No new contract yet for unions and Walt Disney World

"Like" button...

They go as far to make sure that all of the registers are tested and operational by Black Friday too. That seems obvious, but it's quite a big deal to them.

Black Friday can bring in Millions, just that one day, just for one department store in a whole chain of department stores.

My first black friday at a Walmart in southern west virginia saw the store take in a profit of over $1mill in 12 hours. Every register was open. And the lines were LONG.

RatherGoodBear said:
I generally don't mind my local Wal-mart. My biggest gripe is that of the 30 registers they have in the store, they never have more than 6 open at one time.

Thought about this today when my wife went to Target.
She said it was busy as hell, but she got right through because all but three lanes were open.
She complimented the cashier and was told that it is an order from Target corporate that no more than three people are allowed to be in a line. After that they MUST open more. I think that's a pretty good policy.

We had the same Target experience today.

But in all fairness we hit Wal-Mart too. Long-ass lines as we walked in with only 1/3 of lanes open, but within minutes there was an announcement (that for some reason I noticed) asking for all register-trained employees in the store to come to the front (or something to that effect) and we checked out a bit later with a one-person wait.

But to go back to an earlier comment of mine - they were still only around 50% open. I think it may have been 10 of 18. That was enough to keep the Xmas crowd under control.

Still wonder how it makes sense to put in so many check-out lanes when they get used a handful of times at most. Seems like the floorspace could be better used...and it's kill the psycology of "30 lanes, but only 3 open" at the same time.

You have to wonder:

For as powerful and well off as Wal-Mart is, how much potential business do they lose just with the reputation of long lines? And, assuming it is considerable, why not just pay more staff to keep the lines moving? I mean, really...I haven't stepped foot in a Wal-Mart in at least five years. Target has got all of my business in that regard because I simply refuse to deal with the lines, even if the prices are slightly better.

The potential business they lose is made up for in the savings from having to staff more. Trust me, That company has profit & loss down to a science.

They would rather build a smaller Walmart in an area saturated with Walmarts so that people don't have to drive more than 20 minutes to get there, knowing that the store will lose money due to the fact that the store's performance isn't going to cover the runnign costs, because they're still not losing to another store, it reinforces brand recognition, and they have stores that make enough money to cover the loss on those stores that they build 'at a loss'.

I go to both Target and Walmart. Don't notice a difference in terms of lines. Typically I don't wait more than about 5 mins at either. Sometimes though there is a longer line at both. Just depends on the day I guess.

Walmart looks at everything in terms of efficiency. My guess is that the number of registers isn't an accident. Whether its a matter of psychology, efficiency, store planning/uniformity or something else, I don't know.