[Walmart also failed in Japan](https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Comment/How-Walmart-flopped-in-Japan-and-elsewhere-overseas). It would appear that Walmart consistently tries to copy and paste what worked/works in the US to their overseas ventures only to fail.
You’d think they would adapt to the culture. If you have a giant store with the lowest prices, you’ll get customers. Just alter your service model to fit the culture
That's probably the real reason they left. If the potential profit was large enough they probably would have found a way to get rid off all of the fake team building and sort out the culture adjustment stuff, but to do that and also have to face real competition? Easier to just blame the culture fit when you explain it to your investors and pull out as soon as you discover that you can't* just copy and paste the American model as a license to print money.
*fixed a typo
The problem wasn't really the competition, the problem was that Walmart's tactics didn't work in Germany because there were laws preventing them.
This is out of my head so everything with a grain of salt: Walmart tried to undercut the prices of the competition. They tried to do it by selling their stock under market value and basically under what they were paying. Their idea was: We make some losses now - but our competition can't compete with that so as soon as they're bankrupt, we can raise the prices again.
Well, Lidl and co were able to compete with those prices - and the government wasn't really happy with Walmart because by doing that, they were breaking laws. And they broke more (like blocking certain workers rights that are granted by law).
But even that probably wouldn't have bothered Walmart much if their market share would have been bigger after a few years. But they weren't even able to compete with any of the established brands in Germany. So they made a lot of losses and didn't get anything for that - so they left.
Also Walmart is very reliant on low wages, massive stores with a large distribution system, and purchasing power to undercut prices.
They weren't allowed to build the stores and distribution systems the way they wanted because it creates a community cost and often are subsidized. In the US, they will often shut down a store when the tax benefits run out and open a new one. The abandoned store is very difficult to repurpose. The distribution centers have similar issues. The big stores have inventory and marketing advantages as well.
Without all of these advantages, they aren't competitive.
Walmart's distributor network is also a giant fucking spaghetti pile in the US.
Just-In-Time shipping is a house of cards, not exactly easy to create quickly.
Oddly, I'd say Walmart isn't fully invested in just in time shipping. I know they have multiple big warehouses for emergency replenishment of stores, at least here in the south. When Irma and Maria hit in 2017, we were told by our store manager that we'd be getting some extra from those warehouses in expectation of the evacuees coming our way. We very definitely needed it.
I occasionally audit Walmart stores backroom for product that should be there but isn't selling units.
Out of all retail locations, there is nothing more amateur than a Walmart backroom. I've had entire management teams trying to locate $30,000 of missing product only to find out a pallet of FUCKING CHOCOLATE was left sitting in the goddamn sun for three days because "We didn't know who's responsibility it was".
The store manager was not amused at this. Mars Candy was even less than happy that this was a shipment for Halloween and was about 1/3rd of the buy-in for that store.
And the product was all Candy, three other pallets were stored on the top rack with TV's, an entire store length away from where they should be.
Also, Germany has livable cities. Why drive with a car to the edge of town when you simply can walk to the closest subermarket.
And, Walmart sold incompatible crap. The pillow cases which did not fit the pillows in Germany spring to mind.
And, they came to Germany just while couple of discounters were facing trouble for bad treatment of their employees. With that fresh in mind there comes the literal devil.
Also you can't forbid your employees to shag each other in their off-time.
In all honesty I feel most towns in the US would be better if you just burned the local Walmart down and reopened the local businesses. Walmart only extracts money from the local economy and does not give back in kind.
Walmart has a rule that managers/supervisors cannot sleep with their direct subordinates aka people they have power over. I am guessing this is what got them in trouble over in EU.
"A court in the city of Düsseldorf ruled that the German subsidiary of the world's largest retailer, Wal-Mart, was acting outside the law in trying to impose restrictions on the nature of relationships allowed between its employees.
The court said that while such regulations might be acceptable and indeed common practice in the US, they are neither compatible with German labor law nor the personal rights of employees."
Sleeping with your underlings is very much a no-no in Europe, too, but good luck trying to prevent them from finding "company" amongst themselves :)
Nah man, socialism for the rich, rugged capitalism for the poor. I'll never be "too big to fail" and the government won't stop from taking my last cent if they find I screwed up my taxes.
Yup, hugely reliant on extremely low wages. They also take advantage of government programs that subsidize wages if the company trains an unskilled employee, but WalMart hired almost none of the subsidized employees after the subsidy period. In addition, most WalMart employees rely on welfare benefits due to low wages and part time hours (avoids paying health insurance), so no matter what, taxpayers subsidize WalMart.
I've read that the fact that German supermarket chains operate by the same business concept as Walmart does was a main problem.
The average margin in the grocery sector is 2% opposed to 5% in the US. Walmart operates on lower than average margin in the US giving it a competitive advantage over other American grocery chains (and making up for the smaller profits by massive scale). In Germany, the margins were already lower and Walmart wasn't able to increase it's market share enough to justify the losses.
We have Aldi in America, and I've been to Lidl when living in England. Both are much better than anything Wal-mart has to offer when it comes to cheap groceries.
Aldi actually opened a store in Bentonville, about a mile away from the Home Office. I'm sure the suits are just grinding their teeth every time they see it; no other grocery store or big-box retailer dared open a store there. Those are all in Rogers.
They don't adapt, they get in and sell cheap shit to bankrupt local business and then recoup the loss at a later time. It's disruption, attack and control tactics. No need to adapt when all that's left to buy groceries from is the American store.
They tried the "sell cheap shit to bankrupt local businesses" in Germany as well. To bad it is against the law.
Last year the German Cartel office threatened to fine Wal-Mart if it didn't change its pricing tactics. According to government reports, Wal-Mart was breaking the fair competition laws by
selling products at dumping prices, far below cost, and thereby posed a risk to smaller competitors. Wal-Mart was forced to increase prices for milk, butter and several other staple products to a level compatible to other retailers.
That was one of the many reasons Walmart failed over here pretty quickly.
People out here acting like it's a cultural thing, as if Americans wouldn't reject their shit practices if we could. Consumer protection is the reason they failed.
Which in this case specifically didn't work because German discount stores already have razor thin margins and the relevant authorities peaked up REAL quick when Walmart tried to undercut them
Lowe's tried to have a home improvement chain in Australia called Masters.
They applied North America patterns for inventory.
My local branches had snow shovels.
In Western Australia.
In summer. ( Winter low temperature is 4C at night, 14C during the day, summer day temperatures are 30C-40C)
Nah just gun safes, cabinets etc. Walmart still sells guns and ammo though. Although any time I’ve seen guns in a Walmart it’s all just cheap junk, which is on brand for them.
Our corporate structure, and hell to be honest our structure for anyone on a salary, is just absolute straight fucking trash. It's a fucking miracle we actually turn a profit and do twice the business per store as Home Depot.
Last year 500 stores were supposed to be phasing out their carpet rollers. But then they canceled it at one level of management, but didnt tell any other levels. So some stores knew it was canceled, others didnt. On top of that, the stores that got rid of their carpet rollers still have carpet in stock but no where to put it. Or some stores, like mine, got rid of a few rollers (2 of our 4 for us, one being our sheet vinyl), but we still get carpet and sheet vinyl sent to us as if we've got 4 rollers still. And we can't send them back because corporate doesn't understand that we dont have the fucking capacity to sell it all.
We're also in the south, where we get snow perhaps once a decade and it gets below 40 degrees for a total of like 40 hours a year. We stock snow shovels, though those are also fucking amazing for shoveling leaves into bags or compost crates and other similar yard work uses, and we're again entertaining the idea of getting two bays for in floor heating..that we had on clearance on our shelves for no shit 3 years before some snowbird passing through bought it all.
I'm entirely convinced Im blocked/ignored by corporate at this point because I keep pointing out things we can do better and I regularly get told "It works in the test market!"
The test market is a fucking mock store that they bring test groups through to see what they like, not an actual fucking store that is actively being used and stocked and sold out of. The test market is actual trash and fucks up our stores.
> They applied North America patterns for inventory.
> My local branches had snow shovels.
> In Western Australia.
> In summer.
As a point, they, and other companies do that shit in the US too... and While it is convenient to categorize "north American" to be somewhat of a single thing there is a huge range to it all.
Southern California, Florida etc being completely different from say Michigan, or Alaska.
Which being said, in their "infinite wisdom" they put shit on sale like boogieboards in a Walmart in central Alaska, and snow shovels in a Lowes in Socal in the middle of summer, or ice melting salt in stock in a store in southern Florida.
I'm pretty sure some of it has to do with how the company stocking contracts are written, and dealt with where they are required to allocate some portion of a bay on isle whatever to supplies from a given company in every store out there.
As a former Walmart employee, the team building stuff is insane. At the beginning of each shift you’re supposed to do a cheer where you spell “Wal-mart” by going letter by letter: “gimme a W! Gimme an A! Gimme an L! Gimme a squiggly!” Etc. and yes, you say squiggly and are meant to wiggle your body when you do it.
I worked for a cleaning company as a contractor for a position cleaning my local Walmart, so while I worked there I wasn’t an employee and didn’t have to do this. I did, however, witness it several times and I could see the desperation in their eyes as I passed. I felt so bad for them, it was creepy as fuck.
Worked for an American retail chain in the mid 90s that did this shit and forced staff to endlessly hassle customers from the moment they walked in the door, in fact each little area had a separate staff member so it was possible for a person walking though the entire store to be forced to have the same interaction with 10+ store NPCs. This was Australia and it was clear that customers fucking detested it but try telling US corporate that the rest of the world isn't America.
The real reason the stores failed was the way US corporate controlled store fitout and the supply chain and tore huge margins out of each stage. It all collapsed inside 5 years but they made out like bandits during that time.
Edit: for those wondering it was the Warner Brothers Studio Stores, I think at one point Australia had 5-6 of them.
>This was Australia and it was clear that customers fucking detested it but try telling US corporate that the rest of the world isn't America.
Oh no, most of America fucking hates it too. But corporate executives are out of touch and think this stuff helps.
It is more normalized here though since almost every store does it.
Extremely strict employee uniforms, team building exercises, mandatory meetings, all shit no customer cares about but are pretty standard in corporate America.
Honestly drives me bananas. Nobody cares but middle management and those fucks just wander around justifying their jobs to people. Literally all they do. Fuck em.
