Thread 11522329

>get a barcode online for an item im looking for
>ask employee to scan if they have it in the back at a wal-mart
>"uh sir their should be X amount on the floor"
>there are zero of said figure on the sales floor
>about 15 wal-marts do the same thing-they all say their system says they have a number on the floor but they have none in actuality.
And just now i to find another item from a completely different manufacturer using its barcode at target and the same shit happened again. Why are stores purposefully mislabeling product that they should have in stock as being in stock and on the floor when it isnt. Why dont they want to sell their own merchandise? Do target and wal-mart want to lose money and go out of business now? I just dont get it

>>11522329 (OP)
They’re not out on the floor yet and the employee you asked to go check just walked back there to hit their vape

Retail is a soul crushing job op. They probably have zero help and the toy aisles are their least focus unless its the holiday season.

>>11522329 (OP)
If Walmart wagies don't want to go on a wild goose hunt around the store looking for a $20 toy, I don't blame them. Their job sucks and we are kind of giving them extra work. I get it's their job to help customers but at the same time I get it if they are over that shit. If they won't look for it, I either try a different store or move on, say I tried, and just order online.

>Why dont they want to sell their own merchandise? Do target and wal-mart want to lose money and go out of business now?
Anon you really think wagies give a shit about the company's bottom line and making the shareholders wealthier? Would you? It's not like toys are Walmart's main money maker anyway so they can afford to slack off when it comes to stocking the toy aisles

>>11522329 (OP)
What I don't understand is why stores like Target/Walmart don't know exactly how many of each item they ordered, thus exactly how many arrive in the truck, then exactly how many they have in stock, then exactly how many are sold and thus are deducted from stock when they get scanned through the check outs or deducted through other means of ordering like pick up. All of this has a digital interface at either end and should be handled in their stocking system. It can be updated real time or in intervals from the check outs. This is simple addition and subtraction. There should be no uncertainties here. Yet for some reason it seems like Target/Walmart don't actually know what is in their own store unless employees go and do physical counts of items for some reason. I once called a Target and they said they had just done their "count" and thus the number should be accurate, which seems to imply employees have to go around counting item numbers rather than just having the check outs minus X of item Y when it gets scanned as bought.

That all said,
>Do target and wal-mart want to lose money and go out of business now?
They are too large to go out of business just because toy buyers don't buy their toys from them. This is part of the problem of oligopolies.

And also none of this should be on the average store employees, they are just dealing with the system as trained and as people far higher up have set it up and have no real power to change it.

>>11522329 (OP)
>Do target and wal-mart want to lose money and go out of business now?
No. They don't give a fuck if you got your plastic crack fix. They got you in the store, now you can buy some Pop Tarts, Bugfalo Cheetos and a case of Dr Pepper while you are there. That's where the real money is.

>>11528192
I don't know how Walmart and Target work, as I am not a burger, but the retail stores I've worked in all had that. How reliable that information is however is entirely dependant on how accurate/up to date the people working for the company make it and how regularly they do stock checking etc.

I would imagine bigger stores that sell a wider variety of items have a harder time keeping that information accurate.

Regarding stockcounting, it's a requirement of retail because there are factors which can make a stockfile incorrect. Someone scanned the wrong item at checkout, something was stolen, stock didn't arrive on a delivery, or arrived in the wrong quantities. It always requires employees to manually count, the regularity of which is dependant on how often the company/management feels it should be done. If you didn't do manual counts and relied on the system, the stockfile would be incorrect forever as soon as any minor issue occurred.

I don’t know if it changed but Walmart used to blanket skus together under a master UPC. I was waiting to get passport photos taken but the electronics associate was tied up along with a manger of some sort and 2 other associates by a furious red faced neckbeard screaming at that loud enough so the gas station outside could probably hear them. He had a basket with figures still attached to the pegs and the associate had a box from in back. He had print out pictures of the cardback with the UPC looking for a Darth Vader and a Han. The store said it had 24 of each but none were in the 24 total figures that they had right there. He couldn’t grasp the fact that they were bundled under a sku. Finally police showed up to escort him out of the store with his screaming and threats to call Hasbro to make them lose their account. Any of those figures you scanned said 24 on hand but not that individual character. I guess they also devised a bin system where you could find the exact location of an item in back as well but this was early 2000s so it could have changed.

>>11529011
American retail stores barely have enough budget for checkout lanes. You think they have enough to make sure every item count is correct?

>>11529129
I worked in two retailers in the last 4 years and they still used SKUs. Walmart most likely still use SKUs and most likely won't change it unless the online ordering system they use forces them to change to utilize UPCs instead.

>>11528978
Thats why you call the store instead and cut their employees' productivity

>>11529129
This sounds like a recipe for inaccuracy and chaos. Target definitely still does it as that is why Cyborg Superman was impossible to get there despite it saying there were 4+ at random stores online, when actually there were 0 and 4+ random other figures that came in the same bundle.

It doesn't really even make sense to do things like bundling different products together anyway since...wouldn't you want to uniquely know how many of each item you have in your store? Wouldn't you want granular accurate data down to each individual product to see how well they sell? Wouldn't you want to know if Diet Cherry Coke outsells Diet Vanilla Coke so you or your algorithm knows which to drop? Wouldn't you want to know whether Nightwing figures outsell Damien Wayne figures so if the DC license holder offers you a Nightwing exclusive or a Damien exclusive you know which to pick?

I guess not if you're Target and Walmart. But hey they have no real competition anyway, so of course they can shit the bed and it won't matter since no one else can compete.

>>11530229
Former Walgreens employee here. When it came to food, different varieties usually have different SKUs (Walgreens called it WIC#). But when it came to non food related items that had the same ingredients or type of content, it would be the same SKU for different UPCs

i.e.
Cola would be under SKU 000001, while Diet Cola would be under SKU 000002.

Store brand 81mg aspirin, 200 count Ver.1 would be SKU 000003
Store brand 81mg aspirin, 200 count Ver.2 would be SKU 000003

Transformers Voyager Bumblebee would be SKU 000004
Transformers Voyager Starscream would be SKU 000004

>>11530742
Also Card packs follow the same rules. That's why some MTG and Pokémon out of season packs are still there.

>>11530742
Whoever came up with this system wasn't detail oriented.

>>11522329 (OP)
Its called shrink People steal and wagies don't have enough time to count it out of their system.