When I worked for McDonald's I had to work two years in a Wal-Mart location. My husband hates Wal-Mart for the reasons mentioned above. I liked working there because if I had a shift start at 8, I could shop the hour prior without the lovely customers and lack of stock. That was the only reason I like that McD location.
However, our cooler and freezer were located on the other side of the Wal-Mart and I would always get stopped by WM customers thinking I worked for WM....hello I'm in a McDonald's manager's outfit. Even when I was a Team Leader where I had to wear a black McD hat! I would help them b/c they would get mad at me b/c no WM people would help or thought I was a WM empl. Sometimes I’d say "sorry I don't know where that is" if I was too busy to breath. Sometimes I would tell them I would find someone and I would...however I'd come back later and find them there with no one helping them and they would let me have it. Even get physical.
Many times I used the intercom. It is fun experimenting! I am not allowed to, but after trying it a few times one WM employee showed me once b/c they said, "well if we are not around you should help." Ummm hello I don't work for your company. But I'd help b/c honestly sometimes I didn't want to go back to the restaurant only to get yelled at by a WM customer or employee and I felt bad for them especially if they had a screaming kid.
I know not every customer is bad and so on, but every McDonald's worker I know who has experience with a regular restaurant, a McD location in a casino and one in a WM - the WM and Casino are very scary.
I guess because of the long line ups. :p
The WM managers were evil to us. They wouldn't let us have decent space in the storage area and didn't care about our safety unless we were wandering on the top shelves - obviously. Well they made us put our product up there and we had no other way to get it down. Using a stick to poke at a box won't exactly coax it down. We were the busiest WM location in western Canada and they wouldn't give us more space.
They checked our bags, even though I was a manager. I once made them empty their pockets because I found them behind the counter of my restaurant. They had no right to be behind our tills and amongst our product. I will treat them the same he treated me. It was very embarrassing having to empty out my school bag in front of customers. I understand why. . . But once they found out I was not 16 but 25 they stopped. Perhaps they had a bad experience with other employees. I know how much ‘internal theft’ occurs.
The head WM dude was nice. He offered me a job there when I wanted to quit McD because of school. Thanks, but no thanks!
Side rant -
I was sad when Wal-Mart came in because it killed many of the Canadian chains. Just like Home Depot did. With the infiltration of those stores and the amount of US TV on the boob tube and other pop culture, I find the Cdn kids now don't have the same Cdn identity/experience I saw when I was growing up. To me I could go venting on about that forever. What makes me Canadian
?
I studied that in my pscy/history/pop culture/journalism classes and well Wal-Mart just is the right amount for me to make me sad.
Ah, I won’t go into that now. I have to clean the kitchen. Now that is universal unfortunately. . . I will do it with the cleaner I bought at WM and the dish soap I bought at Safeway while watching the evening news from Minneapolis.
