I was talking to one of the backroom guys this morning and we were reminiscing about the ways things used to be, having between the two of us, almost 40 years of time with the company, all of which has been at Sam's Club. The conversation was steered into the direction of, "what do these people in Bentonville really hope to accomplish?" No one really knows, other than that they are given the task of creating these new policies with the goal of reducing personnel costs. How they are implemented and carried out is the responsibility of the market and store management, regardless of whether they agree with them or not. They're given their marching orders and they have to make these things happen, for good or ill. That these things weren't rolled out more gradually is only one cause for concern but the biggest impact it's having over here is that freight is not getting moved into the building and out on to the floor fast enough. There just aren't enough people here to get it done. Compounding this issue is the reality that people don't have enough time during the day to get all the stocking done and take care of their other responsibilities, so a great deal of things fall through the cracks not the least of which is all the stocking that doesn't get done and is left behind for the evening people to finish. Everything starts to snowball and it becomes impossible to catch up. We have three loaded trailers from the DC outside right now that have yet to get into the building. The dock is literally full with two trailers worth of DC freight that still have to be put in the steel. They rope off multiple aisles during business hours, inconveniencing members in the process, just to put away whatever they can, along with water, coke, pepsi, paper, beer, wine, whatever they can't finish by 11. And then the cycle repeats itself the next day, and the next, and the next....
Yeah, Costco has been doing it for years without an overnight crew but the major differences are that Costco doesn't open till 10am every day AND they bring in an army of people to get it all done. Go shopping at Costco some time and you never see aisles closed so they can put freight away in the steel, you never see all the floor associates disappear simultaneously to jump on registers, everywhere you look you see associates assisting to members needs and taking care of the floor. They have the help they need inside the building at all times and they don't have to play catch up on a daily basis with no end in sight. Its a well run operation that has the people it requires to function properly. The beauty of it is that they're all getting paid and they're happy enough to keep doing it. Does that, in any way, mimic what anyone sees happening in any Sam's Club?
I remember a time when we had ten forklifts running all night, every night. Every single night crew associate had a lift license - that they did actually have to prove they were worthy of - and there was NEVER, ever, anything left unfinished for the day crew to have to take on. Every single piece of freight that came off a truck was either put away or stocked and we always emptied every trailer we were sent. The dock area was a wide open slab of cement every single morning. Those were the expectations and we had the people we needed to get the job done 100% of the time. You know what the best part was? We had fun, we felt like we were accomplishing something, and - most of all - we felt important.
Those days are gone.