https://www.wsj.com/business/retail/a-day-in-the-life-of-a-walmart-manager-who-makes-240-000-a-year-3248037f
A Day in the Life of a Walmart Manager Who Makes $240,000 a Year
Nichole Hart walks 20,000 steps as she searches for super glue, encounters a disappointed Snoop Dogg fan and juggles staff; ‘The hardest thing is the uncertainty’
By Sarah Nassauer | Photographs by Desiree Rios for The Wall Street Journal
April 14, 2024 at 7:00 am ET
BELLMEAD, TEXAS—As night fades to day on a recent morning, Nichole Hart walks briskly into the store she manages here, just off the freeway a few miles north of Waco.
“How was the night?” asks Hart.
“Rough,” says Speck.
A few people hadn’t shown up to work. “We got it done though,” Speck says, gesturing to all the products around her that had been unloaded from delivery trucks overnight, then put on shelves.
“What’s up with the parking-lot lights?” Hart asks.
As the pair start walking through the store to review each section, Hart shouts a cheery “Good morning!” to staff as they pass.
Hart is one of Walmart’s 4,700 U.S. store managers, an increasingly important linchpin in the retailing giant’s strategy. Walmart is changing how its stores are run by leaning on managers to use staff to fulfill online orders and technology to automate some work. Plus there are the classic retail responsibilities of managing hundreds of employees, keeping shelves stocked and customers happy, all while increasing sales and profits.
While the demand for hourly retail workers has cooled since the pandemic, finding a store manager that can run a big-box retailer is a challenge. Walmart is offering higher pay, bonuses and more stock options this year to retain and attract more. Some can now make more than $400,000 a year.
“They determine success or failure,” says Kieran Shanahan, chief operating officer for Walmart U.S. As Walmart shifts to automated systems, managing a store is becoming more complex, he says. “It’s hard. You are living in two worlds.”
Hart has seen that change firsthand. About 20 years ago, then 19 years old and a mother of two, she started part-time at the same Walmart she now runs. Her first job was cooking live lobsters pulled from a tank in the deli.
Just out of high school, she needed something stable—a job available to people without a college degree.
“That’s when I realized, this might not be my favorite job, but I can develop pictures or manage clothing at Walmart. I can get promoted,” says Hart, now 40 years old and a mother of four. “I figured out I was good at this, and it was something achievable for me.”
Hart became the photo-lab department manager, then ran the apparel section. She was promoted to run a store in 2018 before she took over the Bellmead one in 2021. Now, like many Walmart Supercenter managers, she oversees hundreds of workers and more than $100 million in annual sales.
Last year, she was paid a $119,000 salary and a roughly $120,000 bonus. Hart doesn’t find the job overwhelming because she likes to stay busy and enjoys people. “The hardest thing is the uncertainty,” she says. “You don’t know what you are going to walk into.”
6:55 a.m. First tour
Hart starts her first lap around the store. Speck, the overnight manager, gives her boss a high-level update on overnight stocking and staffing levels. Hart scans for problems.
A table near the produce area is empty but has a $4.98 sign displayed. Hart asks a nearby worker to fill it with something so as not to confuse customers. Hart snaps pictures of a messy sink in the back deli area, uploads it to the internal app that workers have on their phones, and asks for it to be cleaned up.
Both Hart and Speck check their phones and walkie-talkies frequently. They use the employee app to relay data and what work needs to be done as they walk the huge store, which is bigger than three football fields.
Speck is one of 10 mid-level managers called coaches that Hart relies on for day-to-day operations. Hart works in the store from about 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. except for Tuesdays, when she works noon to 10 p.m. to have time with her night staff. She takes Wednesdays and Sundays off.
“Loving You,” a song by a pop band called Cannons, plays on Walmart Radio, the station that plays in the store most of the day.
Hart is excited about the solar-eclipse glasses and T-shirts that are stocked near the front of the store, knowing it will bring in big business because Bellmead is near prime eclipse-viewing territory.
Near the cereal aisle, a customer walks up to Hart while recording on his cellphone.
“Hi! Can we get some Snoop Cereal here on the shelf?” asks the man.
Earlier that month the rapper Snoop Dogg sued Walmart, claiming the retailer, along with Post Consumer Brands, had worked to suppress sales of Snoop Cereal. Some fans were recording videos related to the dispute for social media.
Hart checks the inventory levels on her phone. “We don’t have it anymore. Sorry,” she says.
“Thank you y’all,” the man says and walks away.
“What the heck was that?” asks Speck.
7:35 a.m. Second tour
Hart starts her second lap around the store, this time with her day manager, Alicia Wright, who has worked with Walmart for 13 years. Wright is a high-potential worker and could soon run her own store, “so she hangs out with me a lot,” says Hart.
This tour will include walking every aisle with shopping carts, filling them with products left where they don’t belong, garbage and watching out for any surprising out-of-stock items and what Walmart calls “Nil Picks.” That’s when a store worker who collects goods for online orders, a “picker,” finds an item out-of-stock even though the computer system says it is available.
