A Walmart store manager makes between $240,000 and $400,000 per year

I make more than that. Ha ha!

The NYT article is paywalled. Does it say she manages just one store, or several, for that salary? I imagine it would be more than one.

I had heard that once you got into management Walmart pays really well, but I didn't know it was that good 😳

R2 Here's the article via archive.ph. It's actually from Rupert Murdoch's WSJ, not the NYT.

Let me correct you OP

A Walmart manager EARNS $240,000 to $400,000 a year. Most of us would not want that lifestyle.

The remaining cast of Friends MAKES $20 million a year on residuals. It just shows up in their bank accounts.

They earn it, I bet.

Thanks much r4, of course its the WSJ.

The manager makes a $120k base salary, another $120k is bonus. She's a female high school graduate under the age of 40, who's worked there since a teen, who worked her way up the corporate ladder through dint of hard work. Now she makes a huge salary, that's how working life in America is supposed to work (but doesn't). She has even higher steps up the ladder to climb, no doubt she'll do it. Hats to Walmart, I guess.

That post was a complete waste of everyone’s time, R5. But if you had an actual point, by all means, please tell us what it is.

And it still wouldn't be enough for me. I purchased a few things online from Walmart. I had to return them so I decided to stop by one morning to return them before the store got too crowded with People of Walmart. I have never experienced such rude, ignorant staff in my life. They didn't even know how to work the scanners and the registers and honestly I'm not sure their reading level was higher than a 3rd grader. In fact I question their literacy at all. Managing that kind of staff,stubborn, reluctant, and borderline illiterate, and dealing with theft, shop lifting,etc. Stocking the shelves, etc. and absenteeism, would be my idea of Hell.

Seeing how r6 also made the same point, I’d reconsider that r8.

Speaking of which Jesus this girl had two kids at 19 and pulled herself up by her bootstraps. She would probably solve the border crisis.

[quote] They earn it, I bet.

Not all. The last time I encountered a "Nicole" in my own local Walmart (complete with regulation Walkie-Talkie in hand) she was standing around bitching about something personal to a customer-friend who was in the store. This was going on while the poor beleaguered worker bee at the nearby combination cell phone and printing services counter was left to handle everything on his own. He was trying to wait on two customers at the same time, with lines for each service running three and four customers deep. I asked her politely, if she could perhaps step into (the snakepit) and ring up a couple of the very simple purchases that both myself and the guy behind me needed from the locked cabinet in the area. "No can do." Some rule about something, she muttered. She walked off. She was lying.

Hey, OP. Do you have any idea of what is required of a Walmart store manager, who is at the lowest level of access to the realities of Walmart, and that is at an introductory level?

A country cousin was a mere assistant manager at one location. It's a cult driving the worker insects. He finally quit and took a job as a prison guard, which he said had less stress.

They don't work retail hours. They work 1st shift Monday-Friday. Off holidays. The dept managers are the ones dealing with all the shit.

I have no doubt she earns that high salary. When I was college age, I was the GM of a chain restaurant with back and front of house staff of 22 and THAT job was so demanding and stressful. I can't imagine how much a GM of an entire fucking Walmart has to "own." It's actually good to see real opportunity being created for working class people.

You are WORKING for that 240k though. It’s fucking Walmart ffs.

Retail is the worst possible work environment. There isn't enough money in the world. And no job security - have a bad couple of months in sales / gross profit erosion because people are robbing you blind and they'll start circling you like sharks. Everything is your fault at that salary range. Much easier jobs pay just as much.

No thanks.

To do that job well you'd have to be a machine -- no feelings, no fatigue, endless patience. It's a "no" for me. I already have a job that provokes suicidal ideations.

Yes, R6 did in five words what it took you 80 words to even attempt. And you still failed, R10. Your point was lost in incomprehensible babble.

R19 how do you manage to type with your little fists on your hips?

I really don't believe it at all, she or someone is lying, this is the Internet

And her boss is an older black woman who probably makes $400,000 a year.

If you're motivated and work for a big retailer (like Wal Mart, Target, Home Depot, etc) you can move up and make an upper middle class income. Or, as is the case with many, you can stay as a cashier and have your income capped basically at $22 hour even if you've been there for 15 years.

A million isn’t entreat sleep and drink Walmart on call 24/7 slavery

No way in hell are you paying peanuts for all the stress that comes with a job like that. Having to deal with the "people of Walmart" types every day? I couldn't.

“You work at Walmart? And you dress like that?”

Walmart store manager is not a rung in the “corporate ladder”. It’s lead local blue collar worker.

You think her underlying co-workers hate her? Or have wages gone up for cashiers?

I interned at Walmart in college and had initially planned on a corporate job at their headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas. Ultimately, I decided I couldn't live there. With that said, the store managers do make really good money. The hours are horrible. You can get transferred to some God awful places. You have to deal with their customer base and their employees.

I wouldn't do her job for twice that salary. Working in retail is bad enough -- but SUPERVISING is a nightmare.