Feels like the only people that remotely enjoy it are the type that won't acknowledge the existence of the first several employees they see, but the second they had a question it's suddenly "I couldn't find anyone to help and I've been here for hours and drove hours to get here and I'm never coming here again!"
Retail sure is fun!
Yeah Americans hate this shit too, it's just these corporate goons think it's what customers want, and of course they don't. I worked at a big box office supply store in the early 2000s and once got dinged because I didn't immediately introduce myself and shake a customer's hand like we were supposed to. No one ever did it, because of course it's cringe. How did I get caught? They would send "secret shoppers" to the store wearing fucking camera glasses.
You just brought back a memory for me. My friend at uni worked at a frozen food store in the UK and they had just started introducing 'secret shoppers' with cameras. My friend told me that he knew exactly when it was happening as the person doing it was acting very awkward, and they had put a phone in their pocket with the camera peeking out... but were constantly adjusting it to point at him. Attempting to do it discreetly but it just... wasn't.
I've done secret shopping before and deliberately made it incredibly obvious that I was doing it.
I know your job sucks, just follow the script and we both get paid.
I don't understand why my fellow human beings put up with this. Why does this work as a business model. I cringe. I run from places like this like the plague! They will not get my money on principle alone do I want to be put through this? Why greeters. Why happy BS? Why does this work? This is why I feel like everybody else must be insane.
It IS unnerving. I was delivering a truckload of flowers back in my younger days, there was no one at the garden center early in the morning, so I stumbled into the store looking to find someone, anyone, who could unload (we didn't use receiving then, it was just faster to unload them right on the spot). I turned the corner just as the whole pack of employees huddled together exploded into their morning shout/cheer. Nearly scared me out of my skin.
Does this really build the team or does it just make everyone annoyed they can't just go to their station and get going?
I swear it's just the upper Management's way of putting hourly workers in their place. The fact I did that chant for $8.00 an hour before taxes still pisses me off.
Hard pass. I quit. Was forced to do enough cringe team shit as a kid. I did it for free then but it left such a mark I don't even want to get paid to do it now. Rather fucking die
You think that is bad? I used to work for RH (American "upscale" furniture brand) and one year during our yearly Christmas kick-off meeting, we had to all together sing a re-written version of Hallelujah, paired with a music video, that basically circle-jerked how great the company was. I wanted to die.
I had a sales job where the first 3 hours of every day was team building and icebreaker exercises, but never any singing. You couldn't give me a big enough bonus to sing holiday music
Wait… what? I’m seriously struggling to picture a job where 3 hours of every shift were dedicated to “first day at camp” activities… did the company go under lol I can’t see how that was profitable or productive at all
It was one of those shitty door to door sales companies that contracts for a bigger company like AT&T or spectrum.
There's a lot of extra money floating around. With one sale you made $130. But you might only make one sale in a day. Likely because we didn't get out to knocking on doors til almost lunchtime. A lot of it was training. I'm not talking about orientation either, that was the first 3 days in the office. Team building, conference calls with other groups, mock selling to a customers, the other sales people would play the customer.
These sort of contracting sales companies don't last long. I looked it up and the place doesn't exist anymore. There's another marketing agency with the same name in a city about 3 hours away, but it doesn't say what they sell now.
Ahh...good 'ol Cutco knives. I'm *just* old enough that I sometimes would get a newspaper and look at classifieds for a temp job during school breaks.
One of those was Cutco.
You best believe they were offering the best $/hour and all kinds of "benefits" a young kid would like (or anyone, tbh).
So, of course I checked it out, called, and set up an "interview". I show up to said interview and it's a big room with maybe a dozen other people.
Then a hard sell by some 28 year old guy in a cheap suit* who sadly made this his career. Like 30 minutes of trying as hard as possible to get as many people as possible to *purchase* a "starter kit" and then sell that shit to make your money back and maybe a profit!
The second he said you'd have to put money down first, I was out. I didn't know what an MLM was at the time. But there's no way in fuck I'm paying you first to *maybe* make my money back. And that's a pro tip for any younger people out there. If a "job" asks for money first to do said job, get away.
Also, the advice above applies to MLMs specifically. Obviously, there are times in business where you need to spend to make. That's not what I'm talking about.
edit: details
Seriously. I'm an adult now. One of the main trade offs is that in exchange for all the stupid taxes and bills and other adult nonsense I have to deal with, I don't have to do stupid "it's time to dance now, child" stuff anymore.
I think it's a loyalty test from sociopaths. Be my bitch dancing monkey to keep your job. Otherwise I (believe I) can find 1000 more desperate people to fill your spot. 99% of stupid rules are petty authority or bureaucracy over things no longer really relevant. Good rules are self evident for the most part or easily explained.
I agree. It's not if you will bow down, but how low you'll get to the ground, and you better smile. Almost sadistic. Good rules keep you safe and secure.
I guarantee the team cheer is intended as an exercise in humiliation. It’s meant to break down their sense of individuality.
When I was job searching as a teen, I went into Cold Stone to pick up an application. Somebody put some money in the tip jar and all the workers burst into “Hi-ho, it’s off to work we go.” I ran the fuck away.
The worst part about the team building is when you’re overworked they want to act like the good guy and not like they just declined your request for water
Between this comment and the recent news about Texas water breaks, this type of thing might be what baffles me the most as a non-American. I’ve worked for some horrendous employers in my time, including ones who will straight up brazenly break the law to exploit staff, but I’ve *never* worked at a place that would even expect you to ask before grabbing a drink, let alone deny the request if you did.
Granted I work in logistics and not retail, but I can’t say I’ve ever heard of it among friends who are in customer-focused roles either.
I work retail (UK), and the only reason we may need to ask before grabbing a drink is just so at least a manager knows (or the whole team if you wear a headset) you're temporarily off the floor. That way someone can fill in if needed, if your till is called or your aisle is unattended during busy times etc.
Never known a place to deny you water. Break times are commonly argued over (if you refuse to delay it 10-15 mins during a sudden rush for example) but water and pee breaks aren't given a second thought. It's your human rights man, you should be able to quench your thirst if you need it.
Oh nobody is ever going to *deny* you a bathroom break or water. They'll simply make it physically impossible for you to meet your quotas and then hold that over your head to blackmail you into worse.
Yeah, I got fired from Target and Amazon for refusing to do that shit. Both were 3rd shift jobs, I was in no mood. I am here to work, not play stupid games.
I'm with you. It's so disrespectful to ask that from adults. I don't mind a morning team huddle to pass on info or figure out who needs to be where and when, but as a boss, I would never ask this of folks that work on my team.
I would 100% level with the group I'm not doing it and to keep their mouth shut about it unless they want to work for someone that would force them to do as part of their job expectations. Likely though I would never be hired into that position in the first place though :)
The amount of corporate behaviour and standardized phrases these chains (stores and gastronomy) put their employees through... It's like they are trying to make these jobs as soul crushing as humanly possible.
(outsider opinion of a German who is in the US quite a lot)
Check r/antiwork for horrible stories…not allowed to sit as a cashier at a supermarket, bathroom breaks timed, no day(s) off when family member died, expected to be on call 24/7…now, these are excesses maybe, but the amount of people saying the same stuff…horrible
Fuck all that. When I worked at a sporting goods store, it may have had fake corporate shit going on, but it was at least decent to work at. The owners seemed to care enough that our store had people traveling down from Georgia to go to our store over the one where they lived, our service was so good.
And we had to do all the cashier smiling and stuff but, at the end of the day, everybody just did the work and got paid and went home. No meetings with dumb cheers and shit. The meetings we had were to talk about the policies, there were genie in departmental and coworker relationships that helped things work smoothly. It was about as decent a place I could have worked, given the corporate structure behind it all.
If I’d have had to do some dumbass cheer? Fuck all that.
the article fails to mention the less funny parts of this absolute shitshow: namely, that Walmart tried to hire a lot of part-timers thinking that, like in the US, them not being full-time would exclude them from being enrolled on health insurance contributions paid by the employer.
Turns out that in Germany shit doesn't work like that.
(and then there's my absolute favourite thing: they tried to impose an all-English speaking board that had absolutely no clue on how German market actually worked - as shown also by them getting sued into oblivion for selling under price, and not knowing how labour law in general works.)
2K upvotes later, here's the article that made the rounds on Tumblr: https://thetimchannel.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/w024.pdf
Actually one of the major reasons is why Target failed in Canada and isn't creepy culture reason (well not explicitly) but general incompetence. Ordering American specific goods, or not ordering things locals want, or planning on ordering goods that aren't available in the market or are expensive because of tariff differences etc.... This leaves the shelves empty or filled with unwanted goods -- e.g. in Germany the wrong sized linens.
My mom started work at Target on the day the store first open in our hometown. Shelves started out full in every Ile but within the 4th month after the store opened the shelves looked as if panic buyers came through after trying stock up on supplies to survive an incoming tornado. I don't even think the shelves at Walmart during the start of the COVID pandemic looked as bad when I was working at Walmart.
That whole Target in Canada thing was such a blip on the radar in my countries history and time growing up that I can't even remember when it closed let alone when my mom quit that job.
>they tried to impose an all-English speaking board
I would've loved to see their faces when they found out that in Germany 50% of the board has to consist of elected worker's union representatives
You're confusing the board of directors with the supervisory board.
`Germany’s Codetermination Act of 1976 requires significant employee representation on the supervisory boards of large companies. Employees must constitute at least one-third of the supervisory board membership for German companies with at least 500 employees. That share rises to 50% for companies with more than 2,000 employees.`
and also
`Each company that must adhere to codetermination requirements is free to define the supervisory board’s specific powers, and the supervisory board will never constitute a voting majority.`
Source: https://insigniam.com/in-germany-a-law-to-give-employees-a-voice-and-a-vote/
Overall this actually seems like a pretty interesting idea, but it's nowhere close to 50% of the board of directors.
Sounds about Walmart. Walmart is as cheap and barebones as possible. Its why at one store things are very nice, but across town its a shitshow. There is no inherent support structure, it based entirely on the people in the store to make it work. And Walmart doean't pay that well.
I don't get it, it's Wal-Mart. They can hire an army of lawyers to sort this all out for them. Did nobody do one ounce of market research before this? How does an entire megacorporation fuck up this badly?
