American reacts to 'Why Walmart Failed in Germany'

Thank you for watching me, a humble American, react to Why Walmart Failed in Germany

Thanks for subscribing for more German reactions every weekday!

Join as a member to get the ridiculous emojis and badge!

Got a video request? You can fill out this form!

Got a fun local news story? Submit it here!

Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. ALL RIGHTS BELONG TO THEIR RESPECTIVE OWNERS

[Erdbeerschorsch]

The idea to buy my car tires in the same shop where I buy my vegetables somehow doesn't feel right.

[SkeleterYT]

The Cheering starts: "Ehm, I'm handing in my resignation, I thought I worked for a professional company"

[PurpleSoulstice]

It's not true that Germans don't like being smiled at by strangers. Quite the opposite. We just don't like being greeted with a fake smile and certainly not when shopping. If we need information, we look for a sales clerk ourselves. For the employee, it's also a waste of time to greet us with artificial friendliness, as they usually have other things to do. It's a typical American thing.

[cobaltdrache]

General rule in germany: If someone greets you in a public space, gives you a fake smile and aproaches you, they usually try to sell you something, you don't want.

[tqluwpe]

The Walmart cheer is too strange for Germans. We like friendly People, but not false Smile.

[Diluculi]

As a german, I remember the news in 2006 when Walmart tried to essentially blackmail the government with "if you don't let us do this, we're out. Think of the jobs you'll lose!!"
and their standing at that point was so low that nobody considered that to be a threat 😂

[insu_na]

Another thing that contributed to Walmart's failure in Germany is that walmart forces their cashiers to stand.
Something like that would fly in the US maybe, but in Germany that's an absolute outrage. Cashiers have a hard enough job as it is, and then also not allowing them to sit when they want or need to is cruel and unusual punishment for... working...
That got a lot of backlash from customers and also led to significant employee turnover

[financemadesimple_official]

Hi Ryan, thanks so much for reacting to my video and I'm really glad that you enjoyed it! My video started to get an influx of views and I was trying to figure out where they were all coming from and then I ended up finding your video here.

I actually took a German Culture course in college and we talked about this topic as a case study in class. I've always been interested in business and finance, so the story of how Walmart's business approach failed in Germany always stuck with me ever since. It legitimately is a textbook case of what not to do as a business when expanding to other countries!

[MascotHorrorFan]

You have to think how these weird chants before work and practices of spying on other workers looked like to people who were there during the nazi regime and when the soviets controlled parts of germany. That was the vibe they got from Walmart

[schnelma]

I remember: You didn't want to buy from a company that treated its own employees badly. You become a kind of accomplice if you shop there

[lapisinfernalis]

I remember a Walmart from when I was still little (about 5-7 years old). I did not like to enter the market at all, because the staff was smiling and "wanting to help" all the time. It freaked me out. In addition to that the stories about the chant were also frightening on a completely different scale, because it reminded many older workers of the Nazis and their chants.
For me it was just a place of a nightmare in a nice box.

[marsa]

I watched several videos addressing the Walmart disaster in Germany but, if I remember correctly, all of them have missed another important issue. At least, middle-class Germans follow an " Excellence by Specialization" culture. If a pizza delivery service also offers Turkish, Indian, and contemporary German cuisine, my fellow Germans do not believe they are dealing with the Kwisatz Haderach of Chefs but with someone who read multiple cookbooks lacking experience, heart, and soul.
A grocery store offering car spare parts, electronics, and more falls into the same category.

[n.n.]

