Do you have that vaguely promiscuous ex in your background? You have a great time together, lots of laughs, and so forth, but she’s just not so, uh, rigorous, shall we say, about the roles of other men in her life? The lines are blurry? We trackin’ here?
Maybe you finally get tired of it and break it off. Then you’re bored one weekend and call her, y’all start back up, and guess what? She cheats on you again.
“Hey, you stung me!” “Yup. I’m a scorpion.”
I was reminded of a bullet from this Thursday miscellanea, as well as the fable linked above, when I read that Walmart is returning greeters to the front door. (I didn’t realize they’d ever moved them away.)
Because I went back to Walmart a few months ago after many years of seething hatred for the place.
And I had a few visits without incident, and even began to enjoy myself a bit. Hey, these groceries are better than they were last time I was around. This store is cleaner than my memory.
Then, that early Thursday morning, there were no baskets at the front door and I had to wait five real minutes for a cashier.
I got cheated on.
Again.
Because Walmart is a scorpion.
I even wrote a post once about how funny it was that Walmart couldn’t figure out why it was losing business. Then, as now, the description of success is simple. I want to come into a clean store, that is open when I want to use it. I want to locate my item(s) easily. I want to pay for them quickly. And then I want to leave.
You know, I started to say I’d also like for the store’s employees to be consistently intelligent and engaging. But that’s not really separable from what I described in the previous paragraph. A store delivering the above is staffed with intelligent and engaging employees.
My friend Paul said hey, it’s not Nordstrom. I said no it’s not, but Publix and Target aren’t Nordstrom either, and they manage to deliver a pleasant shopping experience every single time. I mean, I literally cannot remember the last time I had any trouble either place.
It’s not hard to describe what I want, Walmart. It is, however, apparently too hard for you to deliver it.
And I’m sure I’ll remember that for another good while.
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I hadn’t every really shopped at Publix much through the late 2000’s. Once I moved to the Huntsville area, I was finally in the market for one, but I wasn’t having a terrible time at Walmart, yet, so I wasn’t out looking for a change.
But then, I went on a vacation to Hilton Head. We went to the local Publix to get some supplies for the condo for the week. Among my groceries, I had a jar of publix brand peanuts at the check out line. The girl ringing me up saw the jar I had picked, pointed out that the name brand was actually a buck or two cheaper, and asked if I wanted that instead. I said no, it wasn’t worth running back there to get it.
She immediately took of like a cheetah, sprinting for the peanut isle. In less than a minute, she was back with said name brand jar. I thanked her, she voided the publix brand scanned the name brand, which was indeed cheaper.
That put Publix on my radar. I’ve pretty consistently had that level of service when I go to Publix. I still don’t go there a lot (mostly due to convenience of locations), I’m now more of a Kroger patron. But the Kroger on 72 and Slaughter is starting to get on my nerves with their customer service, so they’re somewhat on notice.
Walmart offers uniformly low prices in return for petty inconveniences, which is important for those with tighter budgets. Conversely, Target and Publix finance their better shopping “experience” via higher prices. As with most things in life, you get what you’re willing to pay for.
That is definitely the trade-off that exists when shopping, though I question whether it’s necessarily inherent in the business model. Where does Target spend money that Walmart doesn’t that generates the disparity? I’m just talking about sloppiness in the customer experience that need not cost anything to fix.