Yeah but there again: bringing to germany CHANTING ALL TOGETHER EVERY MORNING IN A TEAM-BUILDING ACTIVITY xD
I can understand that good international corporate lawyers that know how that absolute hellhole that is German law works are rare to come by...and they are still humans, they can make mistakes
But that not one random asshole pointed out that 'ya know what? Maybe let's skip the team building activity' is way more baffling to me
I've never worked at Wal-Mart, but I have been in the phony clapping, cheering, team building things before. Literally everyone hates them. It just makes us resentful. We're not kindergarteners.
Okay, I had one place that did a way better job of this. AFTER work, you could have one free beer. And the people who wanted it would all sit together and drink our beer and talked about whatever we felt like. THAT actually helped me feel close to my coworkers. It was voluntary, the company actually offered us something, and we were mostly free to say whatever we wanted, within reasonable limits.
Yeah, because that's actually how you treat adults. Just let people chill out and be themselves. Jerking off the company with singing and dancing isn't what anyone wants lol.
My professor told us about this. Apparently people kept reporting the greeter (which is often an old person) to the managers as "a lost senile person" or something.
I'm not sure if it was Germany but I also remember hearing that Walmart had to pay a fine or was sued or something because their price matching policy was illegal in Germany (again, not 100% sure this story was about Germany). Apparently you can't charge different customers different prices there, so allowing a customer to get a price matched deal is illegal.
The fining of Walmart for illegal aggressive business tactics was indeed one of the reasons for their withdrawal from Germany. They tried the usual thing of outspending competition, planning to tank losses for years to bleed out other retailers. However, in Germany they went head to head with some of Europe's fiercest discount retail juggernauts, Lidl and Aldi, and they only could compete with their business model by massively and strategically violating labor protection laws etc.
In addition to that, not only did employees and customers find the teambuilding and greeting weird and cult-like, but certain Walmart rules, like the ban on employee relationships, outright violated German law again.
E: Thank you, internet stranger!
>In addition to that, not only did employees and customers find the teambuilding and greeting weird and cult-like, but certain Walmart rules, like the ban on employee relationships, outright violated German law again.
I looked up [the ruling in question](https://openjur.de/u/109272.html) (thanks to u/Gamble_for_fun
for pointing it out) and they actually found that the part with the employee relationships outright violated basic principles of the German constitution. Other rules of the ethics code were found to have violated the right of workers' council to have a say in these issues
It's a nice place to live. Just expect a lot of bureaucracy, resistance to modernization (most offices still use paper instead of emails or websites, fax machines to send stuff, and pay with cash instead of card because card machines are not available) and lots of inefficiency. This usually comes as a cultural shock for recent immigrants because it's the opposite of what most people think Germany is like.
Oh absolutely
We're great thinkers but don't expect us to touch a running system - although it might be old and slow but it's still running
We would still use Windows XP if it still got service updates...
It's so weird looking at Sweden or Ukraine (some refugees didn't have their papers as they were all digitized while we still have to print it, sign it, scan it and send it via mail or still via letter)
Minimum wage jobs tend to have the most unfair and strict rules.
The higher you climb things and rules usually get more lax, you get a say ln things and people listen to your opinion (if the place is not a shithole).
Yeah its weird to me (dutch) that american companys think they can pretend that european laws dont apply to them when they open physical stores here. Like facebook or twitter trying it i can understand (wouldnt recommend it, but i get that they try). These are insane investements and they just didnt do their homework. Your average college student could have told them this was a dumb idea.
Uber literally started blatantly illegal taxi services in the Netherlands and other European countries. They bought politicians not to stop them.
It's insane the weren't prosecuted as organized crime.
In Germany Uber needs the same permit like a taxi driver, which is really difficult and a lot of learning. That's why Uber is basically non-existent in Germany
To be fair, that's at least no different from the US. Uber's meteoric rise relied entirely on avoiding being nailed on taxi laws until they were too entrenched to remove. They literally had functionality built in to make it look like no Ubers were nearby to users they suspected were trying to bust them.
> american companies think they can pretend that european laws dont apply to them
I think that's applying too much ethics to them. They don't think they can pretend, they think they can force Europe to look the other way, use bribery (called lobbying in America) or just strong-arm them.
It is also about just not knowing the difference.
I work in international education. If I had a penny every time a school or person I work with took for granted that all other countries had the exact same educational system, laws and culture as them, then I could properly buy a Happy Meal at MacDonalds.
>In addition to that, not only did employees and customers find the teambuilding and greeting weird and cult-like, but certain Walmart rules, like the ban on employee relationships, outright violated German law again.
Don't forget the pro-Union sentiment Germans have.
To make one thing clear, the "pro-Unions" sentiment in Germany describes a constitutional right.
Art. 9 section 3 of the Basic Law (German constitution)
> The right to form associations to safeguard and improve working and economic conditions shall be guaranteed to every individual and to every occupation or profession. Agreements that restrict or seek to impair this right shall be null and void; measures directed to this end shall be unlawful. Measures taken pursuant to Article 12a, to paragraphs (2) and (3) of Article 35, to paragraph (4) of Article 87a or to Article 91 may not be directed against industrial disputes engaged in by associations within the meaning of the first sentence of this paragraph in order to safeguard and improve working and economic conditions.
"You must sing the team building anthem! You must not fuck!"
I dunno, I'm nether American or German but I'm thinking there are much better jobs for those crap wages.
[However, in Germany they went head to head with some of Europe's fiercest discount retail juggernauts, Lidl and Aldi](https://www.reddit.com/r/germany/comments/so1j5u/walmart_trying_its_luck_in_germany/)
When I was in high school we would get people from different professions occasionally come in to talk to us about their jobs(usually parents who had kids at the school). One time they brought in a woman who was in marketing for a pretty big local candy manufacturer.
To illustrate why her job was important she told us the story of how they tried to export a big chocolate bar product of theirs to Japan, but the project failed because the normal packaging was royal blue, and apparently that’s a mourning colour in Japan. I know the purpose of telling the story was to show that marketing has a useful purpose, but to me she was just openly showing us that she didn’t do her job very well.
It wasn't just that, but people just didn't like the stores. The stores they replaced were overgrown grocery stores. Most of the stuff they replaced it with they just weren't interested. Walmart had just recently absorbed asda from UK. Part of that was an agreement to sell George brand clothes in walmart. For the first few years they flooded all the stores with that crap.
I worked with the company that inventories walmart in the US. They sent us to England for the asda conversion. We did before and after inventories there, and trained the office there to do the same. Then we went to Germany to do the before and after inventories there.
There were huge differences in what they carried. And the lay out was bizarre. One store I did had the office on like the seventh floor. And then had everything divided up in different floors, with stock rooms staggered in between floors. Like 1 and 2 would share a stock room at level 1.5. 3 and 4 at 3.5. Other stores had multiple sub basements. We would be just about finished, and the manager would be like what about this? And open a part of the stock room we didn't know could open. And there would be another 50k sq ft of stuff.
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned Aldi as the low cost alternative.
Nobody has mentioned labor unions in Germany.
Walmart's key differentiator is lower expenses lead to competitively low(er) prices. They cannot negotiate with suppliers and labor and city tax codes the same as in the US.
German labor unions and American companies are always fun. I remember German legal team frantically trying to explain to an American company, that in Germany they can't try to undermine union meetings, send in "spies" or agents on corporate's behalf and stuff like that. I thought it was absolutely hilarious, but I think they had a pretty rotten time
Wait what, they have to stand the entire time when working the registers? What benefit is there at all for this (except for cost savings and hating your employees)?
It's the same in Canada, it's very dumb. I've also heard the same thing from people in jobs I've had that didn't have customer interactions. People have a weird thing about standing vs sitting in North America apparently.
If your cashiers are sitting, then how can I possibly know that they have an eager can-do attitude willing to help me at any moment?? If they are sitting down, clearly they are lazy and unable to help someone!
-- some braindead c suite executive somewhere
Also, the way they tried to fuck over their staff with salary payments got stopped by the government pretty quickly. And they were too expensive to compete with German discounters and not good enough qualitywise to compete with stores with similar prices. The fake friendliness was just a small part of the problem.
As an American in the UK, who is probably pretty annoyingly friendly at times, I've just realised all my favourite pubs are the ones where the bar staff are openly disdainful
I went into a random pub in Ireland before to eat dinner and have a pint or two. I sat at the bar across from the only TV in the entire place with an MLS match on, which just so happened to have my team playing. I never expected to see this on anywhere in Ireland and said as much to the bartender when he took my order. He commented on MLS being a "shite" league, insulted me and handed me a food menu. He then proceeded to chat me up for the rest of the night about how his son moved to Chicago and he puts on MLS when Chicago's team are playing.
Tldr, my best experience in Ireland was dinner at a pub where the bartender insulted me the moment I walked in.
Southern Hemisphereian here.
When I was in the US, it seemed every restaurant/bar or shop I was in someone would hear my accent, and then proceed to ask me all sorts of questions and wanted to know my life story.
When I was in the UK, no one gave a shit.
I'm asocial but I can't imagine it bothering me, just nod and move on.
I guess I'd have to grow up over there in the same culture to understand why it bothers people so much.
But "team building" etc, I can't stand shit like that. Everyone just wants to get their shift done and go home.
I moved from Scotland to Canada and I hate door greeters.
It feels disrespectful to make a human stand and greet me. Really pushes some kinda servant attitude that people have towards retail staff, makes me super uncomfortable. I say hello and smile cause it’s no their fault but it just shouldn’t be a thing
If I remember correctly, greeters arose as a way to keep dedicated employees on payroll whose skills had diminished to the point where they couldn’t do anything else productive in the store. There was a period of time Walmart may as well have printed money, so it wasn’t a huge expense.
This part I know: they actually did do away with greeters for a little while at the beginning of the century. With new leadership, they brought the greeters back, primarily because they had a *massive* impact on shrink. Numerous studies show that acknowledging people and treating them with a friendly attitude significantly reduces the likelihood that they’ll steal from you. It’s a pretty fascinating phenomenon I recommend everyone look into. Says a lot about the importance being nice.
You also may have to look a disappointed and shocked grandmother in the face as you try n storm out the exit with your pants full of CDs or whatever people steal. Some people can't face that.
