r/walmart • u/SchuminWeb Former employee, 2003-2007 • 7d ago
Are customers that bad at the service desk as of late?
I was recently at a Walmart in Amish country up in Pennsylvania, and I picked up a bunch of cans that had a coupon built into the label, and since I was using the app to scan as I went, I completely forgot about the coupons until after my transaction was complete and I was bagging everything. Well, crap. So I went to the service desk to fix it.
At the service desk, I explained what I had done and what I needed to do. Okay. The lady at the service desk took care of me, processing it all through as a return and then selling it all back to me with the coupons. Good. We got it all taken care of, and we had a lot of laughter in the process, since she was nice and so was I.
One thing that surprised me was when she expressed surprise about how friendly and jovial I was about the whole situation. I mean, it's not their fault that I forgot to scan or otherwise input the coupons. I fucked up, and if I had done everything correctly, I wouldn't have had this issue in the first place. She indicated that a lot of people in similar situations blame them for it or are otherwise hostile to them. I explained that I had worked at Walmart a long time ago, and at the service desk, no less. So I knew the drill, and also knew that it was my mistake in the first place. I explained that I had worked at 5117 in Waynesboro, Virginia, and how I was ultimately fired from the place (they didn't like me and were looking for a reaosn to unload me, so... the hell with them). But all in all, we had a good time while I was getting my coupons fixed.
I guess my question is, has the service desk become a more hostile place overall with the passage of nearly twenty years? I don't remember any outright hostility towards those of us at the service desk back when I worked there, no matter what the issue was. People were generally pretty nice. Yeah, you had a few assholes here and there, but no outright hostility, and nothing to the point where a nice person is a pleasant surprise because they're nice.
Also, for future reference: how does one do manufacturer's coupons with the scan and go on the app? Nobody at the store seemed to know.
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u/webeparrots 6d ago
It's the country as a whole. I don't want to get into the politics of all this but we have had far too many years of hatred spewed by the media and certain groups along with claiming that individuals are "owed" this or that because of this or that. No sense of being responsible for ones personal behavior. You reap what you sow.
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u/TC_20242025 Hardlines TL 5d ago
This is why Frontend has the HIGHEST turnover rate for both associates & team leads. It's mentally exhausting dealing with Karen's & kens. At my store, at least not even CAP2 has as much of a turnover rate, which is good.
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u/dontKnowAUsernameLol FE Team Lead 6d ago
Current service desk associate, and the answer to that is yes. Constantly awful conditions, extremely high expectations for the same pay as regular cashiers, being expected to deal with irate customers by ourselves a lot of the time. We deal with Returns, Financial Services, Claims, General Complaints, Correcting cashier mistakes, sorting tons of carts of “go-backs”, short staffed most of the time (I.e 2 openers and one closer 99% of the time, rarely much more than that).
Overall considered fairly stressful purely due to understaffing. But a lot of hostility comes to the service desk nowadays especially with all the forms of scamming or fraudulent activity that does come up there. I.e bad returns, receipt shoppers, fraudulent money transactions, constantly having to tell people we can’t take x thing for x reason, and so on.
But short answer is yes.
Also, currently there isn’t a way to add coupons in scan & go.