The Lines at Walmart Have Us Wondering: Understaffed or Underhanded?
What's going on? Is it old fashioned greed?
I’m going to come right out and say it:
The current evolution of self-checkout is a disaster.
Have you ever taken a moment to notice what the one person in charge of running eight self-checkouts has to do? Instead of running one register and ringing people up one at a time, they oversee six to eight registers. They have to train random people to use this technology all day.
“It’s not taking my card!” A customer fumes.
“You have to hit the ‘pay’ button first. Then you can tap your card.” The associate replies.
All. Day. Long.
They also have to ensure that customers know how to scan their rewards cards, possibly ring up produce, and prevent people from stealing high-ticket items. All this for $18 an hour?
Whoever came up with this bright idea has probably never been a cashier or worked the front end in a big box store or grocery store because this idea is dumb as hell.
It’s also not working.
“It’s a mess.”
Theft is way up (you don’t say!), and stores are looking to open more standard checkouts with human cashiers and limit self-checkout availability.
But right now, it’s a mess.
A creator on TikTok made a video as she was leaving Walmart. She stopped by a store in Florida to grab a couple of things. When she went up front, all the self-checkout stations were closed, and the front registers had really long lines.
Being a savvy shopper, she turned around and headed to another department to see if someone else could ring her up - the technology or pharmacy department. Because who has time to wait for forty minutes to buy three things?
A pharmacy cashier said he could ring her up. During the transaction, she asked about the long lines up front and why the self-checkout was closed.
“Yeah,” the cashier said. “They closed the self checkout to try to get you guys to download the app and pay for the membership. Because if you have the app you can checkout through the app and you don’t have to wait in line.”
At this point, our creator hero, Breyonce, was not having it. She was like, “This company made us employees, had us checking our own shit out last year. Now that you’re not making money off that, ya’ll said fuck that, download this app and [pay us] to become a member. The math is not math-ing.”
She’s right.
First, the Walmart+ membership is $98/year or about $8/ month. Second, may I remind you that Walmart is the biggest retailer in America? The company raked in $499 billion domestically last year.
They made even more money globally.
So hire some more cashiers. You have the money.
Walmart also quietly took $1.00 away from hourly workers in September last year. Their official statement at the time was a sad word-salad PR nothing-burger. The average hourly worker at Walmart makes $18/hour or $33K/year. The executives make about $14K an hour. Yes. $14K an hour.
But like - they need to get you to sign up for that Walmart+ membership, though.
Also, Breyonce’s TikTok message says, “It’s like all these companies are competing for who can rip us off the most.”
Ain’t that the truth?
So, what do we do?
We keep talking about it. We keep sharing each other’s content. That TikTok has about 599K views on it right now. Two weeks ago, my first article about the rue21 bankruptcy was number one on Google search. That article has almost 57K views. (That’s a wild amount for a self-published article with only 2K subscribers, by the way.)
Giant corporations make terrible policies that benefit them and line their pockets, but they’re slow to the social media game - really slow. They don’t get it, and we get our power in numbers. We get our power from sharing our stories and coming together.
Don’t think we don’t.
If no one buys the Walmart+ membership, then what? Do they hire more cashiers? Or do they lose business? Also, why are we paying more money to do more work as a customer?
Yes, the membership comes with other perks, but the whole thing is ridiculous. We’re all being memershipped to death.
The other thing is that in many smaller or rural areas, Walmart is the only place to shop. What do those people do? They waste forty minutes in line?
The Bad Ideas Keep Coming
The bad decisions at the customer’s and hourly employee’s expense drive me mad.
Sure, capitalism.
Yes, go make money. Yay.
Walmart has found a way to make a shit-ton of money while slowly making the lives of all of us ordinary people worse.
Why? I don’t get it. When I ran stores, I did everything I could to ensure my customers had a stellar experience.
If you have the capital to provide an outstanding visit for people, do it.
Self-checkout only works if you limit it to three stations and stipulate eight items or fewer. Other than that, it sucks.
So, hire cashiers. Hire people to work the floor. Hire people to process stock, fill shelves, and process online orders. But pay them a living wage, for fucks sake. $33K a year is not it.
By the way, I don’t care what the Walmart+ membership includes. I’m not buying it. Ever.
Kit Campoy is an author and retail expert with 20+ years of experience leading retail teams. She thrived on building relationships with customers and motivating sales teams. Now, as a ghostwriter, she leverages this people-centric approach to craft compelling content that resonates and ignites brand loyalty.
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I had no idea Wal Mart had a membership thing going! This may trigger other retailers following suit. The thing is, this scan and go app requires honesty. If they think thefts were up because of self checkout, guess what's gonna happen when people can check out using their phones 🤦🏻♀️.
I try to never go in a Walmart. Even before this new development I hated trying to check out. I loathe their self-checkout and there were few regular checkouts. I got suckered into buying that membership one year because I thought I could get better free delivery service through it. Didn't turn out so great so I cancelled three months in but of course there was no refund for the remaining months.
BTW, Sam's Club has had an app for "scan and go" for a couple of years now. The app and process work flawlessly. You already have their membership if you're shopping there and they don't charge more for this service. Since I don't usually buy many things at a time, it's good to be able to skip waiting in line behind people with huge carts of stuff. They also still have standard self-checkout and lanes with cashiers. I much prefer Sam's Club over Costco because they create a much easier experience for the number of ways to shop without having to deal with massive crowds. I loathe self-checkout at Costco and they don't have curbside.