Have both worked at and shopped at Wal-Mart

• is there a store you will not shop - in no matter what?
  • I wouldn't spend so much as a penny... sm - GLF
    • I didn't know you could still buy puppies & kittens - sm
  • Walmart fired my daughter... - UTMT
  • abercrombie and fitch - ls - WA
    • Oh, good one! I despise that store! And the funny thing is.. - MQer
    • AMEN. I agree 100%. Shocking ads. - Hideous staff.
  • Target - sm
    • Agree, not to mention those weird looking Christmas trees they have - having from the ceilings (sm)
  • No Walmart monies from me. NOT MATTER WHAT. They are disgusting. - i agree
    • WalMart sell homosexual books & videos. I won't shop at any store - that condones homosexual behavior, (sm)
      • Why is it okay to leave this post up, but - TM
        • Because the rest of the thread was compromised & only the OP - was able to remain. Administrator nm
          • I don't mean to be disrespectful or - TM
            • All I did was replace the original post. - Administrator (nm)
      • Would like to share - I'm a Christian... by Maya Angelou
        • Amen. Well said...whoever wrote this. thx. nm - ks
          • Yes, but keep in mind ks that Christian's follow EVERY word of the Holy Bible - INCLUDING what is written about homosexuality. nm
            • sm - ks
              • Where did you get that I was judging anyone? - sm
                • sm - KS
                  • Again, God put us on this Earth to do His work through us. You need to get more in - tune with scripture. End of debate. nm
                    • and you had better read that part again..sm - ks
                  • AMEN - SISTER
                    • sm - ks
            • not ALL of them.................. - I know plenty..........n/m
              • And, so do I. - nm
    • I do not shop at Wally World... - l
    • OK. I have to stick up for Wal Mart and here is why: sm - Me
      • Great post! You are right on it! - Thanks
      • oh puhleeze - an employee gets hurt at Walmart - Walmart disputes all their workers comp cases! nm
        • Oh really, because I knew of a guy who threw his back out on the job at Wally World and got full sm - Really?
          • ok I should've said "some of their workers"..sm - Walmart disputes all their workers comp cases! nm
          • Sorry. Don't mean to be picky... sm - GLF
            • LOL! I did not know that! Thanks for the info!! nm - op
              • It was called workman's comp for many years. - sm
          • WalMart also contracts out companies they know hire illegals. There was - a big thing about it made public (sm)
    • What have they done?? I heard no health insurance for employees, but what else? - nm
      • Wal-Mart does offer health insurance to their workers. Wal-Mart pays part and the employee SM - Not me
      • well just this year they opened 15 stores in...nm - CHINA!
      • Oh, just a few things : ) - SM
        • I really didn't know all of this. - nm
    • Same here. - Will not set foot in a Wal-Mart
      • Have both worked at and shopped at Wal-Mart - Unhappy Camper
        • The "big whoop" is generally... - sm
          • What negative impact? - Unhappy Camper
            • Since you asked. - Here's the info
      • Ditto!!!! - nm
  • wherever customer service is deplorable!...nm - bad customer service? won't shop there again.

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So, last weekend, 10/27, I ordered a large Nintendo Wii bundle (this includes a bunch of games and accessories) from Wal-Mart's website for my daughter for Christmas. On 10/30, I received an email stating that the Wii console was "not available" and they were canceling this part of my order. I tried to cancel the rest of my order, but WM does not allow you to cancel online orders once you place them. Obviously, I'm extremely mad as I now have a bunch of games and accessories for the Wii but no way to play/use them!! I really feel like I was tricked into buying this very expensive bundle when there's no guarantee that I will be able to get the Wii console before Christmas. I actually filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau and sent a letter to Wal-Mart's corporate office. I received a response back from their customer service dept stating that they would call me to "resolve this issue" within one business day, but that was 2 days ago and nothing as of yet. The really crappy part on their behalf is that they are STILL selling this Wii bundle on their website and it states it's IN STOCK when they know very well that it's not!! So, I'm not the only one that is going to be tricked into paying hundreds of dollars for games and accessories and not getting the Wii console!