It may have changed in the intervening years, but I remember a CNBC documentary from the naughts about Wal Mart. They would make their corporate employees share double queen hotel rooms if more than one (of the same sex) were on a business trip together. All the way on up to the Senior Director, Chief xyz Officer level. Sam Walton would squeeze a nickel until the buffalo pooped; his kids aren’t themselves gazillionaires by being paragons of altruism and charity.

Forcing people to share hotel rooms sounds like a great way to increase turnover.

Good for her. The bonus considerably bumped up her take home. Probably depending on profit and job performance. But good for Walmart for not being stingy. Curious now of Costco which is known as a great employer.

It must be hard work, but I would imagine a company that large would have a pathway to leadership. It’s not like these are nepo babies.

I don't know if Walmart is different but most big box stores or grocery stores requite an MBA to be store manager. They typically aren't positions you work up to from within.

As someone mentioned upthread it's the dept heads who are working the longest hours and the front end managers deal with the worker bees and irate customers.

Yeah I was shocked that she got that far without a degree. At the retail store I worked, you couldn’t get to department manager without a degree, let alone store manager. It could be the shittiest, most unrelated degree but you better have had something before you applied.

I have an Ivy League MBA and if I found myself managing a Target I’d go sit in my closed garage with the ignition on.

Bring back pensions.

👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾 r37

The 401k is the biggest ripoff in the last century against low-wage corporate workers (who live paycheck to paycheck), and is more or less totally unavailable to part-time / shift / seasonal workers who instead have to scrape by on unemployment and food stamps. And then we wonder why Social Security is “insolvent” and needs to be privatized.

[quote]Walmart store manager is not a rung in the “corporate ladder”. It’s lead local blue collar worker.

She and others like her are blue collar workers. And she's making a quarter million a year, in an area of TX where the median income is fractions less than that. She's doing very well - where else would she be employed in that blue collar area, with her education level, that would ever pay her anywhere near that? At least it gives her and others like her a path to the middle class.

R31 - What's wrong with sharing a hotel room? I remember an employee bringing a stripper back from the club and we had a three-way. And that was probably the least sketchy of the stories to tell ...

I worked a couple nights a week at an Amazon warehouse. For the job the pay was all right. $22.00 per hour. All the overtime I could want. EEK The health benefits were great too. It was mind numbing though. I had just gotten out of the Army so the physical part wasn't that difficult. It sucked though. It was the first and hopefully only time I'll ever be the dehumanized. It was like Auschwitz without the ovens.

When it came close to my graduation they offered me an AM position at about that salary. I did the cat/hairball imitation and laughed. I can't imagine it would be any different managing a Walmart. That's the problem with supervising low end workers. You have to treat them like shit. So it takes a special kind of human to want a job like that.

I was r26 and I agree with you wholeheartedly. She’s undoubtedly worked her tail off for years and has advanced way up into a fantastic job and OTE, give her geography and the quantity of diplomas on her entryway wall. I was just taking exception to the characterization of her role as being some part of Wal Mart corporate. She’s not on a fast track to becoming Chief Logistics Officer. It could happen for her in the same sense that she may win the Powerball; however, she’s not currently standing on a rung of the corporate ladder.

An ex co-worker of mine from the 80's ended up getting a job at corporate WalMart about 2000 to 2015ish, if I remember correctly it was $600k a year with about a $400k bonus, so that's a million a year nearly a decade ago. He was a good way up the chain.

[quote]Much easier jobs pay just as much.

Examples, please? (better yet... examples of jobs that pay $240k/yr and don't require an advanced degree and many years of experience... let alone not requiring an undergraduate degree?)

Imagine if you get to share the hotel room your hot bi curious coworker?

What a Walmart store manager has to deal with

I’m sure the job can be challenging, but a lot of jobs are. It sounds like each Walmart has enough lower level managers that she isn’t hand ons with every single issue. She probably doesn’t ever have to deal with customers directly unless she wants to.

She made $119k in salary and $120k in bonus, so the $400k number for “some” isn’t relevant to her situation (unless that’s the next step for her). I don’t think $249k is crazy high for a competent person who has been with the same employer for 20 years. But it’s a very nice salary, especially for a HS grad.

It would be interesting to know:

1. What she was making at different points in that 20-year career? 2. How stable is the bonus amount? 3. How many other competent employees never get past the lower level customer facing jobs?

$250 a year in a not too high cost of living area is very appealing. But has that historically been achievable for ambitious and motivated Walmart employees?

The manager also has to deal with violent people

[quote]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.

Take the photo, then clean it up yourself. It's a sink. Employees respect senior staff who aren't afraid to get their hands dirty from time to time, rather than flounce around barking orders and acting as though they're above it all.

What exactly are they doing that warrants such a high salary? The cashier's are making $11 an hour. So fucked up.

Shitty American politics

R50 I imagine Walmart's annual profit is very high, so they need to pay those who manage their stores a decent salary. I'm sure $240K is a tiny percentage of said annual profit.