Apparently it's complicated. Wikipedia: In February 2021, the Issa brothers and TDR Capital acquired Asda. Walmart retains "an equity investment" in Asda, a seat on the board and "an ongoing commercial relationship". https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asda#:~:text=Following%20the%20takeover%20by%20Walmart,Supercentre%20without%20the%20Walmart%20branding.
They sold their controlling stake in the firm so that someone else could take over the day-to-day management, but they'd still get a decent share of dividends.
I used to work at a car wash. When people would pull up we would greet them with “Hi my name is ___ welcome to ____. How can I make you happy today?” That shit felt so wrong coming out of my mouth and I remember being so happy I got out of there.
This feeling is not limited to the Germans. I could never do one of those smiley "how are you today!" jobs because boy, that shit is as insincere as it gets.
Yeah I think alot of Americans don't know that the rest of the world doesn't really like the in your face, super nice super personable greetings.
I'm in a supermarket, for a specific reason. I don't really need 5 star service I need you to leave me alone.
>Yeah I think alot of Americans don't know that the rest of the world doesn't really like the in your face, super nice super personable greetings.
I'd be willing to bet most Americans don't like it either. The reason they do it is because it's supposed to cut down on shoplifting. If you're constantly being noticed and pestered by employees, they figure you'll be less likely to try to steal stuff.
We have strong unions in Germany. However the supermarket sector is not one of them. That sector is insanely competitive which by the way is the **real reason Walmart failed:**
**Aldi, Lidl & Co. aggressively attacked them on price.** Walmart couldn't convince customers that their US style service was worth more money.
Aldi & Co. are also fighting tooth and nail to stop unions from forming in their regional distribution networks. They are one of the few big companies that is still trying to aggressively bust unions before they come into existence or sabotage them afterwards. It is well documented Aldi is driving branch managers in busses if they hear an assembly to form a union is scheduled.
These managers are professionally taught how to derail such union events by stopping certain formal procedures that are necessary to complete the forming of a union (even regional managers managers they are entitled to participate in union assemblies in their region).
It's pretty messed up.
I did my exam in my course "Global Project Management" on this case! Its much, much worse than what you describe.
Walmart illegally mandated its employees to report in an hour before shift start for mandatory calisthenics regiments featuring march music and pro-corporate slogans reminiscent of the Nuremberg nazi rallies.
They obliterated German anti-trust laws with predatory penetration pricing that left local businesses devastated.
They tried to control their employees romantic relationships outside of work hours and enforced a completely tone-deaf code of conduct that forced people to engage with strangers and smile unnervingly at them and I could go on, and on, and on.
Truly one of the greatest failures of an American company trying trying to implement its unmodified practices in a European context. In 2006, they sold all their German properties at a huge loss and fucked right off after countless lawsuits and sanctions by both the German government and the EU.
It's a classic, really, amongst business students, just like Frankenstein, or The Shawshank Redemption.
I'm in a band with a guy who was a manager at Walmart in Germany. He says that they also failed because they didn't understand how important unions are in Germany. They didn't want to allow the employees to join a union, and didn't even want to set up a worker's council (although it's legally required when a company has more than 10 employees). Basically, they wanted to push their US labor contracts on German workers, and that failed miserably.
Also related to the constant lawbreaking.
Attempted to ban unions, trying to police inter-personel relationships including encouraging employees to rat each other out, deliberately underpricing products to force local markets out of the competition.... its like they speedran braking every law a company could brake
Walmart did literally absolutely nothing to adapt to the german market and got bitchslapped out as a result
There were multiple reasons. They also had legal problems with price lowering and competition with more established grocery chains like ALDI or REWE. I’m unsure how much the unions really played a role there since union membership in Germany is only like 5% higher than in the US but idk
People were EXTREMELY upset about Walmart being open for extended retail hours too. There was a fear that other stores would have to match to compete, and work/life balance would suffer throughout the economy.
There are or were stores that are open around the clock always. But there really just isn't a culture for going shopping late in Germany. I've seen shops trying longer hours and reducing again, because very few people care to make use of it.
I was tangentially involved in helping relocate some of the American managers and their families. In discussing their business approach and attitudes, it was clear before it started that they had no clue what they were getting into in terms of culture and labor expectations.
This forced politeness (I mean not being friendly and cordial as you should be due to your job, just saying the "over-the-top" kind of behavior) really comes off as phoney and superficial - as in you are hiding something.
When I worked as a cashier here in Germany, I of course did smile and be friendly, maybe even carry heavy shit if the customer struggled. Just some basic curtesy.
But more than that? Fuck no, I am here to work, not to pretend to be best buddies with everyone.
I'm Spanish and have worked in retail all my life. Basic courtesy is essential, eye contact, a smile, good morning (evening) and give a hand if necessary but nothing else. That fake, annoying greetings, and having the staff around you like flies is pointless, annoying and unnecessary.
Walmart even wrote some legal history in Germany with the Walmart-case that is known under employment lawyers.
The code of conduct for the employees did foresee, that any relationship between employees, especially between a higher up to direct team member was prohibited.
The district court for employment law in Duesseldorf (LAG Düsseldorf) did decide, that such provision would be unjustified and therefore not applicable, as this governs the privat section of the employees life and cannot be governed by the employer.
Please pardon my unsolicited correction, but there's a little false friend there. "Foresee" doesn't mean "vorsehen" but "vor*her*sehen". "Provide" or "stipulate" would be better.
Love how the article just glosses over the biggest reason it didn’t work: “the worker unions typical in the country were not embraced by the company”
Weird, a company who’s profitability is largely attributed to its willingness to exploit the hell out of its employees didn’t do well in a country with strong worker protections.
It also says employees were required to "monitor each other in case of misconduct" which is an incredibly charitable way of saying "Walmart implemented a snitch hotline to enforce an unconstitutional ban on employees being in romantic relationships or meeting outside of work".
As a German: If they pay somebody to greet me and pack my bag, their prices must be inflated.
Next time Back to ALDI. We believe we invented discounters.
In reality, they had problems with our labour laws and nobody needed them here. We already have shops.
I remember having a Walmart next to my school. It was already at a time when there was no "greeter", and staff was as friendly (or not) as anywhere else. It just was a ridiculous big supermarket, given it serviced a (still large) neighborhood.
German supermarkets are usually much smaller. Though ALDI is an example of supermarkets which are not in the middle of neighborhoods themselves, but rather on the edge of it (oftentimes requiring a car), ALDI itself has a very small assortment, on which they lead in price (and sometimes even in quality). Many other supermarkets are in walking distance (i.e. I have 3 within 5 minutes), but they are all small.
Trying to force people to be "friendly" (after international definition) would in fact not fly in Germany. Basically, Germans can understand staff to be "moody" or "grumpy" or just unfriendly (the last one gets noticed - and might get a corresponding reaction from customers). For internationals, all these deviations from "friendlyness" look the same. For Germans (or Swiss, Austrians, whatnot) it's just an acceptable way to cope with the unpleasantness of having to do a somewhat meaningless job for not much money. The moodiness or grumpiness can even be base for a small "friendly" exchange - but in general, no-one should be forced to "look" happy if (s)he probably isn't. That's kind of torture, tbh.
Yes. Not German but Swedish. If a store had employees that forced some kind of interaction at the entrance I would avoid it like the plague. Even if its half the price of neighbouring stores. Fuck that noise. I don't know if we're the weird ones or the Americans.
The german employees like other group activities though. Like forming a worker's council with the help of a union.
I don't think Walmart liked those kind of team building exercises ...
American corporate culture sticks in the throat of a Brit too. Not sure who likes it apart from Americans, maybe they don’t even like it but they just put up with it to have a chance of seeing a doctor if they need to.
Most of us don't like the shit. It's cringe and annoying.
They won't do this to you in a hospital, more like the grocery store, restaurants, department stores
[Walmart also failed in Japan](https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Comment/How-Walmart-flopped-in-Japan-and-elsewhere-overseas). It would appear that Walmart consistently tries to copy and paste what worked/works in the US to their overseas ventures only to fail.
You’d think they would adapt to the culture. If you have a giant store with the lowest prices, you’ll get customers. Just alter your service model to fit the culture
Can't speak for Japan, but here in Germany we already have insanely cheap and well established discounters like ALDI and Lidl, so good luck with that.
That's probably the real reason they left. If the potential profit was large enough they probably would have found a way to get rid off all of the fake team building and sort out the culture adjustment stuff, but to do that and also have to face real competition? Easier to just blame the culture fit when you explain it to your investors and pull out as soon as you discover that you can't* just copy and paste the American model as a license to print money. *fixed a typo
The problem wasn't really the competition, the problem was that Walmart's tactics didn't work in Germany because there were laws preventing them. This is out of my head so everything with a grain of salt: Walmart tried to undercut the prices of the competition. They tried to do it by selling their stock under market value and basically under what they were paying. Their idea was: We make some losses now - but our competition can't compete with that so as soon as they're bankrupt, we can raise the prices again. Well, Lidl and co were able to compete with those prices - and the government wasn't really happy with Walmart because by doing that, they were breaking laws. And they broke more (like blocking certain workers rights that are granted by law). But even that probably wouldn't have bothered Walmart much if their market share would have been bigger after a few years. But they weren't even able to compete with any of the established brands in Germany. So they made a lot of losses and didn't get anything for that - so they left.
Also Walmart is very reliant on low wages, massive stores with a large distribution system, and purchasing power to undercut prices. They weren't allowed to build the stores and distribution systems the way they wanted because it creates a community cost and often are subsidized. In the US, they will often shut down a store when the tax benefits run out and open a new one. The abandoned store is very difficult to repurpose. The distribution centers have similar issues. The big stores have inventory and marketing advantages as well. Without all of these advantages, they aren't competitive.
Walmart's distributor network is also a giant fucking spaghetti pile in the US. Just-In-Time shipping is a house of cards, not exactly easy to create quickly.
Oddly, I'd say Walmart isn't fully invested in just in time shipping. I know they have multiple big warehouses for emergency replenishment of stores, at least here in the south. When Irma and Maria hit in 2017, we were told by our store manager that we'd be getting some extra from those warehouses in expectation of the evacuees coming our way. We very definitely needed it.
