Wal-Mart Associate Blog

Hit Points: 400Million
Armor: Expensive Cloth Suite
Special Abilities:
-Termination (Instantly kills target, grants 100% melee haste, target may not be battle rezzed for 6 months) Global Cooldown
-Coaching (Stacking Debuff with 1 year duration – At 3 Coaching stacks Target is instantly terminated and may not be battle rezzed for 6 months) Global Cooldown
-Conference Call (Manager goes AFK and sits down for 30 minutes behind closed door, does not regenerate health and is immune to taunt and threat generating abilities, the boss cannot be dps’d at this time, the door is destructable using saronite bombs and other siege materials, this ability will only activate on Mondays before 3pm server time, if you destroy the door it will activate hard mode.)
-Walk Salesfloor (Boss is vulnerable to ranged attacks, summons either Co-Managers or Assistant Managers and proceeds to kite raid around 220,000 sq ft store the Co and Assistance will despawn after Kite phase is completed)
-Summon Support Manager (these can be ignored, they really don’t do anything at all besides be an annoyance to just about everyone including the boss, 1 cast will summon 7 of these, but as i said, they can be ignored, these are more of a test of your video card rendoring capabilities) 45s cool down 3s cast time

-Strategy-  note: This boss fight has never been completed

The idea behind this fight is that all the tanks are one shotted, it is up to the DPS to down the boss before every tank in the raid is dead.  On normal mode the boss will go through the alotted 750 tanks in around 6 minutes.  His/Her melee swings only hit for 2-3hp but the termination skill is what kills the tanks, the termination skill has been found to penetrate Devine Shield, as Termination does no damage and will instantly kill the target reguadless of hit point pool, devine protection and priest shields have no effect against the ability.

At a random percentage “Conference call” phase is activated.  You will not AFK out of the game but you must return before the conference call is over.  If you decide to break down the door, this will activate hard mode..   In hard mode the bosses Global Cooldown is removed, reducing the fight time by half.

At 38% the boss will begin his kite phase that usually last around 20 minutes,  the Co Managers and Assistant managers will randomly charge and knockback players but don’t do any real damage.  DPSing them down will enrage the boss causing the boss to cast “Pulsating blood vessal” which is a raid wide AOE wipe ability.  They will despawn after the phase is completed.

Coaching is a stacking Debuff that is thrown out to random raid members.  At 3 coachings you die and cannot be battle rezzed. Coaching cannot be thrown on tanks with more then 55% threat.

Armor Pen is not needed for this fight as he/she wears cloth.

Loot:
can drop a number of retail usable items including:
Telxon – Laser Scanning Beam is for effect only, can cause blindness on gnomes and goblins.

Walkie Talkie – Sometimes inlcudes earpeice for private listenting

And a rare riding mount of random design, year, and color. (Hard Mode only)

Pet: Walter (1% Drop rate on hard mode) Will sometimes say “Get your shit, and get out”

Company Policies or Serving our Customers?   My 10 years as a Wal-Mart associate my instinctive training told me to answer Serving our Customers, however the management staff at my location today told me I was wrong in this assumption.  Please let me explain in detail the entire situation.

This may be a little in depth but please bare with me.

Yesterday (June 7th, 2010) Apple Incorporated launched the newest version of their iPhone. Leading up to that, AT&T changed their Data Rate plans to remove the Unlimited iPhone data plan and Grandfathered in every one who had it prior to the change.  In our location the computer software that we use was not updated with the new data packages for the iPhone data plans yet and one of the associates that worked in the Connection Center was going discussing this with a customer and wanted to include me so I would know how to answer questions regarding this topic.

This was around 3:05pm.

Typically around 3PM CST our store does a “3 o’clock zone” which involves all associates going the consumable areas to help zone and clean (to my knowledge we are the only store company wide that does this).   To me, there is nothing wrong with this, it helps get the store into a manageable state for the evening shift, and makes the store presentable to the customer. However it does tend to pull associates out of their own areas, leaving those areas void of associates who are there to assist customers.

At around 3:10pm we where still discussing the data plan changes and the new iPhone announcements when my store manager walked by and asked me to go to grocery to assist in the 3 o’clock zone. I told him we where working with a customer and I would go when I was finished.  He said “okay” and walked away as if everything was well… Okay.   the next thing I know I have my Department manager and my Zone Supervisor in my face telling me to stop assisting the Connection Center associate and straight to the grocery departments to assist in the 3 o’clock zone.  In my attempts to explain that I was assisting another associate with a customer my Zone Supervisor and department manager interrupted me a total of 4 times, and at this point they where yelling at me in front of the customer. This indeed had upset me to the point where I didn’t want to speak to either of them and wanted to get off the sales floor and blow off some steam before heading back to the floor.  After blowing off steam I went ahead and decided to go to Grocery where one of the assistant managers where sent to talk to me about the situation and after a quick chat I stayed in grocery until the end of the 3oclock zone at 4pm.

I’m sure at this point I had fumes coming out of my ears over the whole situation.  I am working at Wal-Mart to provide customers with assistance to products that we sell,  I am one of the few who are completely honest with our customers about everything that we sell when asked my opinion on items.  My position is Electronics Sales Associate, i’ve been told many times that I am one of the most knowledgeable associates in the department in regards to the products that we carry.  I’m pride myself in the fact that I research everything I can on our products to help customers make informed decisions about what they are buying and to help them understand what they need to do to get it working.

I, however, am not there to “Make Wally a buck” as a fellow associate of mine says sometimes. If I know they can get a product cheaper some place else that is equal to or better than what they are looking at, and its not within our guidelines to price match the product I’ll will tell the customer this information.  I do not work for Wal-Mart to make Wal-Mart millions of dollars every year.

Today (June 8th 2010) I was given a Verbal Coaching (Wal-Mart lingo for write up) in which I was accused of insubordination and challenging the authority of  my supervisors.  And even during this coaching session I tried to explain to my hourly supervisor and the salaried manager that I was doing what I thought was in the best interest to our customers that myself and the Connection Center associate was attempting to help.  They proceeded to tell me that the “correct thing to do” was to proceed to the grocery department that had been asked of me without question.

Now, I don’t know about you, but the impression I got from this was that they really didn’t care at all that I was helping a customer but our policies and procedures are way more important then assisting customers.  Even after receiving a verbal coaching, I stand by what I know is correct and right and not what they think is.  The customers bring and spend their money in our stores, they are more important then any reason anyone can bring up not to help them. The only thing that superceeds the needs of the customers are the safety of the associates and other customers.