I really don't know if there is someone else that I can complain to - like the Attorney General or what??? I really feel like this is very unethical of them to do this. I know I can take all the games and accessories to the store to get a refund for that, but I'm still out the shipping charges which isn't right.

Please all you WM haters don't flame me for shopping there in the first place. I've never had a problem with them before and I'm not sure why they are treating me like this now. I really just wanted to get ideas or suggestions from anyone that knows whether this is illegal or just unethical and if there's anything I could do about it, besides complain on here and hope I keep someone else from shopping at this horrid place :)

Keep in mind this actually really did happen!!!!   This is someone who was moving from a claims office.
 
Okay so this is how I imagine this conversation went:
 
Walmart Employee:   "Hello 'dis Walmart, how can I help you?"
Customer: " I would like to order a cake for a going away party this week."
Walmart Employee:  "What you want on the cake?"
Customer:  "Best Wishes Suzanne" and underneath that "We will miss you".
Walmart Employee: "Dat all? Okay, Bye."

always redesign their layout just when I finally learn where things are?

Why are the seats of the carts at Wal-Mart so little?  My 3-year-old barely fits in.

Why is it when I go to buy something on sale or "as advertised", the store never has it in stock?

Against the Wal
A class-action lawsuit in Dakota County could strike a costly blow to the world’s largest private employer
by MARGARET NELSON BRINKHAUS

In July 2001, Nancy Braun was watching television with a friend when a commercial caught her attention. The ad was soliciting litigants for a potential lawsuit against Wal-Mart, the Arkansas-based retailing giant, for allegedly cheating employees out of wages they were rightfully owed.

A single mother of two—and grandmother of four—Braun had started working for Wal-Mart in 1997. At the time, she lived in Slidell, Louisiana, where she had previously worked for a grocery store. She considered Wal-Mart a step-up. “I liked shopping there,” she says. “I thought I’d like working there too.”

And she did enjoy it, at least for a while. She liked the people, the work, the sense of solidarity among employees. But in 2000, homesick for her family, she moved back to Minnesota and transferred to the Wal-Mart in Apple Valley, where she was assigned to run the Radio Grill, the outlet’s now-defunct in-store restaurant. There, Braun quickly became disenchanted with the company, especially after a supervisor repeatedly prohibited her from taking breaks—even after she had surgery that required frequent trips to the bathroom. She soon quit.

Braun’s friend encouraged her to call the number mentioned in the advertisement to see if she qualified for the suit, but Braun was hesitant. She didn’t relish the prospect of reliving that period in her life. Yet she remembered how her mother, a longtime switchboard operator at Carleton College, had always encouraged her to speak up, to do the right thing when confronted with an injustice, big or small. “You can’t allow yourself to be treated like an animal,” she says. “I’m sure Mr. Walton would agree with me on that.”

One morning this past October, six years after she first saw that television ad, Braun sat inside a Dakota County courtroom in Hastings, her striped shirt and beige pants—bought from Wal-Mart—in marked contrast to dark suits, leather briefcases, BlackBerrys, and laptops sported by the army of attorneys in the room. “I’m a Plain Jane kind of gal, nothing fancy,” she said. “But I know what’s right. What Wal-Mart did to me wasn’t right.”

That sense of determination is one of the reasons why Braun found herself in Hastings, taking on the country’s largest corporation. She’s one of four lead plaintiffs in a massive, class-action lawsuit filed against Wal-Mart, a case that could affect 56,000 people who worked at Wal-Mart in Minnesota between 1998 and 2004. The suit alleges that over that period, the discount retailer systematically avoided paying wages earned by employees for overtime work and missed or shortened meal and break periods. And though the case is not the first of its kind—workers have won victories in similar cases in California and Pennsylvania—it may end up being one of the most significant. If Judge Robert King Jr. rules against Wal-Mart in this phase of the trial, the company would likely have to pay up to $500 for each employee, which could mean a payout in the tens of millions. More significantly, a ruling against Wal-Mart in this first part of the trial would also mean that the case would move to a jury to assess whether punitive damages are in order. If that happens, Wal-Mart could be on the hook for not only millions, but billions.

