Walmart Fail

My trips to Walmart are usually mundane. I shop, I pay, I leave. Yesterday there was a hiccup in that normally smooth procedure.

It began in the produce department. I wanted to buy russet baking potatoes but the bin was very picked over. Only a few small spuds remained. I asked a stock clerk if there were more potatoes stashed in the back but there weren’t. So he grabbed a 10-pound bag of russet potatoes from another bin, opened the bag, and dumped the potatoes into the loose-potato bin. I thought, “That is great customer service! Simple problem, simple solution.”

As the stock clerk walked away, he said, “If you need more, just open another bag.” So I did. Mistake #1.

I looked for a trash can to dispose of the bag, but I didn’t see one. Not wanting to litter, I stuck the bag in my pocket with the intention of disposing of it at the checkout. Mistake #2.

I put all my groceries on the checkout belt followed by the wadded-up bag that had held the potatoes. After ringing up my groceries, the checkout clerk (her name tag said ‘Katherine’) saw the wadded up bag and hesitated. “It’s trash,” I told her. She un-wadded the bag and examined it. “Did your potatoes come from this bag?”

“Yes.”

“I can’t ring up your potatoes if they came from this bag.”

“The loose potato bin was empty,” I explained, “so the produce man told me to open a bag of potatoes and take what I needed.”

“He can’t do that,” Katherine replied. “I don’t know what he was thinking. I can’t ring up these potatoes if they’re from a bag.”

That initiated a long and lively discussion between Katherine, another cashier, and me. Here’s how I saw it: The store has potatoes and I have money, so let’s swap. Tell me the price and I’ll pay it. Let me pay what I owe and leave the store. Don’t quibble about loose potatoes and bagged potatoes. If I want to talk to a rule-bound nitpicker, I can always find a government bureaucrat.

Finally Katherine said flatly, “I can’t sell you these potatoes. It’s against the rules.”

Katharine won. I left Walmart without the potatoes. But what did the cashier think would be done with those potatoes? They can’t be put back into a sealed bag. They will be put into the loose potato bin. Instead of selling them to me, the store will sell them to another customer for the same price I would have paid. Nothing was accomplished except for wasting everyone’s time and persuading me to take my future business to a store where logic prevails and customer service is important.

Why do so many employees have difficulty with the concept of customer service? A business goes to a lot of effort to build good will with its customers and then a single unnecessary incident destroys that good will. I don’t dislike Walmart, but I dislike the experience I had there. Ironically, I didn’t even care what the potatoes were going to cost. I simply wanted to pay and leave. But the rules wouldn’t allow that.

Today I stopped in a Publix store and bought the potatoes I had tried to buy from Walmart. Publix is closer to my home. It’s a large, attractive store and the employees are friendly and helpful. Best of all, I was allowed to leave the store with my purchase. I intend to shop there more often.