Wal-Mart
I've shopped at Wal-Mart for many years. I probably spend $10,000 a year there. For the most part I've been pleased, but I do have a few gripes.
The first is that the number of cashiers they have on duty at any given time decreases as the store gets older. In two instances I've seen them open a new Supercenter. There were many cashiers working. There were so many, in fact, that you wouldn't even have to wait in a line... all you'd have to do is just walk up to one. But over time, the number of cashiers decreases to where there are generally always one or two people in line. I suppose they do this to get people "hooked" at shopping there by making it as convenient as possible initially. Then they reduce the number of cashiers to reduce costs later.
The second gripe I have with Wal-Mart is how the 24 hour stores "shut down" at midnight to tally the day's business. During this time all registers come to a complete halt. The lines get incredibly long, especially when you consider it's midnight. I complained to one of the head cashiers once that I thought it was stupid (even though I told her it wasn't her fault... I understood that she was just doing what she was told). She said it's "just the way we have to do it... we never close so we have to do this to know how much we sold." I said, "no, it's just a poorly designed system." Each register should be able to record the totals up to the last sale before midnight and report that number back to the main system. There is no need for all the registers to be halted and make everyone wait. I am constantly amazed that people look at business procedures (especially those involving a computer) and assume that "that's just the way it is and it can't be changed." Those cash register systems didn't fall out of the sky... they were built and programmed by people. The programming can be changed!
My final gripe with Wal-Mart is an incident I had with their photo department. There is a sign above the film drop which has a schedule of when to expect the film. If they don't meet the schedule, the development is free. I dropped my film in around 1:00 p.m. one Sunday afternoon, which was before the 4:30 p.m. cutoff. So I should have gotten it back Tuesday. I came back Tuesday and my film wasn't back. "Cool," I thought. "I'll get it free." I came back on Wednesday and got the photos. However they wanted to charge me for them. I spoke with the manager of the photo department and said they should be free. He looked at the original film envelope and said it was stamped at (I think) 5 something. I told him I'm sorry they didn't unload the film bin before then to stamp the envelopes, but I dropped it in at 1:00. If I had been in his shoes, I would have just dropped it and given the film development away free. But he didn't do that and insisted I pay. I should have asked to see the store manager, but I was in a hurry and just vowed never to have my film developed at Wal-Mart again. Since then, they have probably lost over $100 in film developing by losing my business. Also, I once posted a sign over their film drop explaining their lie. (That was fun and I intend to do it again... I think I'll print some signs up! :-) )
UPDATE - 07/30/2001
Ok, the Madison Wal-Mart officially sucks in my book. They only run about two or three checkout lines after 11:00 p.m. now. None of these are express lines. The manager I spoke with said it was because they don't have enough customers at that time to justify having more cashiers. Well, they will now have a few less... I won't go in to pick up a few things late now. I'll just go to Kroger. Or perhaps to the new Target if they are any better after the newness of the store wears off.