That is really a shame and such a waste. I agree that taking it out on the cashier was out of line.

I don't know how Walmart handles this... but I know, Home Depot gets a full vendor credit for plants they toss out.

With other words, no incentive to keep them nice... but I also know, the employees (formerly me) try their best to get all plants watered daily. However, there is so much to do, including helping customers, answering the phone and such, that one never gets to ALL of the plants.

Moni

What a shame. I was going to say that Walmart loses money over running their business like that, but from what Moni says, they have no incentive to keep the plants alive. I wouldn't want to be the supplier to them in that case.

And I agree that there is no time that behavior like that woman showed should be tolerated.

I see that all the time at our Walmarts as well. They shouldn't even have a plant section if they can't take care of them.

Taking it out on a cashier is terrible. Same as customers who tear a strip of gas-station employees for the price of gas. Small-minded and mean-spirited people.

Steve, I love your rebuttal!!

I worked at WalMart, Lowe's and Home Depot garden centers. They have two types of vendors.

Type one, the plants are bought outright from the vendor and there is a no-return, no credit. The store owns those plants. Those are the ones that end up on the markdown racks.

Type two, the plants are bought on "consignment," and the plants that die MUST be destroyed and a record kept to give to the vendor so they can be reimbursed. WM and HD don't even keep the pots, but Lowe's does, and gives them for free to customers. I've gotten most of my plant pots from Lowe's.

I've had assistant store managers at WalMart mark down plants for me, but I've only had one that lived. WalMart tends to let their plants get too far gone before they mark them down. Lowe's will pull huge numbers of perfectly good plants and mark them down just to make room for new plants.

WalMart, and most big-box garden centers, consider plants "loss leaders." They actually lose money on the plants, but they bring people into the garden center to buy other things like accessories, chemicals, tools, etc.

I haven't been to HD in years, but when I worked there, they didn't mark down plants. All their plants were "consignment" plants. Maybe they've changed.

Reading this is odd to me, as I have often found just the opposite situation in our Walmart. Very rarely see any plants too dry, but often find them drowning. Especially those in cache pots without drainage holes. And I am not above tipping pots to drain them. I hate to see cacti and succulents in standing water!

Rusty

Rusty, some WalMarts are better than others. We used to have a WalMart in Sarasota that had the most beautiful garden center, but they had a manager who knew her stuff. When she left, it went all to hell. I used to fight with the managers at my stores all the time about how much to water plants.

Last year I went to a certain BBS. It was about 93F and humid that day. I was walking around the garden center outside. There were mountains of boxes everywhere. Some had plants in them. Some had been opened and the plants not taken out, and you could see how horrible and wilted the plants were. A few days later I was back there to get something I forgot. Those boxes of plants were still there and plants looked dead. I dont think vendors should have to pay these BBS to kill the plants. Its really sad.

Wal-Mart and Amazon, among others, are big enough to bully their suppliers. My brother works at Sony managing client relations for stores that sell Sony blu-ray movies, and this is what he has told me. They are both bad, but he said Wal-Mart was the worst to deal with.

All of the plants I have bought recently were from Lowes in the discounted plant Racks. Some were just as nice as the full price ones. I paid $1 for most of them. The most expensive was $5. There's still a lot of them available you just have to know to go way to the back of the garden center where they have them. It hurts to see plants mistreated. All of these were from the discount rack

I had to go back for something today. Well, of course I had to go and check out the situation. There were several of those moveable racks parked near the rear of the garden area (inside) and all the plants on them were completely, totally dead and they were completely full. They are probably the same ones I saw on Saturday. In the areas where the plants had been put on display were still some that were dead and dying. And outside the main door were several new racks from the nursery completely loaded with plants. It looked like they were all OK but they won't be if they sit there for days like the other ones did. As I moved through the whole area, there wasn't one staff member anywhere, including the cash register. What a shame.

Makes me wonder about the rest of that particular store. There appears to be little consistency in the management of dep't.s across various stores.

And honestly, in some stores, the level of competency among employees can be very low. Walmart seems to have a higher share of this than other places, IMPE.