That situation annoys online customers because they don’t get what they ordered, something Walmart is currently focused on solving. It is Hart’s job to make sure Nil Picks are investigated and to correct the internal system so more items are ordered for her store.
Hart notices that the egg shelves are nearly bare. She grabs her walkie-talkie.
“Julianne, please get someone to fill eggs,” she says.
Shelves with packages of bottled water also need to be stocked. Both are big sellers.
“If I don’t fill that up early now, then how much sales am I missing throughout the day,” she says as she throws a wayward Kool-Aid box and stray cardboard into the collection cart.
Walking every aisle is a new practice for store bosses in her area, implemented by their regional manager. It helps managers “see what your customers see,” says Hart, and pay attention to details. It also keeps her employees on their toes.
“Love Story” by Taylor Swift plays on the store’s radio.
Hart gets to the front of the store, a product-display area in between banks of registers known as the horseshoe. “So what are you thinking here?” she asks Wright. “Easter or summer toys?”
Wright suggests summer toys and T-shirts.
“I think we should go after the eclipse,” says Hart, filling the section with eclipse-themed gear, as well as outdoor chairs and coolers.
They next head to prime display space near the store entrance. It is filled with flu and cold medicine, a seasonal display that needs changing as winter ends.
Toys will look better in the entrance area, but switching to allergy medicine will make more money because those items are higher margin, says Hart. They are leaning toward an allergy display.
8:00 a.m. Quiet hour
It’s the start of sensory-friendly hours, a period without Walmart Radio and lower lighting, which Walmart implemented last year.
It’s nice for sensory-sensitive shoppers, says Hart, but for busy minds like herself, “it’s just awkward silence for two hours straight.”
She passes a prominent display of Lume Whole Body Deodorant, a new product for the store priced at $14.97.
“It’s interesting, but it’s too pricey for my customer,” says Hart. It isn’t selling that quickly.
The Bellmead store’s shoppers tend to be low-income, so Hart and her staff usually choose what Walmart calls “opening price point” items for the display areas they control. That includes a 97-cent refillable BBQ sauce bottle, a 98-cent flyswatter and $4.58 toilet plunger, which are selling well.
Bellmead is a working-class community on the outskirts of Waco. The median household income for the county is about $64,000, according to government data.
Sometimes Hart and her team make bad bets on products. Recently they ordered too many bags of deer corn, used by both hunters and deer lovers to attract the animal.
“It didn’t really work,” says Hart. “Now I’ve got a truck of it.”
In the toy area, they double-check that they have ordered enough water balloons. Last year they sold out by June, missing sales. They pass a container of $1.33 toy dinosaurs, another item they ordered to appeal to their local customer.
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“I’m walking around picking up stuff, but I’m also building a rapport with all of my associates and checking on them,” says Hart after chatting with one worker in the outdoor aisle. The mentoring helps her manage 305 people, she says, and “makes them want to work for you.”
She also tries to foster an ownership culture among her 10 coaches, she says. That gives everyone a work-life balance. “I have been in stores where you have to work seven days a week or you have to work 14 hours a day. We don’t do that here,” she says.
Hart’s husband used to work for Walmart, too. He spent 15 years in stores and a returns center but now works at a local
Coca-Cola
warehouse. They live a short drive away. Their youngest child is 10 years old, and they have two grandchildren.
“Coming up in the company, I missed some birthday parties,” she says. “Now I am able to go to my son’s football games and I’m able to spend time with my family.”
9:11 a.m. Inventory check
Hart finishes her second tour through the store, having collected three full carts of detritus and misplaced items.
For the first time that morning, she heads to her office in the back to check on inventory and customer-satisfaction data on her computer. For her coffee, she grabs her sugar-free vanilla caramel creamer from her locker.
The store gets four or five delivery trucks to unload each day. Hart checks what percentage of goods have been scanned through an inventory-management system that Walmart uses called VizPick.
“If a regional manager comes in and you can’t speak to this, I wouldn’t be a very smart store manager,” she says.
She checks two other systems that track different types of merchandise. That is a setup Walmart executives say is on track to be simplified, but for now Hart knows to check all three.
Hart grabs her walkie-talkie and calls all available workers to the daily morning meeting in the breakroom.
9:35 a.m. Staff meeting
Hart highlights the previous day’s big sales increase compared with the same day last year, something all workers can see in their app. The store is now hitting its monthly sales goal, which is determined by headquarters.
“Congratulations!” says Hart. Workers cheer, sitting around low tables. The breakroom includes a small kitchen, a TV and lots of Walmart blue. “So keep doing what we are doing.”
They quickly move on to lighter topics. Hart reports that it’s a few workers’ birthdays. One worker says they are collecting donations for a coworker moving into a new apartment with no furniture.
