Internet and social media has made many of the issues that the company has seem 1000x worse. Back in the day you would talk to your fellow “partners” (We were not called associates back then, we were partners in the company) and complain or gossip talk about what was going to happen. Now you can go online to sites like this or Reddit and hear rumors that may or may not be true, which puts pressure on some people thinking they maybe in danger of losing their jobs.
It had been my experience that if you work hard and care about what you are asked to do, there will always be a place for you in this company. The ability to transfer anywhere in the country, go to the Walmart side of the business, or even go work at a distribution center I believe gives us a lot of options that other companies do not offer. Change is never easy, and losing our PTC has been one of the most difficult changes that I have experienced in my 20+ years, but I do not stress any longer about things I can not control.
Do the workers at Sears, Kmart, Woolworths, JC Penny, Macy's etc wish their home offices would have done things differently in the past to help make the business stronger, probably. It use to take a lot more workers to build a car, and when GM filed for bankruptcy, it was crushing to so many workers and their families. I do not know how the massive push to embrace technology will make the company look like in 5 or even 10 years, but I do know that the younger generation really likes Scan and Go, Club Pickup, and 2 day free shipping on the website.
Costco does a lot of things better than we do, but they also have some of the best locations in the more affluent parts of the country, which means they have customers that have a higher household income than we do. They also have 759 locations and while we have close to 600, the Walmart “umbrella” has 6500 total locations corporately. Sam’s will always be the child of Walmart, and it’s difficult to have Bentonville running 6500 stores under one corporation. We grew too big many decades ago. Sam Walton could never have dreamed that taking the company public back in the 70’s would change retail forever, and it also made the company accountable to our shareholders. Like it or not, we have to keep investors happy, Wall Street doesn’t care what our sales were last year, they want to know why sales and profit do not keep going higher.