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Wal-Mart, you’re still the Devil

Wal-Mart, you’re still the Devil

A couple of weeks ago, I tweeted that Wal-Mart is the Devil. This morning, the company’s Twitter-monitor replied. Below is the e-mail I sent to the Twitter-monitor, who asked if there was anything that Wal-Mart could do to make my customer experience better.

To Whom it May Concern:
I recently received a tweet-reply to a comment I posted about the fact that your company is the Devil. Thank you for your concern about my recent experience at a Wal-Mart store. There are, in fact, things your company could do to make my customer experience better.

1.) Hire qualified people. The people you hire are the lowest common denominator of the lowest possible level of competence or initiative. Better people would make a better company. That would make for better customers.

2.) Hire more people. It would be one thing if the people were just incompetent. Your stores are ludicrously understaffed. This makes it doubly infuriating when, after wandering a store for 45 minutes looking for someone to direct you to whatever abandoned coal mine the toothpicks have been moved to, you find the person and they speak so poorly, are so uninterested in their jobs, and are so under-trained that your 45 minute search for help would have been more productive if you’d spent 45 minutes finding a tall edifice from which to throw yourself.

3.) Carry more than 1 variety of a product (in addition to the Greater Value brand, which is quality-shy, at best) and stock more than two of them.

4.) Quit removing self-checkouts. We already detest most of the employees in your company because of incompetence, rudeness, or unprofessional behavior. The one island of serenity is that moment when the polite, soothing and efficient computer voice welcomes us to Wal-Mart at the self-checkouts. When you eliminate those, turn them off, or don’t repair broken ones, that forces us to interface with the incompetent, mismanaged and (sadly) overworked cashiers that you guys just sprang from the county clink. That’s just bad form.

I could go on, but I think we both agree that to do so would be to waste my time and yours. After all, the chances of Wal-Mart actually attempting to fix any of the 2.8 trillion or so things that are wrong with the customer experience are next to zero.

Thank you again for your attention,

Michael DeVault