I imagine it is the size of the corporation. So many different people in so many different places and one store is different from the other. It is difficult if not almost impossible to know what to expect when you go into a new store when you work for Walmart.
Although all of the stores I have worked in have seemed the same, there are many things in each that are different.
I have worked for store managers that seem real.
I have worked for store managers that are biased and distant.
I have worked for liars and for very honest and ethical store managers.
In the world of retail there are few store manager positions that give incentive bonuses as big as Walmart.
Surely once a manager gets to that salary range they become very secretive and they are almost devious in some things, of course always with a reason to be that way. Fluff is fluff and it makes no difference where you use it.
Confidentiality seems to be a large part of what happens behind closed doors if the management is at fault.
Of course there are a number of things that during my almost seven years with the company I ignored because I knew that some of the simplest things would be used against me.
The company is sexist in that the stores are controlled by males for the most part and even when there is a female store manager she is usually directly below a male in the Walmart order of things.
I have ignored many sexist remarks and have ignored many things some women would consider sexual harassment.
In the store that I have just left or was terminated from there is a mouse pad in the assistant's office that could be looked at as sexual. I said nothing about it because I knew that it would only be another reason for them to find a way to get rid of me.
It has a picture of a scantly clothed woman on top of a car on it. The store's management is divided in that out of fourteen managers only three were female.
I also have in my possession a joke that was passed around the office during the Christmas holidays that is quite dirty.
I have seen other female assistant managers make sexual advances to other members of management and it did not seem to hurt their promotable opportunities. As a matter of fact it seems acting sexy can help your career. Sorry, I am older than they would be interested in.
I have been present when a female assistant held another manager's head upon her breast petting the top of his head and indicating that she would take care of him.
I have heard numerous times of managers being transferred and promoted after relationships with higher management went wrong or resulted in a pregnancy. I have also been told that some associates after being involved with upper management have been promoted after the affair.
Of course most of the more pronounced situations consist of what is considered to be hearsay but Walmart contributes to it by not explaining why things are being done.
Many of the stores that I have been assigned to have associates in them that have been there for a long period of time and many of the associates bring the same information with them as a concern when they do not understand something that is happening in the store.
Integrity on the store, district or regional level is at times virtually nonexistent.
Although I was originally told that I had nothing to worry about if I followed Walmart Policy I do believe that the things I brought to the attention of the corporate offices was a large part of my eventual termination.
Not only is Walmart dead set against Unions, it is dead set against the hourly associates knowing anything that is in the least off color.
They want the management to look pure at all cost. They overly protect managers that have no respect for the associates on an individual or group basis. Hourly associates are kept in the dark on a number of issues. The basic talk in the back office has no line of respect or dignity for associates. The management says what it wants to whoever it wants to it hides the rest. Okay possible it was just the stores I worked in?
Julie Pierce has worked in the retail sector for more than thirty years. She has been a union member of the UCFW Union and the afl-cio more than once and has worked for more than one large retailer during the course of her career. She attended Gulf Coast Community College, Panama City Beach, Florida, in the nineties in the pursuit of a degree in Journalism and Mass Communications. Some of her work has been published during the eighties and nineties in various editorial pages of newspapers in the state of New Jersey and Florida. She also did some work as a community reporter for a weekly newspaper in Panama City Florida. Other work includes an article in the Gulls Cry, the Gulf Coast Community College newspaper.
She is the wife of TSgt William F. Pierce Jr. (retired) USAF and the mother of three children and one grandchild.
Her experience with Walmart has taken her into three different regions and six districts within the company. In over a six-year period has worked in ten Walmart stores for twelve Walmart Store Managers.
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