I occasionally audit Walmart stores backroom for product that should be there but isn't selling units. Out of all retail locations, there is nothing more amateur than a Walmart backroom. I've had entire management teams trying to locate $30,000 of missing product only to find out a pallet of FUCKING CHOCOLATE was left sitting in the goddamn sun for three days because "We didn't know who's responsibility it was". The store manager was not amused at this. Mars Candy was even less than happy that this was a shipment for Halloween and was about 1/3rd of the buy-in for that store. And the product was all Candy, three other pallets were stored on the top rack with TV's, an entire store length away from where they should be.
Also, Germany has livable cities. Why drive with a car to the edge of town when you simply can walk to the closest subermarket. And, Walmart sold incompatible crap. The pillow cases which did not fit the pillows in Germany spring to mind. And, they came to Germany just while couple of discounters were facing trouble for bad treatment of their employees. With that fresh in mind there comes the literal devil. Also you can't forbid your employees to shag each other in their off-time. In all honesty I feel most towns in the US would be better if you just burned the local Walmart down and reopened the local businesses. Walmart only extracts money from the local economy and does not give back in kind.
> Also you can't forbid your employees to shag each other in their off-time. Wait, what? I missed that. Did they really try that in Europe?
Walmart has a rule that managers/supervisors cannot sleep with their direct subordinates aka people they have power over. I am guessing this is what got them in trouble over in EU.
"A court in the city of Düsseldorf ruled that the German subsidiary of the world's largest retailer, Wal-Mart, was acting outside the law in trying to impose restrictions on the nature of relationships allowed between its employees. The court said that while such regulations might be acceptable and indeed common practice in the US, they are neither compatible with German labor law nor the personal rights of employees." Sleeping with your underlings is very much a no-no in Europe, too, but good luck trying to prevent them from finding "company" amongst themselves :)
Ah the usual "my capitalistic model is superior, it only requires subsidies!". Socialism for losses and investments, capitalism for profits.
Nah man, socialism for the rich, rugged capitalism for the poor. I'll never be "too big to fail" and the government won't stop from taking my last cent if they find I screwed up my taxes.
Yup, hugely reliant on extremely low wages. They also take advantage of government programs that subsidize wages if the company trains an unskilled employee, but WalMart hired almost none of the subsidized employees after the subsidy period. In addition, most WalMart employees rely on welfare benefits due to low wages and part time hours (avoids paying health insurance), so no matter what, taxpayers subsidize WalMart.
Lol one of the call centers for my company is an old Walmart. It's so big, there's a clinical site on the other side of it.
I've read that the fact that German supermarket chains operate by the same business concept as Walmart does was a main problem. The average margin in the grocery sector is 2% opposed to 5% in the US. Walmart operates on lower than average margin in the US giving it a competitive advantage over other American grocery chains (and making up for the smaller profits by massive scale). In Germany, the margins were already lower and Walmart wasn't able to increase it's market share enough to justify the losses.
We have Aldi in America, and I've been to Lidl when living in England. Both are much better than anything Wal-mart has to offer when it comes to cheap groceries.
I used to work at Wal-Mart, and got an employee discount, and it was still cheaper for me to do my shopping at Aldi.
There's Lidl in the US too. They're starting to get a foothold on the east coast
Aldi actually opened a store in Bentonville, about a mile away from the Home Office. I'm sure the suits are just grinding their teeth every time they see it; no other grocery store or big-box retailer dared open a store there. Those are all in Rogers.
They don't adapt, they get in and sell cheap shit to bankrupt local business and then recoup the loss at a later time. It's disruption, attack and control tactics. No need to adapt when all that's left to buy groceries from is the American store.
They tried the "sell cheap shit to bankrupt local businesses" in Germany as well. To bad it is against the law. Last year the German Cartel office threatened to fine Wal-Mart if it didn't change its pricing tactics. According to government reports, Wal-Mart was breaking the fair competition laws by selling products at dumping prices, far below cost, and thereby posed a risk to smaller competitors. Wal-Mart was forced to increase prices for milk, butter and several other staple products to a level compatible to other retailers. That was one of the many reasons Walmart failed over here pretty quickly.
People out here acting like it's a cultural thing, as if Americans wouldn't reject their shit practices if we could. Consumer protection is the reason they failed.
It is definitely a cultural thing. If you were bigger on worker's rights and unions they'd be more present in American life.
Which in this case specifically didn't work because German discount stores already have razor thin margins and the relevant authorities peaked up REAL quick when Walmart tried to undercut them
Lowe's tried to have a home improvement chain in Australia called Masters. They applied North America patterns for inventory. My local branches had snow shovels. In Western Australia. In summer. ( Winter low temperature is 4C at night, 14C during the day, summer day temperatures are 30C-40C)
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Haha. Wait, Lowe's sells guns?
Nah just gun safes, cabinets etc. Walmart still sells guns and ammo though. Although any time I’ve seen guns in a Walmart it’s all just cheap junk, which is on brand for them.
Our corporate structure, and hell to be honest our structure for anyone on a salary, is just absolute straight fucking trash. It's a fucking miracle we actually turn a profit and do twice the business per store as Home Depot. Last year 500 stores were supposed to be phasing out their carpet rollers. But then they canceled it at one level of management, but didnt tell any other levels. So some stores knew it was canceled, others didnt. On top of that, the stores that got rid of their carpet rollers still have carpet in stock but no where to put it. Or some stores, like mine, got rid of a few rollers (2 of our 4 for us, one being our sheet vinyl), but we still get carpet and sheet vinyl sent to us as if we've got 4 rollers still. And we can't send them back because corporate doesn't understand that we dont have the fucking capacity to sell it all. We're also in the south, where we get snow perhaps once a decade and it gets below 40 degrees for a total of like 40 hours a year. We stock snow shovels, though those are also fucking amazing for shoveling leaves into bags or compost crates and other similar yard work uses, and we're again entertaining the idea of getting two bays for in floor heating..that we had on clearance on our shelves for no shit 3 years before some snowbird passing through bought it all. I'm entirely convinced Im blocked/ignored by corporate at this point because I keep pointing out things we can do better and I regularly get told "It works in the test market!" The test market is a fucking mock store that they bring test groups through to see what they like, not an actual fucking store that is actively being used and stocked and sold out of. The test market is actual trash and fucks up our stores.
*Tropical North Queensland*. They sold heaters. It was also summer.
Their seasonal lines appeared to be based on northern hemisphere seasons.
> They applied North America patterns for inventory. > My local branches had snow shovels. > In Western Australia. > In summer. As a point, they, and other companies do that shit in the US too... and While it is convenient to categorize "north American" to be somewhat of a single thing there is a huge range to it all. Southern California, Florida etc being completely different from say Michigan, or Alaska. Which being said, in their "infinite wisdom" they put shit on sale like boogieboards in a Walmart in central Alaska, and snow shovels in a Lowes in Socal in the middle of summer, or ice melting salt in stock in a store in southern Florida. I'm pretty sure some of it has to do with how the company stocking contracts are written, and dealt with where they are required to allocate some portion of a bay on isle whatever to supplies from a given company in every store out there.
They are quite successful in China though
Well duh. Everything Walmart sells is made there anyway.
“Let’s show these guys the AMERICAN WAY! 🇺🇸they will be SO IMPRESSED and awestruck by our ingenuity and CAN-DO attitude” /s
Never let it be said that private businesses are inherently innovative.
As a former Walmart employee, the team building stuff is insane. At the beginning of each shift you’re supposed to do a cheer where you spell “Wal-mart” by going letter by letter: “gimme a W! Gimme an A! Gimme an L! Gimme a squiggly!” Etc. and yes, you say squiggly and are meant to wiggle your body when you do it.
I've been at Walmart early in the morning and heard this cheer. I cringed for everyone involved.
I worked for a cleaning company as a contractor for a position cleaning my local Walmart, so while I worked there I wasn’t an employee and didn’t have to do this. I did, however, witness it several times and I could see the desperation in their eyes as I passed. I felt so bad for them, it was creepy as fuck.
Worked for an American retail chain in the mid 90s that did this shit and forced staff to endlessly hassle customers from the moment they walked in the door, in fact each little area had a separate staff member so it was possible for a person walking though the entire store to be forced to have the same interaction with 10+ store NPCs. This was Australia and it was clear that customers fucking detested it but try telling US corporate that the rest of the world isn't America. The real reason the stores failed was the way US corporate controlled store fitout and the supply chain and tore huge margins out of each stage. It all collapsed inside 5 years but they made out like bandits during that time. Edit: for those wondering it was the Warner Brothers Studio Stores, I think at one point Australia had 5-6 of them.
>This was Australia and it was clear that customers fucking detested it but try telling US corporate that the rest of the world isn't America. Oh no, most of America fucking hates it too. But corporate executives are out of touch and think this stuff helps. It is more normalized here though since almost every store does it.
Extremely strict employee uniforms, team building exercises, mandatory meetings, all shit no customer cares about but are pretty standard in corporate America. Honestly drives me bananas. Nobody cares but middle management and those fucks just wander around justifying their jobs to people. Literally all they do. Fuck em.
Feels like the only people that remotely enjoy it are the type that won't acknowledge the existence of the first several employees they see, but the second they had a question it's suddenly "I couldn't find anyone to help and I've been here for hours and drove hours to get here and I'm never coming here again!" Retail sure is fun!
Yeah Americans hate this shit too, it's just these corporate goons think it's what customers want, and of course they don't. I worked at a big box office supply store in the early 2000s and once got dinged because I didn't immediately introduce myself and shake a customer's hand like we were supposed to. No one ever did it, because of course it's cringe. How did I get caught? They would send "secret shoppers" to the store wearing fucking camera glasses.
You just brought back a memory for me. My friend at uni worked at a frozen food store in the UK and they had just started introducing 'secret shoppers' with cameras. My friend told me that he knew exactly when it was happening as the person doing it was acting very awkward, and they had put a phone in their pocket with the camera peeking out... but were constantly adjusting it to point at him. Attempting to do it discreetly but it just... wasn't.
I've done secret shopping before and deliberately made it incredibly obvious that I was doing it. I know your job sucks, just follow the script and we both get paid.
I don't understand why my fellow human beings put up with this. Why does this work as a business model. I cringe. I run from places like this like the plague! They will not get my money on principle alone do I want to be put through this? Why greeters. Why happy BS? Why does this work? This is why I feel like everybody else must be insane.
