Joining The Boy's Club

You probably have not heard the name Betty Dukes, but if justice is done, you soon will. She is the lead plaintiff in the largest class action suit in American history, asserting on the behalf of all women who have ever worked at WAL-MART that the company discriminates according to gender. The lawsuit’s claim is backed up by a mountain of statistics that show men are promoted disproportionately more than women and also paid more for doing the exact same job. In my store gender discrimination is most prominent in the repeated references to “the boy’s club” of managers and casual comments about one of the sexes being more suited for a certain job. At first glance these notes seem trivial, but taken as a whole they illustrate the culture that exists in the store and point to the larger problem of institutionalized discrimination. And the reason that I know gender discrimination is a systemic problem at WAL-MART is because I was the beneficiary of this very practice.

Originally I was hired as a cashier due to the high-turnover and their desperate need for people on the front-end. It quickly became clear, however, that this wasn’t where I, a competent, young male, was supposed to be for long. An associate in Electronics said exactly this, “Man, what are you doing here?” in one of his many attempts to have me ask to move back to his department. Indeed, when I was hired only four of the forty-some cashiers were male. Early on one of the store’s fast-rising stars, the only man at the Customer Service Desk, took me under his wing and saw to it that I would be trained on the desk. In so doing I skipped ahead of at least three women my age that had been at the company longer than I, two of which had already been trained on the desk (the third was denied the opportunity), and all of whom had repeatedly requested a permanent position there. It wasn’t right. I had received my first promotion and was being groomed for bigger and better things to come, all a mere six weeks into my career as a very average cashier.

Even more damning was the phone call I received two days after moving to the Service Desk. A manager from the photo lab offered me a recently vacated position after hearing from personnel that I might be interested (I never mentioned any such thing.) Not wanting to leave the action at the desk for this small back-water department I declined the offer, citing satisfaction with my new position. Needless to say this was an unusual decision given the possibility of full-time hours and the fact that I “wouldn’t be a temp anymore.” The question here is why was I offered the job? First off, it is company policy that all jobs are supposed to be posted publicly, but this one never was. And again there were females who were equally qualified and had shown more interest than I in the position but were not considered. One female my age, who had been at the store longer that I, had applied for every position that opened unsuccessfully. Another young woman was a far better cashier than I but continued to languish on the hated self-checkouts. Why then did I get that call and not they? (I believe that this position was eventually filled by someone from outside the company.)

My friends and family liked to say that WAL-MART must have realized what they had on their hands, which while flattering, is simply not the case. Truthfully, I am not that good at my job: I forget things constantly, make tons of stupid mistakes, and am easily distracted from the task at hand (I never miss a chance to get dirt from one of my fellow workers...) To be fair though, I think that gender is only one of three main factors for my quick ascension up the ladder: I am quick, compliant, and male. Simply put, I have the necessary attributes and fit their image for someone who succeeds in the company. Customer Service Manager’s who thought me incompetent only a month earlier, have made this much clear, winking that soon I will be one of them. My favorite CSM would soon encourage me to apply for an opening for the position, insisting that the requirement of having 6 months experience wasn’t a problem; just lie when asked the question and they will look the other way, she promised. Needless to say there will be more on this topic as I continue to climb up the company ladder.

Struggling on Register

Cashiering is not an easy job. On the surface this does appear to be the case, since you just ring up them items and put them in bags, right? Needless to say there is more that goes into it and this is hardly the unskilled position that many consider it to be. Compounding the difficulty of cashiering is WAL-MART’s half-assed approach to training anyone. According to the plan, new associates would be assigned a mentor to train us, where at first we would observe them cashiering and then switch rolls, going solo only when we were completely comfortable. My mentor – a very friendly older man who would become one of my best friends in the store – did a great job of trying to show me the ropes and encourage me. However, the problem was that he rarely got the chance. Due to a shortage of staffing the Customer Service Manager’s, or CSM's, took my mentor and I off register and had us on the door as People Greeter’s for most of my first week (but more on this absurd job later.) When we were on register observing each other it was hardly a leisurely timetable, and I found myself separated from my mentor on my first day on register, scrambling to find help.

I had joked with my friends beforehand that I was dangerously unequipped for this job, which we all secretly knew was not really a joke at all. To be a good cashier you must be quick, adept at multi-tasking, have a good memory, be submissive, calm under pressure, as well as outgoing and cheery while maintaining a thick skin… all things that I am not. In addition to scanning and bagging items there are codes to memorize, gift cards to sell, alarms to deactivate, price checks to search for, loans and change to order, coupons to scan, check to cash, not to mention the utility payments, WIC orders, food stamps, employee discounts, and multiple means of payment. And this is just a list of your typical tasks, let alone the unusual ones that few knew how to deal with that would continue to crop up months later. It was a struggle as I rang up items too many times, didn’t see others, forgot to scan coupons, crushed merchandise, and didn’t give the proper change. And this was just during the two days that my mentor was watching me.

As complicated as these jobs could get, by far the most difficult part of cashiering is dealing with the customers. Now I have always enjoyed interacting with people, and genuinely believe that people are naturally well intentioned. But if there was ever a place to make me question humanity it is the checkout lines at WAL-MART. The first part of my job as a cashier is to smile and greet the customer, preferably by name, and ask them if they found everything that they were looking for. The problem is that many customers do not feel it necessary to respond to us or acknowledge our existence in any way. While this is thoroughly discouraging and disrespectful, I would rather be ignored by a customer than have them be nasty and take out all of their problems on me. I try to be understanding by reasoning that many of the customers are poor and lead stressful lives, or that WAL-MART creates such an unpleasant shopping experience that it is natural for them to lash out at me as a symbol of the corporation. However, when a customer is actually yelling at you for something totally out of your control, this knowledge isn’t especially reassuring. Most frustrating of all is the fact that you can’t talk back, you have to stand there and take it, or else you will be fired.

And all of this has to be done at a breakneck pace, for speed is the name of the game when cashiering at WAL-MART. IPH, or Items Per Hour is the company’s way of calculating this skill and thus is golden standard for all associates. The computers in our registers keep track of everything: including every transaction down to the last penny, total number of items voided, and how many items we ring up per hour. This single minded obsession among management is obvious: raises are tied to factors such as IPH; the results are posted outside the break room with the top five IPH’s highlighted; the associate of the month seems to coincide with the highest IPH for that period; there is even a separate award at the annual award ceremony given to the fastest cashier. Not surprisingly this fixation on keeping up your IPH is passed on to the cashiers; nearly every tip given to me by other associates focused on how I could do this (the most popular trick was to enter that the customer was going to pay by check whenever you have down time in order to pause the clock.) This constant need to go faster, faster, faster is obviously quite stressful, and in the end doesn’t serve the best interest of anyone… except for WAL-MART.