Because I know several people that work at Walmart, I can tell you that they have cut their staff down to the bare bones and likely there is no one that is assigned to taking care of the plants. Walmart has drastically changed over the years to having lots of employees to help everyone to having one person to do the job that they used to have FIVE employees to do. Then you add in people calling in sick, there's hardly anyone to do the jobs that need to be done. I'm surprised that Walmart hasn't suffered for this. But the stock keeps going up!

I think it depends on both the store and the management. Some have drastically cut back employees or reduced staff in key areas to the bone. So you don’t always have knowledgeable people working in departments who care anymore.

When our Lowe’s first opened years ago, there were actual horticulture experts available most of the day to help. That was short-lived, but at least during busy spring and summer times they had staff to keep the plants displayed properly and watered. Sure they had some die and had a mark-down rack of the ones that didn’t do well but it was usually toward the end of the growing season for that variety. HD was about the same. I never shopped much at WM but their selection wasn’t as large and pretty much uninspired. I never have seen any dead plants there though.

You would think they could hire a few college students looking for part time work to water plants or move them around. But it takes someone who knows where sun or shade plants go and where to properly locate them sometimes for display to get it right. In our heat here you sometimes have to water twice a day in summer.

my W is the pits. I've been shopping there less and less. it's only about 5 min away, but yesterday I drove about 6 miles to a locally owned grocery and even bought a few things I normally get at W - and paid a bit more for those things. Half the time I can't find things in my W anymore. they keep moving things to different aisles and I figure a few cents here and there on an item was worth it not to spend more time walking around looking for things in W. sometimes even if I find what I want, it's several shelves too high for me to reach. and many of their shelves are not stocked. there are huge open areas on the shelves that are empty. The W over in our little town is much better stocked and if I'm over there, I'll stop there rather than go to the one down the road by my house.

I am not thrilled with wallmart or the garden center. I find myself shopping there less and less. I like lowes a lot better for plants. The plants are nicer looking. I like that they discount the less than perfect plants instead of throwing them away. Got a great deal last spring on sweet potato vines from lowes. We got a late frost after they put out their plants for the season. The vines got nipped. I got $ 5 pots of them for $1. I picked off the leaves that were brown, planted them and they were the best I ever planted.

I see dying plants all the time at WM. Rarely shop any of the big box stores for plants. Much prefer local independent nurseries.

This is how cheap the Walmart over here is; they don't even hire seasonal help anymore at Christmas time...YAH!

OH and I get so tired of trying to go there and the shelves are wiped out/empty! That's because they don't have the employees to stock when they need to be stocked.

This particular store has certain areas that get really bad and then they straighten it out but another one will suffer. And yes they also have the problem of running out of inventory A couple of years ago the Women's clothes department was such a shambles that I sent corporate an email and they straightened it out but now it's the garden center. I'm just wondering if the people that used to work that area either were let go or hours cut or they just quit. You would think that they would make every effort to make the store nice and to please customers because of the stiff competition with Amazon but they just aren't making that effort, it's like now they are putting all their focus on online ordering and ordering for pickup, etc. - the old-fashioned customer that walks in and shops is now not being served. I also don't understand why Target's stores are always well stocked, clean and orderly, nothing out of place or miss-labeled or miss-priced. And when you even begin to look like you need help there is someone who flies out of the architecture to ask you if you need help. Why are they able to do that and Walmart can't?

I love that Lowes neglects stuff then puts it on the kill rack..I've found some of the best stuff there!

BBS have contracts for space with the vendors. If a vendor has leased x amount of space for x amount of time, and the next vendor sends their plants early, they are contractually prohibited from removing the previous vendor's plants, or to put them out at all. They call the vendor and give them the opportunity to pick them back up. Usually, it is not financially worth the vendor's time to pick them up, so they just let them stay there. If WalMart is refusing to pay for the plants, they have to scan and dispose of all those plants and send a report of this to the vendor. If they are consignment plants, and the vendor asks them to hold the plants for pickup, they have to do that.

It's all a complicated legal dance of contracts.