As I was working today, I thought back to another quote from that Wal-Mart article that resonated with me:
As I patrolled the aisles, repositioning misplaced items and filling gaps in the shelves, I realized that Wal-Mart "guests" really are like guests. They are visitors who move things around and create a mess before they go home. Cleaning up after them was not very different from doing housework.
I've never been one to shove items where they don't belong, but now that it's my job to un-shove, I am even more diligent about it while shopping at other stores. I make sure to take unwanted items right back where I found them.
I spend a lot of my time putting stuff where it belongs. It never ceases to amaze me that I can almost hear a shopper's inner monologue: "I want to buy this purple yarn...(walks around the corner)...No, wait, I want this purple yarn...I'll just shove the three balls of other purple here, whatever." I am constantly pulling purple out of green and green out of orange, all day long. And taking cake decorating and beading supplies back to their own parts of the store.
It's ridiculous how many people just drop stuff wherever they are in the store.
Oh, and also how I spent two hours of my Christmas Eve making a pirate ship that was manhandled and destroyed within days of putting it on the shelf.
Posted by Sarah at February 9, 2009 05:13 PM | TrackBackI think there should be some sort of cart at stores where people can put back stuff they are either too lazy to put back themselves, or just can't remember, just like the cart at the library, where they basically plead with you not to put the book back yourself, because they are afraid you will do it wrong and it will be lost forever until they do some general inventory. I think that would save a lot of time for stores, and appeal to customers' sense of entitlement that they don't have to put things back, because that is a part of customer service.
Posted by: CaliValleyGirl at February 9, 2009 05:59 PMThat's a great idea, CVG! It would have saved Sarah a lot of time today.
Too bad it doesn't work 100% for libraries. Out of hundreds of books that I borrowed from the University of Hawaii library over a decade, only one was lost forever after I returned it.
Like Sarah, "I make sure to take unwanted items right back where I found them." And I think long and hard about buying something so they're not unwanted (and end up far from their original aisle).
I'm sorry about the ship's sad fate. Poor foamie. I had assumed the display models were under glass.
Posted by: Amritas at February 9, 2009 07:05 PMHeh. I worked at a Michael's during graduate school. Incredibly, the messiest were the "fine art" people. Expensive oil paints with lids off and laid anywhere in the aisle or elsewhere, for example. But yeah, the whole store was just a big playground for misplaced items.
I had an incredibly dense and power-tripping manager with no concept of incentives. The reward for those of us who did our "housekeeping" on our own departments quickly at the end of the night was ... to be commanded to help the slowpokes. Ugh.
Posted by: Anwyn at February 10, 2009 11:18 AMAnwyn -- I am lucky that my managers are both cool. One thing I've noticed is that they always say "Bye! Thank you!" at the end of my shift. I chuckle every time they thank me for working, but it fosters a good environment. I feel appreciated.
Posted by: Sarah at February 10, 2009 11:26 AMI think that is what is considered, in some form, job security. They need 'somebody' to straighten it up. Atleast, that is how I dealt with when I worked retail. If customers were clean, could answer their own questions, find what they were looking for, why would the store pay me? That is how I dealt with the slobs.
Posted by: rayanne at February 10, 2009 08:25 PM