I had a wonderful conversation from a district manager at Papa John's Pizza. I had called with some concerns because of a couple of bad experiences, but the conversation that I had with Steve not only reinforced my fondness for Papa John's and the things they do, it increased it.
The gentlemen that I spoke with listened to my complaints and took very proactive measures to fix them. Afterwards, when he has solved my problem, we were discussing customer service in general. I told him about the time I had spent at the happiest retailer on earth. Then he told me that he donated many many many pizzas to the Auburn, IN Walmart to serve to the associates there over Christmas blitz. What a wonderful thing to do for the people that work there.
As a Walmart survivor, I was amazed that such generosity still exists in the Walmart culture. It warms my heart that there are still people who find ways to be generous these days. To be sure, Papa John's got some goodwill for doing this. The associates at that store and all of the others are being squeezed from every direction. Walmart considers full time to be 36 hours for the regular folks. Not of course, the lucky few who have fought their way to unsalaried management, those lucky souls get 39.5 hours. Weehoo, book the cruise, right?
It wasn't always this way. When I first started at the happiest company on earth, the job was still pretty good. I got 10% off of general merchandise from the first day I started, the Christmas party was off store and the door prizes were wonderful. The company picnic was actually great, and people liked their jobs. Full time was considered 40 hours, and they hadn't found a way to kill overtime yet. Turn over was reasonable, raises were given and the world was much better in the Walmart way of life.
Then all of the Walton's were no longer involved, a faceless corporation took over and the collective neck of the Walmart associate was stepped on. Oh, mouth service was given to the open door policy, and the policy of having a yearly meeting (they call it grassroots)to discuss ways to improve the store was still in effect. But....
The last few years that I still collected a check from Walmart there was a manager there who opened the meeting with, "If you think this is going to be an hour of just sitting here and complaining about what we need to fix, you are wrong." Sets the tone for an open dialogue, doesn't it?
But before I start the flow of Walmart complaints, let me close on the idea that there are still people who are trying to make working at Walmart a little less awful. Thank you, Steve. Thank you.
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