As a customer visiting any store (not just Walmart), it is rather frustrating to need assistance from an employee but unable to find one until you find a gaggle of them all "hanging out". I have no idea what they are doing. They could be talking about unions, they could be talking about the weather, or they could all have just completed assiting the movement of a heavy item require 4 "teammates". Either way, it is not a good look for the customer.

Having worked retail stores, you really underestimate how little time you have as any individual to get your shit done and also help customers. That gaggle may be them deciding how to make the store look right with only 4 people when normally it’d take 8.

If you want good customer service go somewhere they dont cut corners on staffing while paying the heroes that have to do 3 people’s jobs minimum wage.

>That gaggle may be them deciding

Then take that gaggle to the back in a meeting room so that it's not visible to the customers.

>If you want good customer service go somewhere they dont cut corners

Where does this exist? I'm free this weekend. I'll see about taking a visit to this magical fairy land you speak. /s Seriously though, what public facing retail store doesn't cut corners on staffing or any other aspect? I need to expand my list of stores not on the "disgusted with" list

> Seriously though, what public facing retail store doesn't cut corners on staffing or any other aspect?

Food co-ops and independent/small chain grocers. We are fortunate to have a good density of these in the Seattle area and PNW in general.

http://northwestgrocers.com/?page_id=12

> Then take that gaggle to the back in a meeting room so that it's not visible to the customers.

Maybe they don’t care about offending you? Just a thought.

I don’t know why any of those three possibilities qualifies as a “bad look”. They’re working humans with needs, just like anyone else. It’d be like saying it’s a bad look whenever a few programmers are at a computer. What could they be doing?

Why would you even try to compare coders to customer service oriented jobs? No computer coding company has ever had a slogan similar to "We're here to help". Every big box retailer promotes their employees being there to assist their customers. That's why the all wear the same color blue shirts, orange aprons, etc so that they are easily identifiable to customers looking for assistance. That's their job, at least part of the job.