sniperc151 posted pictures from her local Walmart Canada store in Grande Prairie, Alberta showing how they are breaking safety codes by placing products along Fire Exits:
I had to show you these pictures of walmart, I’m sure this is against about 100 fire codes.
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was this just one day or all the time
i mean sometimes they do have to move things/renovation etc
our local wal mart is so bad for this sometimes that you cannot even get a cart thru the asiles…
:O
It has been like this for three days, these pictures were taken at 5:00pm on a Sunday
My walmart is like that right now too. My Extra Foods is like that ALL the time. You can’t get down aisles, it’s bad.
The sad thing about this is if the store it self looks like this, then I know that the stock rooms are 10 times worst. And it is not only Walmart but I have Seen Zellers. I used to work at a zellers store. What happends is the stores get so much stock at once Being it is Halloween and Christmas and winter thing and some store still trying to sell what they have left of summer stock and really have no place to put it. and then ends up out on to the sales floors like in the pictures….
But I know that safety of people should come first. And why isn’t something done about it…..I know that some stores Know when the inspectors are coming (so they clean up before they come, so everything looks great) and some stores get warnings from the inspectors…But I have never seen anything done about this….
fire code is 36-inches clearance. Imagine being in a wheelchair and needing to get out in a fire…
I noticed that the Walmart trademark/logo is judiciously omitted. 😉
Wal-mart should have thought twice about messing with the folks of SC!!!
Perhaps you should have a talk with management. I live in the Niagara Region in Ontario and have NEVER seen any of our Walmarts here look like that, at all! Somebody in that store needs to step up and get their shite together.
often this is the case about an hour or 2 before closing too, the night crew puts all the stock out overnight. Surprisingly, if you’ve ever been in the stock rooms, their aisle are fairly clear….
Why post these here? Call your local fire marshall with your concerns.
I just assumed this was normal for Walmart because ours is constantly like this. I can’t push the stroller down some of the aisles
Uh oh…
*squinting at sky and sniffing*
Storm’s a comin’!
Those are unbelievable pictures! I remember being in Walmart when they are open 24 hours just before Xmas. The aisles were bad but not as bad as this.
Your right mcminsen.. storm’s a comin’.
Don’t pick on Walmart Grand Pararie, because every Walmart looks like this at one point or another. This is their solution when the new seasons stock comes in, and they don’t have room in the back to accomodate all of it.
I have seen this in more than one Walmart store in Canada.
Sask. mayor worried Wal-Mart will close unionized store
http://www.cbc.ca/consumer/story/2008/12/10/wal-mart-weyburn.html
Glad you posted this
Walmart is so corrupt, the only reason things like this is not in the news is because of their Lawyers
I emailed the photos, and comments to the Grand Prairie Fire Department
MICHELEal:………if all walmarts ARE like this, then report them. GLAD they are picking on them here as most stores no one ever reports anything just COMPLAINS about them
ps………and the ‘dont have room comment’ is a lark. WALMART doesnt have enough staff or wont pay them enough. Walmart knows that what they are doing is wrong. They constantly break the rules, yet in their training program its all about “safety first” ……I hope this walmart gets a HUGE FINE……..buggers!
Mark my words…. they will not do anything about it until someone is badly injured and then they will speak in platitudes about “implementing new safety measures to ensure this type of unfortunate incident does not occur again”
🙁
I’ve seen my WM and Zellers both like this at times but the worst store for it would have to be the Dollarama’s 🙁 I went to one the other day with my daughter and couldn’t get her stroller down ANY of the aisles!! They had one aisle completely blocked and roped off b/c of all the boxes…..I don’t see it very often at WM though and the times I have seen it were mainly close to closing time or first thing in the morning.
I SEE A STORM A COMIN; TOO GUESS .SM. DID’NT LIKE THE RESULTS OF “ROUND 1”
The first photo was actually alright, as they only need to leave about 4′ clearance. The other photos are problems only if there isn’t another route within 100′ or blocking emergency exit doors, or causing the fire route to be longer than 100′. It is too hard to tell from the photos.
The real problem here is wheelchair accessibility. They could get fined under ADA act.
Last Christmas when my local Brampton wal-mart was opened 24hours, I would often go in the very early morning with my mom on weekends to avoid the massive crowds. I found that the vast amount of skids miles high strewn across every inch of the sales floor were even more angering than the crowds of senseless scrambling idiots. I kept saying to my mom- “why do they even open 24hours if the hours outside of regular business the store is unmangeable to navigate?”
I guarantee you that if I have to go there again this winter I will be sure to take photos and report them to the authorities. Also, when browsing for men’s electric shavers kept behind a glass case we spent close to an hour begging and waiting for someone to come and open the case- no one ever came and we took our business elsewhere. I HATE wal-mart.
