My first fulltime job was as a overnight stocker at Walmart in their food department. I even met my girlfriend of 7 years there.
I was top shit there for many years until she showed up. I was in line to be the next lead hand, even supervisor. Until I saw how they treated her. Maybe it was that I never noticed how they treat women or maybe it's because she was better than us.
We started dating and she was in my department. Work is work. It didn't change how I worked, though I would wave and smile to her whenever we passed in the isles which probably slowed me down a bit.
Our job was to take these tall carts over to skids, fill our carts with products for an isle, then stock the items. I got bored of that quickly and would grab a pump cart, pick up a whole skid, and just navigate around based on the layers of the skid.
My girlfriend decided to the same as she was just as quick if not quicker. After a few days of this the lead hand told her “hey stop doing that, let the men do the heavy work like that”. Obviously that pissed her and I off. I spoke to the lead hand calmly saying she's just as good as us why can't she grab a skid? The response was “she's just a little girl, don't make her do all the work”. I didn't want to be hostile so I laughed it off with them.
Throughout that month she would get confronted by management about “being a show off” and to “slow down, you're too cute to work so hard”. The last comment was the last straw. I setup a meeting with management.
In the meeting it was myself and 2 managers. I told them my opinion and how if you want us to remain a team you need to stop being rude. Their response was that they wanted me and the other 2 guys to do all the heavy and hard work while the 2 females zoned the isles (facing cans and packing forward so it looked nice). I told them that it would slow everything down if they didn't help us stock all night (we used to spend the last hour of the night zoning anyway). I guess my tone was hostile as they went off at me about how I will now never move up. I still remember the words “remember that management position we talked about? That's off the table now”.
The next day we showed up late for the first time. Walked right into the middle of the night shift meeting, right up the managers. “We're quitting” we say in front of everyone. They stopped the meeting and gave us an exit interview. We did the meeting and I highly doubt they wrote down anything.
We will never work at Walmart again and I recommended only working there as a starter job to add something to your resume. Don't make it your career. They don't care about you.