frank sent a message to Doug McMillon, President and Chief Executive Officer ,Walmart Stores, Inc. Email Address that said:
I am a musician who has recently done a charity water run for the people of Flint, MI. To make this run a success, we used several of your locations as meet up and drop off zones for water in which we later took the collected water to Flint ourselves. The entire trip was a great success and for the most part your company was a very accommodating and helpful one for our cause. However, your store in Maysville, KY was not so accommodating due to the actions of one Assistant Manager by the name of Stephen Smalley.
Ideally, we wanted to set up with your company so we could be by your entrances where we could catch the most attention. I made countless attempts to contact the Maysville store to properly arrange this. Not only was I not successful, but I spent most of the attempts on hold and being transferred for 30 minutes or more each time only to be told âthe person I need to speak with is not inâ and I would need to call back. After FINALLY speaking with someone in personnel, I was told I had no choice but to show up in person to pick up the proper paperwork from customer service despite being from out of town. I agreed and made the drive a few days later only to be told by customer service that I would have to come back another day when someone from personnel was working, and they could not give me a day or time when that would be. Despite my best efforts and even speaking with management, I was sent home without the paperwork. Needless to say, I was pretty frustrated and exhausted with this task by now.
On Feb. 26th, at 10:00 am we set up outside of the Maysville store. Because we could not get the proper paperwork to run our charity event in front of the store, we set up on the outer edge of the storeâs parking lot. Around 1:00 pm we were approached by the storeâs assistant manager, Mr. Smalley. He pulled up claiming to be on his lunch break and immediately took a negative and disrespectful tone with my teammate. Overhearing this confrontation, I approached to try and neutralize the situation. At no point did any of my team or I speak in a disrespectful manner to him or act confrontational. Mr. Smalley changed his attitude briefly when I approached and he saw that I was filming. However, it didnât take long for him to revert back to his rude approach to the situation and even went as far as to involve local law enforcement despite our attempt to simply communicate with him.
Please understand, this email is NOT about if he was right or wrong in telling us to leave. This is about how a member of your MANAGEMENT handled the issue. I understand that your company has a policy for these kind of things, and I even understand 100% why! I wish I would have better educated myself on it before I set up on Wal-Mart property. However, I would safely bet, your company has a great training process and I would assume Wal-Mart takes pride in their management being so well trained and respectful toward your customers! This man however, is an embarrassment to your business and I hope this issue will be viewed as important enough for Wal-Mart to address the situation and that Mr. Smalley will be appropriately reprimanded for it.
The video of this event is on Facebook and reached over 30,000 views in the first 24 hours. Because of my respect for your business and for the other employees there, I wish this to be as far as this goes on social media. However, I am asking that Wal-Mart handles this issue with Mr. Smalley from the inside. I have already been put in contact with a channel news station as well as being contacted by celebrities who are native to Michigan offering their assistance in the event that a protest is arranged at the Maysville store location because of this incident. Despite the personal feelings I now have towards this man and the display of unprofessional attacks towards me via Facebook on his behalf, some by other Wal-Mart employees, I would like to put these events on hold and allow your company to handle the issue first. Hopefully that will eliminate the need to react using such measures if the issue can be resolved at the company level.
I would like to thank you for your time and offer my complete cooperation in resolving this issue. Please feel free to contact me in any way to help put this behind us.
Respectfully,
Frank