Braun’s troubles began after she returned to Minnesota. At the Apple Valley Wal-Mart, she worked in several different departments before running the Radio Grill. At first, she enjoyed the work. “I treated that place like my own kitchen,” she says. “I did it all willingly. I’m not afraid of work…never have been.” Not long after she started in Apple Valley, Braun had learned she needed to have gallbladder surgery. After the procedure, Braun suffered some relatively common side effects that required her to take frequent bathroom breaks. Braun’s supervisors initially said they would accommodate her needs, but that’s not what happened. “I’d get in a pinch, be there all alone, and soil myself, ruin my clothes,” Braun recalled. “I’d feel so degraded. Sometimes I wouldn’t have clothes with me, and the manager would say ‘We have clothes here for sale. Get your purse and go buy yourself some.’ They didn’t care.”

Putting up with an insufferable boss is, of course, an unavoidable part of a job for many people. Yet Braun’s treatment, argue the plaintiffs’ attorneys, wasn’t unique among Wal-Mart employees. Another lead plaintiff, Debbie Simonson, 59, started working as a cashier at the Wal-Mart in Brooklyn Park in April 2000. As a single mother of two children, she needed the money. And, like Braun, Simonson was often told by her supervisor not to take bathroom breaks. “He’d say ‘Skip the bathroom and get your butt out here,’ and I’d do it,” she explained in court. “It was an order. Your boss tells you to do something, you do it.” She quit after 13 months.

According to Justin Perl, the plaintiffs’ lead attorney, the denial of breaks was standard operating procedure at Wal-Mart. As part of the case, he and his colleagues combed through Wal-Mart’s own records to find workplace violations. They identified millions of missed bathroom and rest breaks, as well as millions of shortened rest breaks, along with thousands of missed meal breaks. “It’s the Wal-Mart way,” says Perl. “They nickel-and-dime the lowest- paid workers so they can improve their own bottom line.”

Wal-Mart sees it differently. A spokesman, John Simley, says the company doesn’t comment on pending litigation, but in other cases the company has denied it encourages employees to miss breaks or work off the clock. Wal-Mart, company officials maintain, tries to ensure compliance with company policies and state laws, but has no control over individual choices workers make.

Yet those individual choices are often informed by pressure from the company, argues Perl. According to testimony in other wage cases, Wal-Mart compensates its managers largely via bonuses that are tied to profits—and the easiest way to increase profits is by cutting expenses. “They do it by erasing everyone else’s salary,” says Perl. “It’s not a hard job. They cut staffing. They shave breaks. They make their profit goals. It’s the only basis for how they compensate their managers.”

Pamela Reinert, 54, saw for herself how that pressure was brought to bear. A petite, soft-spoken mother of seven from Maplewood who has a PhD in psychology, she joined Sam’s Club—a Wal-Mart subsidiary—in 1997, after she was laid off from another job. Like Braun and Simonson, Reinert liked the work, and was good at it. She made it into the management-training program shortly after joining the company. As a manager, she would sometimes try to intercede on behalf of workers who weren’t getting their breaks. Eventually, though, she was told to stop making trouble. She eventually quit after a supervisor threatened to write her up for insubordination—for trying to take her complaints up the chain of command.

A ruling on the case is expected sometime this month. But no matter how it turns out, Nancy Braun says she will always miss Wal-Mart. “I wish I could have stayed working there,” she says. She enjoyed the other employees, the customers, and the idea “that there was always something to do, always a way to keep busy. I worked my way up—that was a big deal for me. When I quit, I felt defeated.”

Now living in Stevens Point, Wisconsin, and selling insurance at a cell phone company, she tries to attend the trial whenever possible. When she’s in Hastings, she occasionally makes a stop across the street from the courthouse to do some shopping—at Wal-Mart.

Margaret Nelson Brinkhaus is a Minnesota-based writer.

