Walmart here I come 2.0

Woo, boy, did I have a bad two days. All the fault of the weather, not Walmart, but it was quite the adventure all the same.

It started with a flight from my local airport to Chicago O'Hare, connecting from there to XNA here near Bentonville. We had just about all gotten on the plane and sat down when they told us to get off because the flight was delayed. Once I got off the plane, I found a few other Walmart drivers heading down for orientation and thus began our ordeal.

Back on the flight, off to O'Hare an hour later. We land on a snowy runway and come to find out our flight has been delayed significantly. After some waiting, the flight gets canceled. Whoops. The later flight was fully booked already, but that didn't matter because it also got canceled. We contacted the travel agency and with two of us on the phone and me looking up other flights, we managed to get booked on to a flight with a different airline, leaving a few hours later. We didn't know this at the time, but our driver contact had gotten in touch with people here in Bentonville and they were all working to get us here to the best of their ability. The travel agency was initially very reluctant to change flights to another airline, but eventually caved thanks to our higher ups over here.

After walking a mile across O'Hare and sitting around for almost 3 hours (now nearing 8 hours at the airport) we're minutes from boarding the plane when the flight got canceled. That was two in a row we'd missed, and it was the last flight to XNA for the night barring some weird rerouting that would have taken us through 3 more airports and gotten us here at about the same time as waiting all night and flying direct today did.

Walmart booked us rooms at the O'Hare Doubletree, which was a very nice hotel, and we managed to hop on an afternoon flight to get here in Bentonville at about 6pm today. Unfortunately, we missed the first day of orientation. Fortunately, the HR and safety folks went out of their way to stick around late until we were all processed and our paperwork was done. They were absolutely fantastic and great sports about staying late to get us taken care of. The frustration of the past couple days was wiped clean when I got to see the attitudes and friendliness of the people here. Not to mention getting to know the 4 other drivers pretty well, which kept things from getting too stressful. I kept saying that Walmart orchestrated the whole thing (including the ice storm) as a team building exercise.

So, we're all safe and checked in here in Bentonville with a plan to get us caught up on orientation tomorrow, and I'm ready to rock. Seems like great people to work for so far!

 

Woo what a day! I'm glad you made it safely! And you have a great attitude You'll be a welcomed addition to the crew Welcome aboard!

 

Copy that. Thank you sir!!

 

Great attitude. Welcome to walmart.

 

Thanks for the welcomes, folks!

Today was fun, miserable, exciting, grueling, educational, and inspiring all in one. Cold and windy turned to cold and rainy as those of us who missed day one made up by doing the hands on stuff we missed yesterday, followed immediately by the rest of the day 2 activities to catch us up. Our safety guy had a sound plan to get it done, and it went off without a hitch, so we were caught up by lunch time.

I passed the second round of skills pretty handily today and if I repeat it tomorrow, I'm a Walmart driver. Yahoo! I'm enjoying myself and the staff here are taking all the pressure off of us and helping us perform our very best. Learning the Walmart way is a process that will require long term practice and adaptation, but its something I know I can do now. I absolutely cannot speak highly enough of the drivers, safety, and HR personnel that made this all work. There are highs and lows anywhere you go, but they're clearly doing their best to outnumber the lows with highs!

All that said, I am 100% bonafide bushed right now, so I'm going to enjoy the rest of my day and get my first full night's rest since last Friday. Will report again tomorrow!

 

WTG!

 

Signs spring is just around the corner!

Dirt & mulch season are here & direct deliveries to stores Yahoo

 

nice to hear a good story like that, it could have went a lot worse, but the staff made strides it sounds like to make it right... thanks for the story, I'm supposed to be there the 18th next month, stuff like this helps me feel better about it

 

I'll tell you all one thing, I haven't eaten this good in a while.