pseudo-cashiers sign onto registers but leave the lights off. Computer thinks register is staffed -- higher score. Sign on, then go cover the door. Sign on, then run these items back to the correct department. Sign on, then help the guest to the car with her three carts. Sign on, then go. Eventually, the register logs this inactive person off, unless the neighboring cashier is enlisted to go tap a few keys on the empty station and keep the ghost operator active. It's a numbers game, and by the numbers, the store has an "A" this week.