Against the Wal
A class-action lawsuit in Dakota County could strike a costly blow to the world’s largest private employer
by MARGARET NELSON BRINKHAUS

In July 2001, Nancy Braun was watching television with a friend when a commercial caught her attention. The ad was soliciting litigants for a potential lawsuit against Wal-Mart, the Arkansas-based retailing giant, for allegedly cheating employees out of wages they were rightfully owed.

A single mother of two—and grandmother of four—Braun had started working for Wal-Mart in 1997. At the time, she lived in Slidell, Louisiana, where she had previously worked for a grocery store. She considered Wal-Mart a step-up. “I liked shopping there,” she says. “I thought I’d like working there too.”

And she did enjoy it, at least for a while. She liked the people, the work, the sense of solidarity among employees. But in 2000, homesick for her family, she moved back to Minnesota and transferred to the Wal-Mart in Apple Valley, where she was assigned to run the Radio Grill, the outlet’s now-defunct in-store restaurant. There, Braun quickly became disenchanted with the company, especially after a supervisor repeatedly prohibited her from taking breaks—even after she had surgery that required frequent trips to the bathroom. She soon quit.

Braun’s friend encouraged her to call the number mentioned in the advertisement to see if she qualified for the suit, but Braun was hesitant. She didn’t relish the prospect of reliving that period in her life. Yet she remembered how her mother, a longtime switchboard operator at Carleton College, had always encouraged her to speak up, to do the right thing when confronted with an injustice, big or small. “You can’t allow yourself to be treated like an animal,” she says. “I’m sure Mr. Walton would agree with me on that.”

One morning this past October, six years after she first saw that television ad, Braun sat inside a Dakota County courtroom in Hastings, her striped shirt and beige pants—bought from Wal-Mart—in marked contrast to dark suits, leather briefcases, BlackBerrys, and laptops sported by the army of attorneys in the room. “I’m a Plain Jane kind of gal, nothing fancy,” she said. “But I know what’s right. What Wal-Mart did to me wasn’t right.”

That sense of determination is one of the reasons why Braun found herself in Hastings, taking on the country’s largest corporation. She’s one of four lead plaintiffs in a massive, class-action lawsuit filed against Wal-Mart, a case that could affect 56,000 people who worked at Wal-Mart in Minnesota between 1998 and 2004. The suit alleges that over that period, the discount retailer systematically avoided paying wages earned by employees for overtime work and missed or shortened meal and break periods. And though the case is not the first of its kind—workers have won victories in similar cases in California and Pennsylvania—it may end up being one of the most significant. If Judge Robert King Jr. rules against Wal-Mart in this phase of the trial, the company would likely have to pay up to $500 for each employee, which could mean a payout in the tens of millions. More significantly, a ruling against Wal-Mart in this first part of the trial would also mean that the case would move to a jury to assess whether punitive damages are in order. If that happens, Wal-Mart could be on the hook for not only millions, but billions.

Braun’s troubles began after she returned to Minnesota. At the Apple Valley Wal-Mart, she worked in several different departments before running the Radio Grill. At first, she enjoyed the work. “I treated that place like my own kitchen,” she says. “I did it all willingly. I’m not afraid of work…never have been.” Not long after she started in Apple Valley, Braun had learned she needed to have gallbladder surgery. After the procedure, Braun suffered some relatively common side effects that required her to take frequent bathroom breaks. Braun’s supervisors initially said they would accommodate her needs, but that’s not what happened. “I’d get in a pinch, be there all alone, and soil myself, ruin my clothes,” Braun recalled. “I’d feel so degraded. Sometimes I wouldn’t have clothes with me, and the manager would say ‘We have clothes here for sale. Get your purse and go buy yourself some.’ They didn’t care.”

Putting up with an insufferable boss is, of course, an unavoidable part of a job for many people. Yet Braun’s treatment, argue the plaintiffs’ attorneys, wasn’t unique among Wal-Mart employees. Another lead plaintiff, Debbie Simonson, 59, started working as a cashier at the Wal-Mart in Brooklyn Park in April 2000. As a single mother of two children, she needed the money. And, like Braun, Simonson was often told by her supervisor not to take bathroom breaks. “He’d say ‘Skip the bathroom and get your butt out here,’ and I’d do it,” she explained in court. “It was an order. Your boss tells you to do something, you do it.” She quit after 13 months.

