Walmart’s Plan to Fill Empty Shelves: Green Dots

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We recently asked if Walmart was letting you down and got dozens of comments. Many of you mentioned empty shelves, long lines and not enough employees.

Here’s what Walmart is doing about it: adding neon green dots around the store, Bloomberg says.

You’ll find the dots next to price stickers for everything from peanut M&Ms to Hanes boxer briefs and Crest toothpaste. Those are among 800 products Walmart considers important and that it pays a consulting firm to track the availability of, Bloomberg says.

As a result, employees are wasting time plastering stickers by key products while non-stickered shelves around them go empty, according to one current and one former employee who spoke with Bloomberg.

One idea Walmart came up with that might work better is tying executive and manager pay to metrics such as how well shelves are kept stocked. That proposal will be voted on by shareholders at a June meeting, Bloomberg says.

But here’s a more obvious solution: Hire more people. Walmart is bound to get a lot of new applicants, since next week the company launches its program to hire veterans who left military service in the last year.

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