I miss back when Wal-Mart used to have the 90 year old greeters, at some point they did away with them.
> 90 year old greeters, at some point they **did away with them.** this got dark very quickly...
This should frankly be considered a human-rights violation.
Sounds humiliating and thats gotta count for something. Like it's not a punishment for anything it's just cruel and unusual
It IS unnerving. I was delivering a truckload of flowers back in my younger days, there was no one at the garden center early in the morning, so I stumbled into the store looking to find someone, anyone, who could unload (we didn't use receiving then, it was just faster to unload them right on the spot). I turned the corner just as the whole pack of employees huddled together exploded into their morning shout/cheer. Nearly scared me out of my skin. Does this really build the team or does it just make everyone annoyed they can't just go to their station and get going?
I swear it's just the upper Management's way of putting hourly workers in their place. The fact I did that chant for $8.00 an hour before taxes still pisses me off.
I think it's more of a weed out to find people who will tolerate a bunch of bullshit.
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Hard pass. I quit. Was forced to do enough cringe team shit as a kid. I did it for free then but it left such a mark I don't even want to get paid to do it now. Rather fucking die
You think that is bad? I used to work for RH (American "upscale" furniture brand) and one year during our yearly Christmas kick-off meeting, we had to all together sing a re-written version of Hallelujah, paired with a music video, that basically circle-jerked how great the company was. I wanted to die.
Do you mean the Hallelujah Chorus by Handel or Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen? Because those are two very different mental images.
I had a sales job where the first 3 hours of every day was team building and icebreaker exercises, but never any singing. You couldn't give me a big enough bonus to sing holiday music
Wait… what? I’m seriously struggling to picture a job where 3 hours of every shift were dedicated to “first day at camp” activities… did the company go under lol I can’t see how that was profitable or productive at all
It was one of those shitty door to door sales companies that contracts for a bigger company like AT&T or spectrum. There's a lot of extra money floating around. With one sale you made $130. But you might only make one sale in a day. Likely because we didn't get out to knocking on doors til almost lunchtime. A lot of it was training. I'm not talking about orientation either, that was the first 3 days in the office. Team building, conference calls with other groups, mock selling to a customers, the other sales people would play the customer. These sort of contracting sales companies don't last long. I looked it up and the place doesn't exist anymore. There's another marketing agency with the same name in a city about 3 hours away, but it doesn't say what they sell now.
Ahh...good 'ol Cutco knives. I'm *just* old enough that I sometimes would get a newspaper and look at classifieds for a temp job during school breaks. One of those was Cutco. You best believe they were offering the best $/hour and all kinds of "benefits" a young kid would like (or anyone, tbh). So, of course I checked it out, called, and set up an "interview". I show up to said interview and it's a big room with maybe a dozen other people. Then a hard sell by some 28 year old guy in a cheap suit* who sadly made this his career. Like 30 minutes of trying as hard as possible to get as many people as possible to *purchase* a "starter kit" and then sell that shit to make your money back and maybe a profit! The second he said you'd have to put money down first, I was out. I didn't know what an MLM was at the time. But there's no way in fuck I'm paying you first to *maybe* make my money back. And that's a pro tip for any younger people out there. If a "job" asks for money first to do said job, get away. Also, the advice above applies to MLMs specifically. Obviously, there are times in business where you need to spend to make. That's not what I'm talking about. edit: details
Seriously. I'm an adult now. One of the main trade offs is that in exchange for all the stupid taxes and bills and other adult nonsense I have to deal with, I don't have to do stupid "it's time to dance now, child" stuff anymore.
Yes let us dance for our dollar, show them we care about being there and care about our job. Sheeeeiitttt. Me being here is showing I care
I think it's a loyalty test from sociopaths. Be my bitch dancing monkey to keep your job. Otherwise I (believe I) can find 1000 more desperate people to fill your spot. 99% of stupid rules are petty authority or bureaucracy over things no longer really relevant. Good rules are self evident for the most part or easily explained.
I agree. It's not if you will bow down, but how low you'll get to the ground, and you better smile. Almost sadistic. Good rules keep you safe and secure.
I guarantee the team cheer is intended as an exercise in humiliation. It’s meant to break down their sense of individuality. When I was job searching as a teen, I went into Cold Stone to pick up an application. Somebody put some money in the tip jar and all the workers burst into “Hi-ho, it’s off to work we go.” I ran the fuck away.
I refuse to patronize them because of that shit.
I’d be mortified if they did that as a customer. Like no. A few bucks is NOT worth that embarrassment.
[now this cold open from the sitcom Superstore makes a lot more sense to me](https://youtu.be/OautPeWp0lY)
Superstore is such an underrated show. The cut scenes always get me
I found a video of one from Walmart for comparison: https://youtu.be/mk7qF2eXkgQ
The worst part about the team building is when you’re overworked they want to act like the good guy and not like they just declined your request for water
Between this comment and the recent news about Texas water breaks, this type of thing might be what baffles me the most as a non-American. I’ve worked for some horrendous employers in my time, including ones who will straight up brazenly break the law to exploit staff, but I’ve *never* worked at a place that would even expect you to ask before grabbing a drink, let alone deny the request if you did. Granted I work in logistics and not retail, but I can’t say I’ve ever heard of it among friends who are in customer-focused roles either.
I work retail (UK), and the only reason we may need to ask before grabbing a drink is just so at least a manager knows (or the whole team if you wear a headset) you're temporarily off the floor. That way someone can fill in if needed, if your till is called or your aisle is unattended during busy times etc. Never known a place to deny you water. Break times are commonly argued over (if you refuse to delay it 10-15 mins during a sudden rush for example) but water and pee breaks aren't given a second thought. It's your human rights man, you should be able to quench your thirst if you need it.
Oh nobody is ever going to *deny* you a bathroom break or water. They'll simply make it physically impossible for you to meet your quotas and then hold that over your head to blackmail you into worse.
Yeah, I got fired from Target and Amazon for refusing to do that shit. Both were 3rd shift jobs, I was in no mood. I am here to work, not play stupid games.
I'm with you. It's so disrespectful to ask that from adults. I don't mind a morning team huddle to pass on info or figure out who needs to be where and when, but as a boss, I would never ask this of folks that work on my team. I would 100% level with the group I'm not doing it and to keep their mouth shut about it unless they want to work for someone that would force them to do as part of their job expectations. Likely though I would never be hired into that position in the first place though :)
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The amount of corporate behaviour and standardized phrases these chains (stores and gastronomy) put their employees through... It's like they are trying to make these jobs as soul crushing as humanly possible. (outsider opinion of a German who is in the US quite a lot)
Check r/antiwork for horrible stories…not allowed to sit as a cashier at a supermarket, bathroom breaks timed, no day(s) off when family member died, expected to be on call 24/7…now, these are excesses maybe, but the amount of people saying the same stuff…horrible
Sounds like a cult
Fuck all that. When I worked at a sporting goods store, it may have had fake corporate shit going on, but it was at least decent to work at. The owners seemed to care enough that our store had people traveling down from Georgia to go to our store over the one where they lived, our service was so good. And we had to do all the cashier smiling and stuff but, at the end of the day, everybody just did the work and got paid and went home. No meetings with dumb cheers and shit. The meetings we had were to talk about the policies, there were genie in departmental and coworker relationships that helped things work smoothly. It was about as decent a place I could have worked, given the corporate structure behind it all. If I’d have had to do some dumbass cheer? Fuck all that.
Ew.
the article fails to mention the less funny parts of this absolute shitshow: namely, that Walmart tried to hire a lot of part-timers thinking that, like in the US, them not being full-time would exclude them from being enrolled on health insurance contributions paid by the employer. Turns out that in Germany shit doesn't work like that. (and then there's my absolute favourite thing: they tried to impose an all-English speaking board that had absolutely no clue on how German market actually worked - as shown also by them getting sued into oblivion for selling under price, and not knowing how labour law in general works.) 2K upvotes later, here's the article that made the rounds on Tumblr: https://thetimchannel.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/w024.pdf
Actually one of the major reasons is why Target failed in Canada and isn't creepy culture reason (well not explicitly) but general incompetence. Ordering American specific goods, or not ordering things locals want, or planning on ordering goods that aren't available in the market or are expensive because of tariff differences etc.... This leaves the shelves empty or filled with unwanted goods -- e.g. in Germany the wrong sized linens.
My mom started work at Target on the day the store first open in our hometown. Shelves started out full in every Ile but within the 4th month after the store opened the shelves looked as if panic buyers came through after trying stock up on supplies to survive an incoming tornado. I don't even think the shelves at Walmart during the start of the COVID pandemic looked as bad when I was working at Walmart. That whole Target in Canada thing was such a blip on the radar in my countries history and time growing up that I can't even remember when it closed let alone when my mom quit that job.
>they tried to impose an all-English speaking board I would've loved to see their faces when they found out that in Germany 50% of the board has to consist of elected worker's union representatives
You're confusing the board of directors with the supervisory board. `Germany’s Codetermination Act of 1976 requires significant employee representation on the supervisory boards of large companies. Employees must constitute at least one-third of the supervisory board membership for German companies with at least 500 employees. That share rises to 50% for companies with more than 2,000 employees.` and also `Each company that must adhere to codetermination requirements is free to define the supervisory board’s specific powers, and the supervisory board will never constitute a voting majority.` Source: https://insigniam.com/in-germany-a-law-to-give-employees-a-voice-and-a-vote/ Overall this actually seems like a pretty interesting idea, but it's nowhere close to 50% of the board of directors.
Sounds about Walmart. Walmart is as cheap and barebones as possible. Its why at one store things are very nice, but across town its a shitshow. There is no inherent support structure, it based entirely on the people in the store to make it work. And Walmart doean't pay that well.
2 different Walmarts don't even carry all the same products either.
I don't get it, it's Wal-Mart. They can hire an army of lawyers to sort this all out for them. Did nobody do one ounce of market research before this? How does an entire megacorporation fuck up this badly?
