HOW MANY TIMES DO WE REPEAT THIS STORY…?
Bad company is nailed for bad product. Government agency issues recall of bad product. Wal-Mart promises quick action. Consumers find product still on the shelf. Wal-Mart says it’s flagged at the register. Stop me if you’ve heard this one.
This time the product recall is for a snack food with possible contamination from salmonella wandsworth, a bacteria that causes gastrointestinal illness.
The story does have a couple of twists. First, when first contacted, company claimed it didn’t carry it; and second, it gets good here, because the food is a snack, there’s always the chance that a customer might open a bag before getting to the register and munch a few before attempting to pay for the now empty bag at the register.
Can you imagine the conversation?
Wal-Mart employee: I’m sorry ma’am, I can’t sell you these.
Customer: What do you mean? I already ate them. I want to pay for them.
Wal-Mart employee: I’m sorry ma’am, the product has been flagged by our computer as not for sale.
Customer: Why in the world would it do that? It’s on the shelf, why wouldn’t you want to sell it?
Wal-Mart employee: I don’t know, ma’am. They don’t tell us that kind of thing. I guess you just got a free bag of Veggie Booty.
Customer: I’m sorry, that’s just not right. I wouldn’t have opened them if I didn’t intend to pay for them. I’d like to see a manager.
Wal-Mart employee: Yes ma’am. (over the public address system) CSM to register 5, CSM to register 5.
How high up the chain do you think the customer would have to go before she found someone who actually knew about the food recall? And do you think she’d make it out of the store before the salmonella kicked in?
Just asking.
From the Oneonta, New York, Daily Star:
Wal-Mart was contacted Friday afternoon after The Daily Star received a call from Oneonta resident Katherine Angell, who said she bought the product Thursday at the local store. She said she did not eat any of it.
When she called the store on Southside at about 3 p.m. Friday, Angell said, she was told by an employee that there was no notice of a product recall and there was nothing the store would do.
When the Wal-Mart national media-relations office was contacted at about 4:30 p.m., spokeswoman Marisa Bluestone said the product was not carried by the company.
But after the product was found in the crackers and snack-food aisle by a reporter during a trip to the store, Bluestone was contacted again.
After checking into the situation, she responded with a statement that said, “Following the lead of Veggie Booty to initiate a voluntary recall of products, we have blocked the sale of this product at our registers and have immediately directed our stores to pull the product off our shelves.”
Anyone giving odds on how many months this shelf-removal might take?
Jeff, allow me to take your hypothetical a different route:
1.the food is a snack, there’s always the chance that a customer might open a bag before getting to the register and munch a few before attempting to pay for the now empty bag at the register.
2.Customer takes Wal-Mart to court for the GI illness from the product.
3.Wal-Mart’s defense: “We didn’t sell the product to the customer. They ate it without paying.”
4. Wal-Mart attempts to sue customer for stealing tainted product.
5. Public relations nightmare.
6. No lesson learned.
Shalom Someone,
Here’s the part I don’t get.
I worked retail at two discount chains — Harts and Kmart — during the early ’70s so I know what it means to stock. If word had come down from a store manager to pull something from the shelves, it would have been gone from the floor and the stock room in 30 minutes max.
There is a great deal to admire about the business model that Sam Walton created and there are still many positive lessons to be learned from the company as it exists today.
So why the bloody feck can’t Bentonville send a message to all store manager with a priority flag saying “Pull product X from the shelves?”
It’s not rocket science.
B’shalom,
Jeff
They do… Unfortunatly, it’s not *quite* that simple.
For example, we had a product that was recently recalled in Electronics. Store Manager got with the department manager on Friday who had already pulled the item.
Then, Monday, we got a bunch of boxes of videos in again. Included in them were two copies of the recalled item. And our Electronics Department manager is on vacation this week. If I (who doesn’t even work in that department) hadn’t seen the recalled item in the back office and been nosy and read the recall sheet, the items would have been put out by the associate covering that department.
