What's so great about Walmart??
Walmart is the nation’s largest private employer. So what can be said about Walmart? Is it really a good company? Yes, we get low prices from them and they supply people with a great deal of jobs. But how great is it to work for Walmart? Will you get good benefits and hours that you’re willing to work?
So a little while ago, in my Intro to Computers class, we were talking about using excel to help us solver optimization. What we do it given a get of constraints, we want to maximize or minimize a function. Generally it involves maximizing profits. So we read an article in the Wall Street Journal about Walmart. They developed a computer program that just like excel, minimizes their costs. The way it works is it figures out what time of day they will need the most amount of people and how that would vary over the course of the day and then the assigns work shifts to people. However, these shifts are not normal shifts. Instead of being the standard 6 or 8 hour shifts, there are like 4 and 5 hours shifts. Then when it comes to who is going to get these shifts, the people with higher salaries and those who are nearing full time get fewer hours because of the constraints put in the program. This saves them a lot of money in benefits. But is it fair to Walmart employees? According to the article, people had mixed feelings about this. Some employees liked it because had to specify what hours they would be free in order to be assigned shifts. Other did not like it people because they were not getting many hours and the shifts were very irregular. One can only wonder if Walmart is as great as it seems.
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NO! Walmart is not as good as people often think! Just my answer to the title.
http://www.progressiveu.org/user/tcho
No personal experience from me, but in her story told in Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich does not have such a dandy time working for Walmart. I didn't know about the shift, that's news to me. But i did get that it's really unfair to workers. They have silly mottos, completely corporate, enforcing their goal to serve the consumer. Yet they don't get much in return.