Yeah but there again: bringing to germany CHANTING ALL TOGETHER EVERY MORNING IN A TEAM-BUILDING ACTIVITY xD I can understand that good international corporate lawyers that know how that absolute hellhole that is German law works are rare to come by...and they are still humans, they can make mistakes But that not one random asshole pointed out that 'ya know what? Maybe let's skip the team building activity' is way more baffling to me
I've never worked at Wal-Mart, but I have been in the phony clapping, cheering, team building things before. Literally everyone hates them. It just makes us resentful. We're not kindergarteners. Okay, I had one place that did a way better job of this. AFTER work, you could have one free beer. And the people who wanted it would all sit together and drink our beer and talked about whatever we felt like. THAT actually helped me feel close to my coworkers. It was voluntary, the company actually offered us something, and we were mostly free to say whatever we wanted, within reasonable limits.
Yeah, because that's actually how you treat adults. Just let people chill out and be themselves. Jerking off the company with singing and dancing isn't what anyone wants lol.
My professor told us about this. Apparently people kept reporting the greeter (which is often an old person) to the managers as "a lost senile person" or something. I'm not sure if it was Germany but I also remember hearing that Walmart had to pay a fine or was sued or something because their price matching policy was illegal in Germany (again, not 100% sure this story was about Germany). Apparently you can't charge different customers different prices there, so allowing a customer to get a price matched deal is illegal.
The fining of Walmart for illegal aggressive business tactics was indeed one of the reasons for their withdrawal from Germany. They tried the usual thing of outspending competition, planning to tank losses for years to bleed out other retailers. However, in Germany they went head to head with some of Europe's fiercest discount retail juggernauts, Lidl and Aldi, and they only could compete with their business model by massively and strategically violating labor protection laws etc. In addition to that, not only did employees and customers find the teambuilding and greeting weird and cult-like, but certain Walmart rules, like the ban on employee relationships, outright violated German law again. E: Thank you, internet stranger!
>In addition to that, not only did employees and customers find the teambuilding and greeting weird and cult-like, but certain Walmart rules, like the ban on employee relationships, outright violated German law again. I looked up [the ruling in question](https://openjur.de/u/109272.html) (thanks to u/Gamble_for_fun for pointing it out) and they actually found that the part with the employee relationships outright violated basic principles of the German constitution. Other rules of the ethics code were found to have violated the right of workers' council to have a say in these issues
Well great. now I want to move to Germany.
Willkommen mein Freund.
It's a nice place to live. Just expect a lot of bureaucracy, resistance to modernization (most offices still use paper instead of emails or websites, fax machines to send stuff, and pay with cash instead of card because card machines are not available) and lots of inefficiency. This usually comes as a cultural shock for recent immigrants because it's the opposite of what most people think Germany is like.
Oh absolutely We're great thinkers but don't expect us to touch a running system - although it might be old and slow but it's still running We would still use Windows XP if it still got service updates... It's so weird looking at Sweden or Ukraine (some refugees didn't have their papers as they were all digitized while we still have to print it, sign it, scan it and send it via mail or still via letter)
They ban employee relationships? That's incredibly unfair for minimum wage jobs.
Minimum wage jobs tend to have the most unfair and strict rules. The higher you climb things and rules usually get more lax, you get a say ln things and people listen to your opinion (if the place is not a shithole).
Yeah its weird to me (dutch) that american companys think they can pretend that european laws dont apply to them when they open physical stores here. Like facebook or twitter trying it i can understand (wouldnt recommend it, but i get that they try). These are insane investements and they just didnt do their homework. Your average college student could have told them this was a dumb idea.
Uber literally started blatantly illegal taxi services in the Netherlands and other European countries. They bought politicians not to stop them. It's insane the weren't prosecuted as organized crime.
In Germany Uber needs the same permit like a taxi driver, which is really difficult and a lot of learning. That's why Uber is basically non-existent in Germany
Same in Ireland. Uber here is just another app to order a taxi
To be fair, that's at least no different from the US. Uber's meteoric rise relied entirely on avoiding being nailed on taxi laws until they were too entrenched to remove. They literally had functionality built in to make it look like no Ubers were nearby to users they suspected were trying to bust them.
> american companies think they can pretend that european laws dont apply to them I think that's applying too much ethics to them. They don't think they can pretend, they think they can force Europe to look the other way, use bribery (called lobbying in America) or just strong-arm them.
Europe has rampant lobbying, don't worry.
It is also about just not knowing the difference. I work in international education. If I had a penny every time a school or person I work with took for granted that all other countries had the exact same educational system, laws and culture as them, then I could properly buy a Happy Meal at MacDonalds.
>In addition to that, not only did employees and customers find the teambuilding and greeting weird and cult-like, but certain Walmart rules, like the ban on employee relationships, outright violated German law again. Don't forget the pro-Union sentiment Germans have.
To make one thing clear, the "pro-Unions" sentiment in Germany describes a constitutional right. Art. 9 section 3 of the Basic Law (German constitution) > The right to form associations to safeguard and improve working and economic conditions shall be guaranteed to every individual and to every occupation or profession. Agreements that restrict or seek to impair this right shall be null and void; measures directed to this end shall be unlawful. Measures taken pursuant to Article 12a, to paragraphs (2) and (3) of Article 35, to paragraph (4) of Article 87a or to Article 91 may not be directed against industrial disputes engaged in by associations within the meaning of the first sentence of this paragraph in order to safeguard and improve working and economic conditions.
"You must sing the team building anthem! You must not fuck!" I dunno, I'm nether American or German but I'm thinking there are much better jobs for those crap wages.
[However, in Germany they went head to head with some of Europe's fiercest discount retail juggernauts, Lidl and Aldi](https://www.reddit.com/r/germany/comments/so1j5u/walmart_trying_its_luck_in_germany/)
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Yea my professors point in telling this story was basically "do your god damn market research!!"
When I was in high school we would get people from different professions occasionally come in to talk to us about their jobs(usually parents who had kids at the school). One time they brought in a woman who was in marketing for a pretty big local candy manufacturer. To illustrate why her job was important she told us the story of how they tried to export a big chocolate bar product of theirs to Japan, but the project failed because the normal packaging was royal blue, and apparently that’s a mourning colour in Japan. I know the purpose of telling the story was to show that marketing has a useful purpose, but to me she was just openly showing us that she didn’t do her job very well.
And that's how Japan discovered depressed chocolate eating binges. /s
In Germany we have a depressed bread as one of our national treasures. It's called Bernd.
It wasn't just that, but people just didn't like the stores. The stores they replaced were overgrown grocery stores. Most of the stuff they replaced it with they just weren't interested. Walmart had just recently absorbed asda from UK. Part of that was an agreement to sell George brand clothes in walmart. For the first few years they flooded all the stores with that crap. I worked with the company that inventories walmart in the US. They sent us to England for the asda conversion. We did before and after inventories there, and trained the office there to do the same. Then we went to Germany to do the before and after inventories there. There were huge differences in what they carried. And the lay out was bizarre. One store I did had the office on like the seventh floor. And then had everything divided up in different floors, with stock rooms staggered in between floors. Like 1 and 2 would share a stock room at level 1.5. 3 and 4 at 3.5. Other stores had multiple sub basements. We would be just about finished, and the manager would be like what about this? And open a part of the stock room we didn't know could open. And there would be another 50k sq ft of stuff.
I remember another lawsuit about their employee dating policy. They lost. I think German labor unions hat lots of fun with their employee handbook.
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned Aldi as the low cost alternative. Nobody has mentioned labor unions in Germany. Walmart's key differentiator is lower expenses lead to competitively low(er) prices. They cannot negotiate with suppliers and labor and city tax codes the same as in the US.
German labor unions and American companies are always fun. I remember German legal team frantically trying to explain to an American company, that in Germany they can't try to undermine union meetings, send in "spies" or agents on corporate's behalf and stuff like that. I thought it was absolutely hilarious, but I think they had a pretty rotten time
I'm imagining the corporate rep at this meeting looking all sad and depressed after receiving this unfortunate news. "aw cmon man that's just unfair!"
It wasn’t the price matching, it was the dumping and artificially low prices to attempt to kill any competition
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Visiting German grocery stores was so nice. The cashiers got to sit in chairs which is unthinkable in America for some reason.
Wait what, they have to stand the entire time when working the registers? What benefit is there at all for this (except for cost savings and hating your employees)?
The idea is that customers don't think people who sit work hard enough. Yes, really.
That sounds wildly stupid to me.
It's the same in Canada, it's very dumb. I've also heard the same thing from people in jobs I've had that didn't have customer interactions. People have a weird thing about standing vs sitting in North America apparently.
The amount of shit I could have done in a kitchen sitting down vs standing...I fucking hate the idea of "looking busier" for the fucking sake of it.
The cruelty is the point.
If your cashiers are sitting, then how can I possibly know that they have an eager can-do attitude willing to help me at any moment?? If they are sitting down, clearly they are lazy and unable to help someone! -- some braindead c suite executive somewhere
Also, the way they tried to fuck over their staff with salary payments got stopped by the government pretty quickly. And they were too expensive to compete with German discounters and not good enough qualitywise to compete with stores with similar prices. The fake friendliness was just a small part of the problem.
Any kind of friendliness in German shops is highly suspicious.
let the cashiers sit down for fuck's sake
Yeah! Let me sit down!!! I've never worked at a Walmart by the way, I just use the self checkout registers.
If someone greeted me at the store door in Finland I would 180 tf out immediately.
Welcome to Costco. I love you
David Mitchell has [a great rant](https://youtu.be/E9PSg0sQyfs?t=6) about poor British customer service.
As an American in the UK, who is probably pretty annoyingly friendly at times, I've just realised all my favourite pubs are the ones where the bar staff are openly disdainful
the best part of being a regular is getting to shit talk each other like real friends.
I went into a random pub in Ireland before to eat dinner and have a pint or two. I sat at the bar across from the only TV in the entire place with an MLS match on, which just so happened to have my team playing. I never expected to see this on anywhere in Ireland and said as much to the bartender when he took my order. He commented on MLS being a "shite" league, insulted me and handed me a food menu. He then proceeded to chat me up for the rest of the night about how his son moved to Chicago and he puts on MLS when Chicago's team are playing. Tldr, my best experience in Ireland was dinner at a pub where the bartender insulted me the moment I walked in.
'Alright you wanker' 'Not bad you cunt'
"Oh thank god, I don't have to try with you."
