On June 6, 2014, Walmart conducted its annual stockholder
meeting under “scrutiny on all fronts.”[1]
Revenue at the company’s stores in the U.S. had declined for five consecutive
quarters. Walmart was also facing ethical questions over how the company’s
executives handled bribery allegations at the Mexican division, as well as on the
low wages going to non-supervisory workers (esp. part-timers). In short, the
question facing the management was whether the company was being managed by
cutting corners, as manifest both in terms on incompetence and unethical
conduct. That the shareholder proposal to split off the chair of the board from
the CEO did not meet even a preliminary tally of votes suggests that the
company would sooner go under than that its management would be held to
account.
On the day of the meeting, I happened to be at a Walmart
store for what must have been two hours. I had stopped in to pick up medicine
only to find that the pharmacy employees had lost my prescription. “You
cancelled it and it was handed back to you,” an employee informed me. The system says you have it. Well, I
didn’t, and after waiting over an hour for a manager to look at the camera
footage, I was coming to the conclusion that someone had lied to cover up the
mistake. For the prescription was cancelled and returned to me forty-five minutes after camera footage
showed me leaving the store for the day. “You could have phoned in the
cancellation,” the store manager suggested. Unfortunately for him, that would
not explain how the paper prescription got into my hands.
Turning to his assistant, the shift manager, I asked if it
is likely that the prescription had been inadvertently thrown way. “Oh, no,
that doesn’t happen here,” she assured me. “Well,” I concluded, “then if no one
handed it to me, and your employees don’t throw things out in there, then the
prescription should still be in there, right?” Even as she nodded affirmatively—meaning
the paper had been misplaced—the store manager interjected his view that the
chances are minimal that it is still there. “The system indicates that it was
given to you,” he said. I was stunned. Had he not been listening? I began to
understand how it could be that the front managers and cashiers could have been
getting away with treating customers so rudely right under the nose of the
store’s manager. He went on to add that he and his assistant had done “excellent
due diligence” and unfortunately the camera angle did not give him a clear view
of me talking with the pharmacist after I had dropped off the prescription so
he couldn’t be sure—in spite of having “an excellent camera system.” I was
stunned at the sheer disjunction in what the guy was saying.
Clearly, someone had lied, as no one had handed back my
prescription to me (and I had not cancelled the prescription). In this case,
the lie had staying power, for the medical provider who had written the
prescription refused to reissue or revalidate it even when the pharmacist called
to explain the situation. Even though Walmart had erroneously cancelled and
lost my prescription, it was “my responsibility.” I was between a rock and a
hard place, neither one being willing or even perhaps even capable of deviating from a rigid script. Not having a primary-care
physician locally, I would have to go without until the end of my visit.
Speaking the next day with a pharmacist at a Walgreens after
I tried again in vain by stopping by the offending hospital’s emergency room, I
learned that it was indeed unusual for a prescription provider to refuse to
revalidate a prescription that had been erroneously cancelled. I also gathered
from that pharmacist that I had erred in supposing that the pharmacy at a
Walmart would somehow be immune from the sort of incompetence that plagues the
company at the store level.
That very evening, a Walmart truck-driver killed one comic
and seriously injured Tracy Morgan and two other passengers on the New Jersey
Turnpike after going without sleep for than 24 hours.[2]
In response, a Walmart statement claimed that the employee had not violated any
federal regulations. Nevertheless, police charged him with manslaughter and
assault. Interestingly, Congress was at the time bowing to industry pressure by
backing off proposed regulations that would have required companies like
Walmart to see to it that their truck drivers are getting enough sleep. One
might say that Walmart’s management is
asleep behind the wheel, even amid claims of being fully alert.
[1]
Anne D’Innocenzio, “Walmart
Faces Shareholder Scrutiny at Annual Meeting,” The Associated Press, June
6, 2014.
[2]
David Jones, “Truck
Driver in Tracy Morgan Crash Had Not Slept in 24 Hours: Complaint,” The
Huffington Post, June 9, 2014.