According to Justin Perl, the plaintiffs’ lead attorney, the denial of breaks was standard operating procedure at Wal-Mart. As part of the case, he and his colleagues combed through Wal-Mart’s own records to find workplace violations. They identified millions of missed bathroom and rest breaks, as well as millions of shortened rest breaks, along with thousands of missed meal breaks. “It’s the Wal-Mart way,” says Perl. “They nickel-and-dime the lowest- paid workers so they can improve their own bottom line.”

Wal-Mart sees it differently. A spokesman, John Simley, says the company doesn’t comment on pending litigation, but in other cases the company has denied it encourages employees to miss breaks or work off the clock. Wal-Mart, company officials maintain, tries to ensure compliance with company policies and state laws, but has no control over individual choices workers make.

Yet those individual choices are often informed by pressure from the company, argues Perl. According to testimony in other wage cases, Wal-Mart compensates its managers largely via bonuses that are tied to profits—and the easiest way to increase profits is by cutting expenses. “They do it by erasing everyone else’s salary,” says Perl. “It’s not a hard job. They cut staffing. They shave breaks. They make their profit goals. It’s the only basis for how they compensate their managers.”

Pamela Reinert, 54, saw for herself how that pressure was brought to bear. A petite, soft-spoken mother of seven from Maplewood who has a PhD in psychology, she joined Sam’s Club—a Wal-Mart subsidiary—in 1997, after she was laid off from another job. Like Braun and Simonson, Reinert liked the work, and was good at it. She made it into the management-training program shortly after joining the company. As a manager, she would sometimes try to intercede on behalf of workers who weren’t getting their breaks. Eventually, though, she was told to stop making trouble. She eventually quit after a supervisor threatened to write her up for insubordination—for trying to take her complaints up the chain of command.

A ruling on the case is expected sometime this month. But no matter how it turns out, Nancy Braun says she will always miss Wal-Mart. “I wish I could have stayed working there,” she says. She enjoyed the other employees, the customers, and the idea “that there was always something to do, always a way to keep busy. I worked my way up—that was a big deal for me. When I quit, I felt defeated.”

Now living in Stevens Point, Wisconsin, and selling insurance at a cell phone company, she tries to attend the trial whenever possible. When she’s in Hastings, she occasionally makes a stop across the street from the courthouse to do some shopping—at Wal-Mart.

Margaret Nelson Brinkhaus is a Minnesota-based writer.

Here is what happened.  When you write a check at this Wal-Mart here, they have you sign something and give the check back.   I stuck it back in my purse.  They are supposed to void.  I was cleaning at my purse that day and paying bills at the same time.  I wrote a $250 to pay a loan.   I really don't know how it happened but I must have torn that one up and sent the $10 voided check to the loan.  A week later, i was looking at my acct online.  I notice that that $10 I had written to Wal-Mart went through twice.  I called the bank and asked why.   They said, "oh, it looks like Wal-Mart double dipped." so I was refunded the money.  I don't know who refunded the money, was it the bank, Wal-mart, I don't know.  Anyway, I became concerned about why that 250 check didn't come in so I called that loan company.  They said $10 was credit to my acct.   I did not connect the 2 at the time.  I thought, 10, I don't write $10 to this acct.  The man told me he would look into it incase there was a mistake.  He called back the day later and said that was a  $10 originally written to Wal-Mart and we cashed it.  So I called the bank and told them.  They then had me go to wal-mart because they said I owed them $10 back.  I go to wal-mart and they say no it is the Telecheck, company they use for this service and they thanked me for trying to clear it up and said Telecheck will be contacting me.  So I get a letter in the mail saying I owe $40 plus I am not allowed to write checks anywhere that uses their service until I pay that $40 back. 

What scares me is that that check said VOID on it and that other bunch was still able to cash it and get their money, which I think was dishonest of them...also my bank let it go through.  Now what if I were to loose a bunch of those type checks and someone cashes it AGAIN.  Man I would be out a lot.  Do you think any of this is right?  TIA.