Many years ago, I worked at a Walmart.
One of the only events that staff would look forward to was an employee profit-sharing program.
It was essentially an annual bonus, and it was typically worth about half a week’s pay. Most places that would be an insulting low bonus, but when you work minimum wage and don’t get benefits, anything extra is appreciated.
While I was working there, the store went through some major renovations to become a Super Centre. If you’re not familiar, that means they added a bunch of refrigerators and such so they could sell fresh groceries instead of just pantry items.
It was a huge pain to deal with during the renovations, they were super disruptive to operations, but the store never closed. We just had to work around the contractors, and the customers were more ornery than usual.
That same year they opened another store across town. Ours is a fairly small town, at the time I wouldn’t have thought that our town would support two Walmarts. But since our store was going through major renovations, the other location cannibalized a lot of our traffic.
We didn’t get our bonus that year because we weren’t profitable enough. We didn’t decide to do renovations. We didn’t decide to open a new store. We all had to work harder to accommodate the grander corporate strategy of strangling the life out of our town’s economy.
This was at least ten years ago. Income inequality has only gotten worse since then. Why the fuck would I do more than the minimal effort if they’re going to squeeze me for the minimal wage?
Many years ago, I worked at a Walmart.
One of the only events that staff would look forward to was an employee profit-sharing program.
It was essentially an annual bonus, and it was typically worth about half a week’s pay. Most places that would be an insulting low bonus, but when you work minimum wage and don’t get benefits, anything extra is appreciated.
While I was working there, the store went through some major renovations to become a Super Centre. If you’re not familiar, that means they added a bunch of refrigerators and such so they could sell fresh groceries instead of just pantry items.
It was a huge pain to deal with during the renovations, they were super disruptive to operations, but the store never closed. We just had to work around the contractors, and the customers were more ornery than usual.
That same year they opened another store across town. Ours is a fairly small town, at the time I wouldn’t have thought that our town would support two Walmarts. But since our store was going through major renovations, the other location cannibalized a lot of our traffic.
We didn’t get our bonus that year because we weren’t profitable enough. We didn’t decide to do renovations. We didn’t decide to open a new store. We all had to work harder to accommodate the grander corporate strategy of strangling the life out of our town’s economy.
This was at least ten years ago. Income inequality has only gotten worse since then. Why the fuck would I do more than the minimal effort if they’re going to squeeze me for the minimal wage?