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I don't normally shop at Walmart because it's not convenient to me - both Target and Fred Meyer are closer and prices are comparable for the items I want - but they had TP I could order online so I did.
Took two orders first being canceled, but I finally got one to stick. The confirmation email said to go to the orange pickup tower when I got there. Not sure what I was expecting but it was not this massive beast!
But, I'm not really sure why it exists? You check in there and apparently some items are either within the tower or in one of the lockers (which presumably the checkin would unlock as needed), but my TP was not. Size, I guess?
But it put my name up on this board so I could track my order moving through the store. Presumably. Very, very cool if it works.
I know Walmart Labs has been doing lots of dev work and hiring in the Portland area, so if this is what they are doing it seems like some very good dev work.
However. As is almost always true, it still relies on humans to make it work. And they need to be paying attention. The woman in front of me was waiting when I got there (everyone masked, mostly giving space). I waited about 15 min, no updates on the board.
The woman finally flagged down an employee. "Oh, yeah. Just go to the customer service desk." Well why does this monstrosity and the entire system exist then?!
We both walked over and had our items in less than five minutes. An example of a really nice service created by a dev team, but clearly poorly implemented. Considering the $$ involved for something like this that's really, really bad planning.
Someone either didn't understand the requirements or didn't have buy-in from the people affected. So why build it?! Or, alternatively, why not direct employees to use the system?
Especially since customers are being directed to use the system, which is easy to understand and use.
