Wal-Mart Employees Rip the Company on Its Own Internal Website
Wal-Mart, a $254 billion corporation, is so terrified of its employees sharing their true workplace stories with us that it's purchased ads on Google and Twitter expressly targeted at our readers. On its employee website, the company also asked workers to share positive stories. Here are the comments they got.
To recap: earlier this week, we published a small collection of true stories of workplace woes, from Wal-Mart employees. Wal-Mart— apparently horrified at the prospect of its employees speaking their minds freely in a public forum— responded by issuing a plea on its internal employee website for workers to send us happy tales of Wal-Mart bliss. We got a few, along with many more negative stories.
It's one thing for frustrated workers to vent anonymously to a media outlet; it's another thing for workers to be so fed up that they disregard their instincts of self-preservation and vent their frustrations directly on the company's internal website— and on a posting that asked them to "share your story about the real Wal-Mart," at that. Several people with access to Wal-Mart's employee site leaked us the comment section of that post. (All of the comments are pictured at the bottom of this post. Click to enlarge the image.)
They did get some positive comments. They also got these:
- "Sadly, the Gawker stories match my Walmart experience."
- "I choose not to tell my Walmart experience. All you corporate people want is the sunshine stories. You don't want the reality."
- "I'll say what needs to be said. Now this will probably get deleted but oh well. I feel as though walmart doesn't care about their associates it's all about the customers and profit now that's fine I guess but without your associates you wouldn't have customers. We're all hard workers and it's a shame that this company doesn't appreciate that."
- "Isn't it funny that these stories 'aren't true,' and yet many of us are too scared to post our disagreement, lest we lose our job? I read the Gawker reports: There's not one bit of that that I haven't experienced myself."
Perhaps if Wal-Mart shifted some of its PR budget to worker salaries, they might be happier. We'll have more true stories from Wal-Mart employees next week.
