The Temp Trick

Quite possibly the most interesting revelation that I discovered in my time at WAL-MART was a devious scheme to control their new workers and deny them benefits. It is a slight of hand used by the store with its new hires and I am the perfect example of how this works.

As I mentioned before, I was hired as a temporary peak-time cashier, which means that the company can work me for as many or few hours as they want without providing benefits for three months. Ordinarily peak-time workers (which is the same as part-time) must wait for two years before becoming eligible for benefits; with this little trick that date is pushed back yet another three months. Just as significant is the fact that temporary workers aren’t peak-time or full-time, but rather any-time. If for example, I was hired as a permanent peak-time associate, I would be limited to working 32 hours per week. Due to my temp status, the store was not held to this threshold when scheduling me to work, a perk that they exercised during all 7 weeks of the peak holiday shopping season.

Not only this, but as a temporary worker I am only under contract for three months. WAL-MART sets a termination date for 90 days after being hired and is under no obligation to keep me on board. In essence the three months were a limbo period where I was forced to walk on eggshells in one marathon job interview. Inexplicably, in a lapse of judgment I had been lulled into believing my friends in the store when they reassured me that I would be kept on since I was such a hard worker. I was jarred back to reality a couple of weeks before Christmas when I overheard one of the CSM’s saying in a hushed tone that “We had a great group [of temporary hires] last year and they let them all go. And they were hiring again a month later.” With this I was forced into an exhausting guessing game of reading into the mixed messages of my co-workers. Once again, it isn’t hard to imagine the stress that this uncertainty would cause a low-wage worker who is trying to provide for his or her family. And it wasn’t until the day after Christmas that the Front-end Manager said as an afterthought on my way out the door that, congratulations, I would be staying on.

For these reasons, WAL-MART loves its temporary workers. So much so that it will use any excuse in order to get more of them. Mine was the rapidly approaching holiday shopping season that they desperately needed more cashiers for. But I would later find out that even the most flimsiest of occasions would serve as sufficient justification for not hiring permanent workers. For the previous half-year it had been the summer renovations that took place at the Supercenter, although the actual logic used by the store is unclear. Nearly all of the renovations were done by outside contractors with only the smallest of projects done by actual WAL-MART associates. This gap in logic was seemingly lost on the employees in the store who had been hired as temp workers, nearly all of whom dismissed the incident one big misunderstanding.

These aren’t theoreticals that I am speaking in; all of this did happen. I won’t be eligible for benefits until a staggering 820 days after my hire date. I worked as many as 46 hours in a week, even though I was hired as a peak-time worker. And most importantly, there was a Post-Christmas massacre at our WAL-MART Supercenter. I made the cut, but at least five of my fellow hires did not. There was the socially-awkward young man who I had painstakingly built a rapport with. Or the tough-looking but disarmingly polite teen. Or the tall, soft-spoken red-haired boy and the sadly forgettable girl. And most tragically, the friendly, emotional pregnant woman, who gave birth to a healthy young boy on Christmas Day. All five were young like myself, and perfectly capable cashiers in every sense as far as I could tell. And after slaving for months for WAL-MART Stores, Inc. all five were casualties of the temp trick on the day after Christmas. Two short weeks later the store would be hiring once again and the cycle started anew.