This is why flagging stuff at the register is nice – unless you get someone who grazes while shopping or switches tags on t-shirts that they know are recalled, preventing the sale at the register is the last line of defense.
Shalom Uncle Bob,
I can appreciate the new stock showing up.
And what you say is true. It’s absolutely correct: preventing the sale at the register is the last line of defense.
What we see in these cases, however, is the last line of defense is being treated as the only line of defense. To me that represents a breakdown in communication that puzzles me.
It would have been, I should think, a simple task for the manager to make a photocopy of the recalled product and taped the pictures at appropriate places in the stock room so that employees would know what was going on.
For instance, when I worked hardlines for Harts, the department manager taped all appropriate notes to the inside of the stock room doors where none of us could miss them.
I just don’t get how a company with the best distribution system in the world, can’t get a handle on this.
B’shalom,
Jeff
I just don’t get how a company with the best distribution system in the world, can’t get a handle on this.
Poor training at the store level.
I don’t necessarly think it’s poor training at the store level – it doesn’t take a lot of training to take something off the shelf. I think it’s just as Jeff said – poor (or no) communication.
Posting notes in the back room isn’t a realistic fix – you’re assuming every associate is going to read every note (because you never know who’s going to be covering whos department for a break when the ‘evil’ box comes in.)
What would be nice is if Wal*Mart could set up an automated system that flags items that come into the store via Direct Receiving (UPS/FedEx) and the assoicate who checks these items into the store would be notified at that point that the item is on recall. For WMDC trucks, it seems if an item is on the invoice and is flagged for recall, an auto-mail could go out to the store management to make certian that item doesn’t go to the floor.
Additionally, if an item that is being recalled scans “NOT FOR SALE” at the register, an e-mail should be dispatched to management telling them what the item was so they can double check to make sure the item gets pulled (assuming it already hasn’t).
As far as training goes, I think it would be nice if all associates were made aware of the fact that if an item scans “NOT FOR SALE”, it needs to be brought to management’s attention ASAP…
There was one day at my store when a set of products from a manufacturer was recalled. The problem was, this product was carried (under several different SKUs) in Electronics, Stationary and in “Impulse” (i.e.: Checkouts and Sidecounters). Well, we had already pulled the item from Electronics – but apparently the other two areas were not notified. Later that evening, we received a call back in Electronics from a CSM wanting to know why we hadn’t pulled the item from our department, that they kept having people come up there with it. I assured them that we had pulled the item and went up there – sure enough, they had a couple of the item from each of the other two areas.
Instead of waiting until later that day, the CSM should have notified management *immedatly* so it could have been addressed. I guess you could call that a training issue, but I think it’s just a lack of communication…
I lump communication problems within the store in with training issues – associates are not trained where to go for the information or how to effectively disseminate it, what to do with it or when certain events occur, and how to follow through. If associates are unmotivated to act appropriately, that’s a breakdown in the coaching process.
The most real example of this in my experience (being a CSM) was at the registers. Many people on the front end did not know what to do when the sale was blocked. Items were sometimes sold, usually not reported by the cashier, and almost never reported to management. That, to me, constituted a real training issue (due also in no small part to turnover).
Perhaps the biggest problem is management follow-through. Ultimately it is they that are charged with signing off on it, isn’t it?
[...] HOW MANY TIMES DO WE REPEAT THIS STORY…? Bad company is nailed for bad product. Government agency issues recall of bad product. Wal-Mart promises quick action. Consumers find product still on the shelf. Wal-Mart says it’s flagged at the register. Stop me if you’ve heard this one. Keep reading… [...]
[...] And, of course, Wal-Mart reacted quickly when it was notified about the recall. [...]
Shalom Someone,
It it that:
1. Wal-mart doesn’t care about training?
2. Wal-mart employees are largely untrainable? or
3. Wal-mart employees turn over so rapidly that it makes training too expensive.
Or is it, more likely, a combination of all three plus other factors I’m not aware of?
B’shalom,
Jeff