Looks like my Walmart store. Another reason I hate shopping there!
ours is always like this, esp after 5pm
This is an ongoing problem at Walmart and many other retailers. Besides violating health & safety regs. and the fire code, it is just difficult for people to shop so it is costing them. I know they don’t care about their employees or the public but they should care about losing business. If I can’t get to the product, I can’t buy it. At my Walmart, they actually had the shelves set up in one area so that you could only get one cart down the aisle and that was without any other obstacles on the floor. The aisle was obviously not wide enough.
When you see something like this, call the fire department (prevention division) and call the Ministry of Labour and get an inspector sent in. Walmart doesn’t care about injuries because they don’t report them. In 2005, they were fined in Ontario for not reporting injuries. May be if they get some orders issued, they will clean up their stores.
Yeah, that reminds me of how it looked when I used to work retail. If there’d even been a fire there would have been no way to access fire escapes other than to climb over unsteady pallets of product that were all about 6 feet high.
Walmart may be messing up big time. Please do no assume they are on your part. Could be open to litigation. We know how much they love you.
Harold
I’m not surprised at all. I work at a personal injury law firm, and Walmart is one of the most often sued department stores by us. They probably don’t care, as the insurance company pays. It’s probably cheaper to pay higher insurance premium then to rent /warehouse storage space.
This is what our walmart looks like quite often as well. This is not a early evening or morning thing. This is an all day for months at a time. Talking to the employees leads me to belive that the stockrooms look much worse than the aisles, and walmart keeps cutting the hours of the employees so that there are even less people to clear out the clutter!
Thanks for the tip on phoning the fire marshal though, I hadn’t thought about that.
I have to agree with this problem with Wal-Mart. Here in Woodstock, Wal-Mart relocated their store and built a smaller store than the one they had on the other side of town. At Christmas ( and many other times, too ) you could not push a cart down the aisles. Currently they are expanding their store but only because they are becoming a “superstore” to carry groceries, too. I am really ticked at this because they launched a huge protest and law suit when our local Zehrs store tried to stock their ‘Joe Fashions”. They said it was too much competition in town but now, here they are, putting in a huge grocery store. Is that not competition with the other grocery stores? I try very hard not to shop there as I want to buy Canadian made products, even if they cost a little more. We have got to do our part to stimulate our own economy and stop giving all our money to Chinese products that are poorly made!!
Jan in Woodstock, Ontario
most dept stores in Edmonton look just like this – Rona, Home Depot, Walmart, Dollarama. It’s ridiculous and frustrating to shop at these places!
It looks like “adora” is only one who actually attempted to read the fire codes. I see this everywhere – not just Walmart, but also in Zellers, Fields, Dollar Stores, Dollaramas, and occasionally at Home Outfitters, Home Depot, and Sears as well. When I worked in retails, we did have fire marshals dropping by fairly often, but he did not seem to care about the rows of skids on the floor. As long as the fire exits and “means of egress” are not blocked (I believe 43” in width for BC), they were satisfied. As a stock boy, I had to move some skids when the fire marshal thought they were questionable, but overall we always passed the inspections. Wheelchair accessibilities were another matter all together as adora stated. If you have any fire safety concerns, you should be contacting your local fire department.
Luca
PS: The first picture seems to show enough width, but the rest I cannot tell if the skids are actually blocking the exits or the passage to the nearest exit(s).
HI i show the same think here in Scarborough Supper store
they are doing all store in scarborough
The fourth picture is the only picture actually blocking a fire exit, it actually completely blocks off one of two of walmarts stock rooms, I have another picture which shows their mechanics area completely filled with skids which I am pretty sure is a fire exit…
My concern is that in a panic some people are going to be thinking lets go to the nearest fire exit, and some will be thinking get to the front door… This causes traffic jams, I’m sorry and I’m not trying to offend people but it can be hard enough to get by a normal size person in some aisles staring at the merchandise let alone a large person, or a person in a wheelchair. Magnify that frustration with an emergency, it is not going to be pretty, stores should not try to “meet” fire code, they should try to exceed it.
Anyways I put these pictures up because my walmart is like this ALL the time, Most of the time it is not that bad, but it has been WORSE!!!
I do not want to get anyone fired (maybe reprimanded).
The sad abuse story of Canadians workers rights continues.
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/toronto/story/2009/09/22/qc-labour-walmart-compensation.html
Former employees at a Wal-Mart store in Jonquière, Que., could be compensated for having lost their jobs after a decision to unionize.
The Quebec Labour Relations Board ruled Tuesday it was illegal for Wal-Mart to lay off 190 workers in April 2005, shortly after they sought union accreditation.
In his ruling, arbitrator Jean-Guy Ménard said the company had not justified its decision to dismiss its employees.
Thanks for the post,Great stuff!! All working wonderfully
I work for the big W and my store doesn’t have skids on the sales floor when the store is open, the ONLY time there are skids on the floor is at 1000 pm truck being pulled to floor skids are placed in main isle Not blocking customers space or fire doors there has been No cut back of hours No lack of wages being increased
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