Walmart Can Do Better

Sounds like LIDL to me

There was no shortage of staff when I was there. There was just no staff getting carts. lol

@porwest That's just annoying I agree, especially if they are just standing around chatting when there are things that obviously need doing!

@porwest High crime or high homelessness... I don't know of any other stores' carts locking up.

That's usually a sign you live in high crime area. lol

@BarBaraPrz Lots of stores in high crime areas use locking carts. At least here in the U.S. they do. But homelessness is also an issue since they like to use the carts for their stuff.

@porwest It's this entitlement generation.

I understand the carts being left around the handicapped parking area. But the other ones? No. I can't wrap my head around the laziness. It just gets under my skin. lol

@kareng Big time. All about "me," and no one else in the world matters.

No Kroger here. We do have a Ruler Foods, though, which is Kroger owned. But they do carts like Aldi does, with a quarter deposit.

@porwest Same. almost as annoying when trying to get in contact with a physical person on the phone and get stuck with automatic answering systems

@BACONSTRIPSXXX It is almost impossible to get anyone to answer the phone at our Walmart.

That sort of thing drives me insane.

@porwest The world is going downhill. That’s what it seems like sometimes.

@lovebuglena It is. It's not just your imagination.

So many people nowadays are just thoughtless and lazy. They just don't care. It's sad, really, when you think about it.

It's one area where Walmart could really gain some ground, and that's better hiring criteria for their managers, and more "checking in" on what they are and aren't doing in their stores.

Well, ours is a Supercenter, so they tend to have more carts. The smaller stores typically keep around 600. The way your store handled carts is the way it should be handled everywhere. The last time this happened, there were two store employees outside smoking and I told them about the carts and they said their cart guy wasn't in yet. So, apparently, our store's policy is no one brings in carts other than the cart guy. In the case of our manager, clearly if all the carts were outside in the parking lot, things were not going "correctly" and the assistant manager was not doing their job to handle the "day to day" stuff. Which would have been a good time for the manager to step in and correct that before all 2000 carts were outside. But yes, cost cutting, which usually means cutting staff, is always a problem. They really should take more care about customer service because over the past few years, they've gained a wider customer base to include more affluent customers. They won't keep them when the tides turn if they keep doing stuff like this, leaving carts outside and not opening enough registers. Affluent people understand about the value of time, and so they will be willing to pay a premium to save themselves some of it.

The delivery thing is getting out of control and contributing to a bad customer experience as well IMO. The "pickers" are always in the way, and seem not to care that they are blocking aisles and making it harder for people inside the store to shop. I think Walmart needs to reduce the "in store" picking and come up with a better way of doing this.

It's not always like this. But every time it does happen, which is more often than I think it should, it boggles my mind every single time. As for our scooters, there'd be more charged if lazy, able-bodied people stopped using them.

I'm sure they'd be all ears.