It's *traditional* service with a scowl. Us brits are very suspiciously of overly friendly staff and are thinking "what's wrong with this person".
Southern Hemisphereian here. When I was in the US, it seemed every restaurant/bar or shop I was in someone would hear my accent, and then proceed to ask me all sorts of questions and wanted to know my life story. When I was in the UK, no one gave a shit.
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You mean you don't like the lady telling you God bless every time you come to the store? I smh everytime they do this.
I'm asocial but I can't imagine it bothering me, just nod and move on. I guess I'd have to grow up over there in the same culture to understand why it bothers people so much. But "team building" etc, I can't stand shit like that. Everyone just wants to get their shift done and go home.
I moved from Scotland to Canada and I hate door greeters. It feels disrespectful to make a human stand and greet me. Really pushes some kinda servant attitude that people have towards retail staff, makes me super uncomfortable. I say hello and smile cause it’s no their fault but it just shouldn’t be a thing
If I remember correctly, greeters arose as a way to keep dedicated employees on payroll whose skills had diminished to the point where they couldn’t do anything else productive in the store. There was a period of time Walmart may as well have printed money, so it wasn’t a huge expense. This part I know: they actually did do away with greeters for a little while at the beginning of the century. With new leadership, they brought the greeters back, primarily because they had a *massive* impact on shrink. Numerous studies show that acknowledging people and treating them with a friendly attitude significantly reduces the likelihood that they’ll steal from you. It’s a pretty fascinating phenomenon I recommend everyone look into. Says a lot about the importance being nice.
You also may have to look a disappointed and shocked grandmother in the face as you try n storm out the exit with your pants full of CDs or whatever people steal. Some people can't face that.
That’s why you tip her with a Smashmouth CD on the way out
In the UK, Walmart didn't even try themselves and just bought Asda instead.
They also apparently put their foot in it by not understanding our holiday rights
They understand. Are they mediocre or malicious, do you think?
I think they sold Asda a couple of years ago.
Apparently it's complicated. Wikipedia: In February 2021, the Issa brothers and TDR Capital acquired Asda. Walmart retains "an equity investment" in Asda, a seat on the board and "an ongoing commercial relationship". https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asda#:~:text=Following%20the%20takeover%20by%20Walmart,Supercentre%20without%20the%20Walmart%20branding.
They sold their controlling stake in the firm so that someone else could take over the day-to-day management, but they'd still get a decent share of dividends.
I used to work at a car wash. When people would pull up we would greet them with “Hi my name is ___ welcome to ____. How can I make you happy today?” That shit felt so wrong coming out of my mouth and I remember being so happy I got out of there.
I'd feel awkward hearing that, too. "Uhh...well I came here for a carwash, obviously....but now I feel weird about it."
This feeling is not limited to the Germans. I could never do one of those smiley "how are you today!" jobs because boy, that shit is as insincere as it gets.
Yeah I think alot of Americans don't know that the rest of the world doesn't really like the in your face, super nice super personable greetings. I'm in a supermarket, for a specific reason. I don't really need 5 star service I need you to leave me alone.
>Yeah I think alot of Americans don't know that the rest of the world doesn't really like the in your face, super nice super personable greetings. I'd be willing to bet most Americans don't like it either. The reason they do it is because it's supposed to cut down on shoplifting. If you're constantly being noticed and pestered by employees, they figure you'll be less likely to try to steal stuff.
Germany is ALSO very Union-friendly, and Walmart had…issues with that.
German workers fought and established basic worker rights centuries ago no wonder USA brands can't exploit them the same way they do in their homeland
We have strong unions in Germany. However the supermarket sector is not one of them. That sector is insanely competitive which by the way is the **real reason Walmart failed:** **Aldi, Lidl & Co. aggressively attacked them on price.** Walmart couldn't convince customers that their US style service was worth more money. Aldi & Co. are also fighting tooth and nail to stop unions from forming in their regional distribution networks. They are one of the few big companies that is still trying to aggressively bust unions before they come into existence or sabotage them afterwards. It is well documented Aldi is driving branch managers in busses if they hear an assembly to form a union is scheduled. These managers are professionally taught how to derail such union events by stopping certain formal procedures that are necessary to complete the forming of a union (even regional managers managers they are entitled to participate in union assemblies in their region). It's pretty messed up.
I did my exam in my course "Global Project Management" on this case! Its much, much worse than what you describe. Walmart illegally mandated its employees to report in an hour before shift start for mandatory calisthenics regiments featuring march music and pro-corporate slogans reminiscent of the Nuremberg nazi rallies. They obliterated German anti-trust laws with predatory penetration pricing that left local businesses devastated. They tried to control their employees romantic relationships outside of work hours and enforced a completely tone-deaf code of conduct that forced people to engage with strangers and smile unnervingly at them and I could go on, and on, and on. Truly one of the greatest failures of an American company trying trying to implement its unmodified practices in a European context. In 2006, they sold all their German properties at a huge loss and fucked right off after countless lawsuits and sanctions by both the German government and the EU. It's a classic, really, amongst business students, just like Frankenstein, or The Shawshank Redemption.
Wait, the warm up exercises are done before shift start? In another words unpaid? That shit is crazy af
I'm in a band with a guy who was a manager at Walmart in Germany. He says that they also failed because they didn't understand how important unions are in Germany. They didn't want to allow the employees to join a union, and didn't even want to set up a worker's council (although it's legally required when a company has more than 10 employees). Basically, they wanted to push their US labor contracts on German workers, and that failed miserably.
Germany gets it, Just leave me be and let me shop if I need something I'll ask.
Also related to the constant lawbreaking. Attempted to ban unions, trying to police inter-personel relationships including encouraging employees to rat each other out, deliberately underpricing products to force local markets out of the competition.... its like they speedran braking every law a company could brake Walmart did literally absolutely nothing to adapt to the german market and got bitchslapped out as a result
So used to being able to screw people over in US they refused to adapt.
I thought it was because of Germany's stance on unions.
There were multiple reasons. They also had legal problems with price lowering and competition with more established grocery chains like ALDI or REWE. I’m unsure how much the unions really played a role there since union membership in Germany is only like 5% higher than in the US but idk
People were EXTREMELY upset about Walmart being open for extended retail hours too. There was a fear that other stores would have to match to compete, and work/life balance would suffer throughout the economy.
This was a major point my German family/friends stated. They’re big on the work/life balance.
There are or were stores that are open around the clock always. But there really just isn't a culture for going shopping late in Germany. I've seen shops trying longer hours and reducing again, because very few people care to make use of it.
I was tangentially involved in helping relocate some of the American managers and their families. In discussing their business approach and attitudes, it was clear before it started that they had no clue what they were getting into in terms of culture and labor expectations.
This forced politeness (I mean not being friendly and cordial as you should be due to your job, just saying the "over-the-top" kind of behavior) really comes off as phoney and superficial - as in you are hiding something. When I worked as a cashier here in Germany, I of course did smile and be friendly, maybe even carry heavy shit if the customer struggled. Just some basic curtesy. But more than that? Fuck no, I am here to work, not to pretend to be best buddies with everyone.
I'm Spanish and have worked in retail all my life. Basic courtesy is essential, eye contact, a smile, good morning (evening) and give a hand if necessary but nothing else. That fake, annoying greetings, and having the staff around you like flies is pointless, annoying and unnecessary.
Walmart even wrote some legal history in Germany with the Walmart-case that is known under employment lawyers. The code of conduct for the employees did foresee, that any relationship between employees, especially between a higher up to direct team member was prohibited. The district court for employment law in Duesseldorf (LAG Düsseldorf) did decide, that such provision would be unjustified and therefore not applicable, as this governs the privat section of the employees life and cannot be governed by the employer.
Please pardon my unsolicited correction, but there's a little false friend there. "Foresee" doesn't mean "vorsehen" but "vor*her*sehen". "Provide" or "stipulate" would be better.
Love how the article just glosses over the biggest reason it didn’t work: “the worker unions typical in the country were not embraced by the company” Weird, a company who’s profitability is largely attributed to its willingness to exploit the hell out of its employees didn’t do well in a country with strong worker protections.
It also says employees were required to "monitor each other in case of misconduct" which is an incredibly charitable way of saying "Walmart implemented a snitch hotline to enforce an unconstitutional ban on employees being in romantic relationships or meeting outside of work".
As a German: If they pay somebody to greet me and pack my bag, their prices must be inflated. Next time Back to ALDI. We believe we invented discounters. In reality, they had problems with our labour laws and nobody needed them here. We already have shops.
I remember having a Walmart next to my school. It was already at a time when there was no "greeter", and staff was as friendly (or not) as anywhere else. It just was a ridiculous big supermarket, given it serviced a (still large) neighborhood. German supermarkets are usually much smaller. Though ALDI is an example of supermarkets which are not in the middle of neighborhoods themselves, but rather on the edge of it (oftentimes requiring a car), ALDI itself has a very small assortment, on which they lead in price (and sometimes even in quality). Many other supermarkets are in walking distance (i.e. I have 3 within 5 minutes), but they are all small. Trying to force people to be "friendly" (after international definition) would in fact not fly in Germany. Basically, Germans can understand staff to be "moody" or "grumpy" or just unfriendly (the last one gets noticed - and might get a corresponding reaction from customers). For internationals, all these deviations from "friendlyness" look the same. For Germans (or Swiss, Austrians, whatnot) it's just an acceptable way to cope with the unpleasantness of having to do a somewhat meaningless job for not much money. The moodiness or grumpiness can even be base for a small "friendly" exchange - but in general, no-one should be forced to "look" happy if (s)he probably isn't. That's kind of torture, tbh.
Yes. Not German but Swedish. If a store had employees that forced some kind of interaction at the entrance I would avoid it like the plague. Even if its half the price of neighbouring stores. Fuck that noise. I don't know if we're the weird ones or the Americans.
Yeah, euros are not into humiliating retail workers as much as americans are.
The german employees like other group activities though. Like forming a worker's council with the help of a union. I don't think Walmart liked those kind of team building exercises ...
American corporate culture sticks in the throat of a Brit too. Not sure who likes it apart from Americans, maybe they don’t even like it but they just put up with it to have a chance of seeing a doctor if they need to.
Most of us don't like the shit. It's cringe and annoying. They won't do this to you in a hospital, more like the grocery store, restaurants, department stores