Another coach reminds workers that shoppers are getting tax refunds this week and to make sure all items are on the sales floor to be sold. “Don’t miss the boat,” he says.
Hart tells the group about the store’s plans to highlight the eclipse, which could bring thousands of people to the area.
To end the meeting, Michael Cole, 66, a maintenance worker, leads the group in the Walmart Cheer, a chant workers throughout the company do to start and end meetings.
“Give me a W!,” shouts the group to kick it off.
10:00 a.m. Third tour
Hart heads to the deli counter to give worker Esthela Sandoval a plaque commemorating 15 years with the company. Sandoval couldn’t come to the morning meeting because no one else was available to staff the deli. They snap a picture.
Soon after, Lesia Cobbs, Hart’s boss and the market manager for this store and 10 others, arrives. She was previously the store manager at the Bellmead location and a mentor to Hart.
Hart begins her third tour of the store that morning, this time with Cobbs, something the pair do every few weeks.
Hart and her boss Lesia Cobbs, a regional Walmart manager, hunt for missing items in the arts-and-crafts aisle.
“That could mean we have 11 different customers we disappoint,” says Cobbs. “You need to find someone to go on a search,” she tells Hart.
The arts-and-crafts aisle was recently organized and cleaned, but it isn’t up to par. “We have things all mixed up, things not open, it’s not very tidy,” Cobbs says.
Cobbs asks Hart to call over the worker involved, as well as the coach for that shift. Cobbs peppers both with questions, showing them what should have been done.
Hart highlights that part of the problem is that Easter crafts items weren’t sent in their own display case this year, overloading the aisle. “That’s good feedback,” says Cobbs.
Near the entrance Cobbs says she wants the store to stock summer toys, not allergy medicine, as planned. She says it will look better and more seasonally appropriate.
11:28 a.m. Office time
Hart returns to her office to check on freight and labor needs for the evening. She walks 8 to 10 miles a day, about 20,000 steps.
Like most days, Hart grabs a salad and two hard-boiled eggs from the prepared-food area of the store, buying lunch to eat at her desk. As she eats, she reviews stats from the store to prepare for a coming meeting with her coaches.
1:00 p.m. Coaches meeting
Hart uses her walkie-talkie to call coaches to their daily meeting in the training room, a windowless room with a table and counter with computers for mandated training.
They review some of the day’s work that remains, like price changes. Hart reminds them to download a new beta version of the Walmart app and to focus on solving Nil Picks.
“That was a big highlight of Lesia’s tour with me today. There was some super glue we couldn’t find,” she says. (The missing glue packs were later found in the hardware section.)
She reminds the group that her bosses are cracking down on dress-code violations, and they need to enforce it. Vests need to be clean and zipped. No sweatpants and leggings allowed.
One coach points out that two nonfood trucks are arriving today, not one as previously expected. “That wasn’t there earlier” in the system, says Hart.
Hart hopes the surprise delivery truck isn’t one that was supposed to show up the following day, when she has workers scheduled to unload it. Those moments “can be wasting a lot of payroll,” she says.
1:45 p.m. HR meeting
Hart meets with the head of human resources for her store, Jessica Davis. Each store has their own HR manager dedicated to staff needs.
The pair take a dive into each area of the store, using internal data calculated by headquarters to gauge where they have enough staff and where they need more. Before the store hires new workers, Hart tries to fill holes with existing staff.
They discuss which people they can encourage to stay in their role or switch hours or types of work. “She is making a big difference over there,” says Hart of one worker. “Let’s talk to her about staying.”
“She feels like she runs out of things to do,” says Davis. She suggests talking to the worker about specific tasks she can do when she’s done with her primary tasks so she doesn’t get bored. “I don’t want to lose her,” says Davis.
2:30 p.m. Evening prep
Hart goes to the loading dock to check on the surprise truck that is being unloaded, before swinging back to the grocery section.
Around 3 p.m. she and other team members head to the front area for a moment that Walmart calls “Alive @ 5,” to make sure important items like bread, produce and rotisserie chicken are well stocked for the evening, the busiest time in the store.
“The store needs to look just as good for evening shoppers as it does in the morning,” says Hart.
She heads to the back, the online-order hub of the store. Orders are coming in and brought to shoppers curbside, as well as handed off to delivery drivers from the area.
4:00 p.m. Recap meeting
Hart meets with her coaches one last time in her office. They recap the day and realize that no one restocked the display in the front of the store with summer toys. It still has the cold medicine. The group agrees to tackle it the next morning.
While she walks back through the store, she uses her phone to review all the requested product orders and make sure inventory corrections are accurate in the store’s internal systems.
She clicks through to accept orders for more water balloons, sidewalk chalk and water g-ns to prepare for coming summer demand. Those items will arrive in about two weeks, she says.
Around 5 p.m., Hart heads home. It is a seven-minute drive from the store, which is never off her mind.
“I love my job,” says Hart, but “it doesn’t turn off. That is one of the hard things about it.”