We had one of the first walmarts where I lived in the 90s. My best friend's mom worked there from the start. But there were a few things that made everyone go out of their way to NOt shop at Walmart. For starters, Walmart put up cameras in every corner of the store. They soon explained to people that that wasn't to watch what you are buying but to watch their employees which in turn made everyone mad at Walmart for spying.
On top of that, there weren't many brands that were known to people. Washing detergents, soap, shampoo, bread... Most people are set on a certain brand here.
Then slowly reports surfaces about how employees were treated. My friends mother didn't have much of an education so she was stuck there but everyone who had an option left. We would often go to Walmart after school to wait for her to get off work. She had to work overtime with no notice, she was exhausted from standing all day, her breaks were cut short, she wasn't allowed to drink water on the job, and she didn't even get much of a discount on things. Students who had hoped for a student job were scheduled to work during school hours. Senior citizens were asked to work a few hours were then scheduled to work full time, losing their pensions.
We sometimes bought American snacks there but, it didn't make much sense.
Also: walmart had a huge parking lot out front but in the city most people would take the tram or their bikes so now with that huge plot between the tram station/bike stand and the store people were to carry their bags longer distances which was just stupid, take the tram one stop further and shop at Aldi's where you can enter the store from the tram. And Walmart had dumb shopping carts that weren't at all practical, just big.

Walmart tried to reason that they treated their employees the same as their American employees but it's not like that helped their case. I mean you telling me you are a bad person everywhere doesn't make you a good person anywhere. We were just baffled that they didn't understand their own words.

[dermathe-boller]

Walmart arrived thinking Germany was just waiting for them. They completely underestimated the competition that Aldi, Lidl and Globus gave them. They also replaced the counters with fresh goods with packaged goods. There were no familiar items in their range. What motivated me to boycott Walmart at the time was the arrogant, turbo-capitalist way in which it treated its workforce. And I could do without that fake, lying smile. Ultimately, Walmart disappeared without a hitch and no one misses them to this day.

[KahoriFutunaka]

*taking notes* "Walmart had no idea how the German consumer market functions, tried to implement a cult which reminds me of a mixture of Scientology and the Stasi (GDR secret police) AND did not give a f about the worker's rights we have fought and died for since at least the mid 19th century. When it all backfired they made a surprised Pikachu face." ... did I get that right?

[thegreatveritas]

I worked at a Walmart in Germany back in the day.
I can confirm that many products vanished and the working conditions were toxic.
Worst thing that we had to sing several times every day how much we love Walmart and how much we love it to work there.
We even had a VHS-tape we had to watch every morning before the doors opened.
It was no surprise that they failed.

EDIT: Yes, they changed the name.

[tqluwpe]

Wir hatten mal Walmart. Die haben damals einen anderen Supermarkt bei mir gegenüber aufgekauft und schon das Personal war überrascht. Sie sollten plötzlich vor der Arbeit ein Gruppenmeeting zur Motivation machen. Das waren Leute, die in dem Gebäude unter verschiedenen Besitzern immer ihren Job bestens gemacht haben. Dann verschwanden erstmal viele bekannte Marken aus dem Sortiment. Statt dessen wurden auf der Fläche hässliche, billige Klamotten und Schuhe angeboten, die niemand haben wollte. Walmart ist mit einer Milliarde Dollar Verlust aus Deutschland wieder gegangen.

[GödekeMichels_]

The employment ethics code wasn't struck down by the goverment, but by the courts. At some point they basically told Wallmarkt that all their work contracts are partly illegal and thus those parts all revert back to the base standart contract in the lawbooks (which was very bad for Wallmarkt).

[arnewengertsmann]

I was in a Walmart once. Must have been somewhere around 2000 or so. When I got in some employee came around smiled at me and greeted me. I was like... nope, I'm out. Never went in there again. If I go shoping, I want to get in there, get my things and get the hell out as fast as possible. If I have questions or need help, I will ask for it. As long as I don't ask for help, please assume, I don't need any.

Another thing was this motivation thing. When I was in my senio year at school, around the same time as my Walmart expirience, we got that motivational trainer in school. She tried those same things we saw in the video in an attempt to raise school spirit and morale. Basically she crashed and burned and the project was canceled after about a month, as almost all the students and all the teachers found those practices completely ridiculous. We would just silently watch her making a fool out of herself and more or less ignore her.

So yeah, as much as we adapted from the US, those things just don't translate here. We just aren't comfortable with over friendly, and forced cheery people. It seems fake to us. And most Germans just hate it.

[thehellscourge]

This reminds me of the story about how at a Wallmart meeting, for their upcoming Black Friday sale, they told workers not toa ccept superbowl cards in exchange for keeping ware in stock for selected costumers. And the german workers were looking at each other 'wtf mate'.