Confessions of a Wal-Mart Hit Man

Confessions of a Wal-Mart Hit Man
excerpts with long-time Wal-Mart manager Weldon Nicholson
from the documentary, "Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price"
This is the transcript, You can watch the video as well.

WELDON NICHOLSON: I worked for Wal-mart 17 years.

I come from a poor background in a rural area. I was the first one in my family that went to college -- I think it was amazing to them i got through high school if you want to know the truth!

I worked in the Supercenter division, specialty divisions, General Manager for Sam's Club. I was promoted and moved from O'Fallon, Illinois to Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Nice little country town with just country people there.

I'm proud that I worked for Wal-Mart; I'm not proud of what I did for Wal-Mart.

Wal-Mart should feel the same betrayal with somebody blowing the whistle on them as they are the hundreds of thousands of associates they have betrayed.

I watched so many people go without lunch in the lounges that I stopped eating in the lounges, I just had my managers eating there because I just couldn't stand it. They just wouldn't eat and we weren't allowed to offer them any money. There were people i'd see who didn't eat nothing; they'd take an hour lunch and just sit there.

I had people there on welfare working, husbands totally disabled. We're paying them $6.75, $7.75 an hour. And on any given day, if for some reason you just happen to tick off one of the managers, if you're full time, you can just work 28 hours a week. And if you tick one of them off bad enough, no matter even if you are just a sub par performer, just at a blink of an eye they can get rid of you. They'll find a reason. I found a lot of reasons and set people in a lot of positions where they would fail just so I would look good for my boss.

Associates were disposable to them just like we flick a tooth pick away after we get through with it.

The philosophy of the company: "do more with less." I know the true meaning of "do more with less". They want the associates to do more, and they're gonna pay them less.

And even though I paid some of my managers really well, it was the associates that suffered. And in the Wal-Mart culture, if you're a manager, that's great -- you can squeeze every dime out of them you go for it. Doesn't matter what happens to their families, if they fall apart, they get sick... the hell with them.

Stacking the Deck
I always had a manager that would eat in the lounge with the associates, and if anything was brought up about any terms, any union terms whatsoever brought up, we watched that associate. First time we caught them talking to someone about something, doesn't matter what it was, if we couldn't tell what they were talking about, we terminated them too.
And that was just the beginning. When I was transferred to Annapolis, Maryland -- probably the worst time of my life -- I was briefed on what to do when I got up there. They had just come off a union campaign, and to offset the vote they had transferred 33 associates into the Sam's Club and as far as I know from what I was told by the Director of Operations at the time. I did find out later that they had backdated all the transfers to make the people legal enough to vote. And when I brought this to the Director of Operations attention, she told me I didn't know what I was talking about and I just needed to leave it alone.

Ghosts
We used to drive downtown and just say, well "This will be a ghost town soon." kinda proud of the fact that we worked for big Wal-Mart, we're coming into a small town, we are somebody, almost like we're taking over.
"To hell with it," Wal-Mart will buy the damn town. We'll shut them down. We used to drive through towns going "six months, three months, six months," of when we'd be closing them.

And unfortunately watched a lot of businesses close. Although Wal-Mart says they will hold this meeting and they'll help people, they'll send people in to help your business. Well that's great if you're telling your story on TV about what Wal-Mart's doing for you, as soon as it is publicized or on TV, you know what? They pull the ad and dump you and they're gone.

The Pressure Trap
The unwritten rule. There's just so many unwritten rules that you have to deal with, ya know? And i say you know, you don't know.
It just makes me very uncomfortable because i think of all the things i've done wrong, it makes me mad at myself. Because nobody told me to do it, but you know if you didn't do it you'd be in trouble. And other people hear this and might not know what i'm talking about -- how can you make someone do something if you don't tell them?

It's the reaction of your district manager that puts you in a position to where you have no alternative but to do what they want you to do. So you get the choice of feeling guilty about doing something wrong or being afraid that you are not satisfying your supervisor, and that's a trap that people get put into. That's the unwritten rules right there.

Do you ever cover up people working off the clock? I can't answer that question. And the reason I can't answer that question is because no matter what I say I'm still guilty, because I may not have done it, but I may have instructed someone else to do it.

I consider myself the mob boss, and i'd have one of my lieutenants / co-managers axe people, go get under people. They were the disciplinarians or the assistant principals, however you want to put it. But those were the ones that kicked ass, and I was the nice guy.

I've seen managers go in when someone worked 41, 42 hours, and change it to 40 hours. I never directly authorized anybody to do that, but I turned my back whenever I saw someone do that.. and that's just as bad.

If i was a devil's advocate, I'd say, nobody made you do those things, no one told you to do those things. Well if that's true then why have I worked with all these people all these years and they all think like me, and feel like me, and feel the same pressures, and are doing the same things?

People are transferring from other states and I'd catch them shaving payroll. Now, you think that was an isolated incident...it might be, if it was one of your managers doing it. But if you have eight and they are all talking about doing it, all coming from different district managers, different states, different stores. How would they all know about it, and know how to do it?

I'm not the only one who did it. I've seen every manager except for one general manager do it.

The Bribe
The gentleman that was over the building of a Wal-Mart, he was kind of like the real estate supervisor, can't remember exactly what his title was. He thought we might have a problem with the sign. The building inspector red tagged it. Next thing I know there was an overnight package coming for me and I'm to take it to this person. Envelope wasn't sealed, so I just opened it up and there's a $10,000 check, I don't remember who it was made out to. I gave it to the individual and the very next day the red tag was off the sign.
Redemption
20/20 [ed note: it was Dateline NBC in 1992] is out hitting Wal-Mart to check to see if it is really "Made in America." So I immediately just go out there and start looking around to see if there are any signs that say "Made in America." I only had 106 signs out there "Made in America" and the funny part about it is, when I got out there thinking about it, it was made in Yugoslasvia, China, Bangladesh. There wasn't but 1 rack that was there that was made in america!
That's when i thought this is really starting to make me mad and worry me, because you know what? If the media comes in here and even though we have a little media card and they call this person and they talk and the worst thing you can say is "no comment." That's all good, but it's a lie.. I'm not going to lie to people, well, i'm not going to lie to people any more.

Retaliation
Life began after Wal-Mart. You don't know the quality of life you can really have once you get out of the company, because you get caught up in that culture, that cult whatever you want to call it, and it just consumes you.
It's almost like when soldiers come home from Iraq, they go through the debriefing. It's almost like when you leave Wal-Mart you have to be debriefed to know how to be a human being.

And the worst part of it is is no one will ever know how big this is, what happens to people. There's gotta be more people like me out there, but they are too afraid to say anything.

I don't care what anybody says, anybody that works at Wal-Mart that is in management are not going to talk on camera while they are still working for Wal-Mart -- that's a death sentence right there.

And let me tell you something, I still have a certain fear of retaliation without working for them.

Watch the video
www.walmartmovie.com