As I'm sure you can all guess it is now Christmas time in the toy dept. at most any store. Now being at WalMart you think they would hire some extra help for such an occasion. Well they did so you would think things would go smoothly right?? Well being as this is me you know that can not possibly be true.
Lets start with my work load now. Not only do I have to still run a register and be a Customer Service Manager (CSM), but I'm getting anywhere from 8-12 pallets of freight a night. Now I expect this because of the holidays what I didn't expect was the help that they provided for me only 2 weeks ago. That's right 2 weeks before the friggin biggest sale day of the year. With all of that said I will now go into the joys of my day to day encounter with the new guy who we will call D.
I start out with training him the way I have always trained people. Tell them what is expected of them and what the holidays and the dept mean to the customers and the store. So I go through a whole bunch of bs so that they understand what they are being paid for. I then ask if he has any questions that I could answer about what we just covered. At this point D says no I think I get it. So here I am thinking oh good I have a good one and he'll work out great. What was I thinking???
Then I move into the actual work part. I show him the basics of each aisle and how the signs above them will help him out as well. Which I didn't think was that hard to understand. I even showed him how to cut open the box and look for what he had to help him put it away. I showed him how to read labels incase there was an empty spot that the item may belong in. He says he understands that and then I get called away by my manager to do some small project that I probablly hated doing. I didn't find this to be a big deal because the new guy said he understood everything, and I gave him pleanty of time to ask questions.
Once I come back like 30 minutes later D is still in the same spot I left him. I asked him if everything was going ok and if I could help him out with anything. At this point I am still being nice because it's his first time on the night shift and only his second week with the store. He then opens a box and asks me where the product goes. I look at the doll that he pulled out of the box. After recovering from my look of well duh...I calmly told him it was down the doll aisle. He proceded to walk up and down all the asiles til he actually found the doll aisle....it isn't that hard to find really. Then he comes back to me and says he can't find it. I therefore have to walk down the aisle and asked how he looked for it. I won't mention it was right in front of him and full. Then he looked at me like I was stupid for asking that question. So I repeated myself and asked him what he did to look for it. It took me a moment to realize he wasn't looking at me like I was stupid but that is how he actually looked for the product. At this point I'm thinking oh no this is going to be a lost cause if he can't even look for anything.
Well that night we had a small 6 pallets and no I didn't not expect to much out of him his first night. Though I should mention he was in the dept for over a week on the day shift, so I thought he should know a lil about the dept. Like that a big doll is NOT an action figure. Or that a stuffed animal is NOT a remote control car. Again what was I thinking??? Anyway we get started on the six pallets. I had figured I'd probablly do 4 and he'd do the other 2. Seemed about right to me. That's 8 hours to do 2 pallets. That gives you pleanty of time to find your way around and to ask the occasional quesiton if you can't find something. Everything he opened he came to me and asked where it went. Then it got to the point I was like...It's in the doll aisle, second shelf from the bottom, third item from the left. That still didn't work, He was like but I still don't see it. Sure enough I'd walk over there show him just as I had said and point right to it.
This went on for a full week and by the 3rd day I was losing my patience. Don't get me wrong I can understand a question now and then after almost 2 weeks but still after every box is a lil much. I finally had to go to the manager and that's when they told me to do nothing but supervise him. I wasn't to work any pallets just watch him work and run the front end lol. I did this and he came back to me in about two hours and said he was done. That didn't work for me because before that he was asking me where everything went. This caused me to double check all his work...not one pallet was worked it was just restacked. Now as you can imagine that didn't sit well with me and I made him redo it all. That night we only had 2 pallets so it wasn't so bad. Though it took him the rest of the night to do the pallets.
Tomorrow I will tell you about how I almost went crazy when it came time to teach him how to do the overstock. How to utilize the risers and what was safe and unsafe for the risers.
Love
Stace
