Hate walmart.
I live in a crowded part of a big city, and there is no room for a huge Wal-Mart (let alone a parking lot). But we do have a Wal-Mart Express (or whatever the hell they call it) which is basically a big drug store and grocery store and little else. I LOVE it. Great prices on the stuff that I would otherwise get at Walgreen’s or CVS for 50% more money. Plus equal or better quality to the name brands.
I like Walmart and do probably 90% of my bricks and mortar shopping there, usually once or twice a week for groceries and whatever else I need. I like the superstores since sometimes need groceries + something not usually carried by grocery stores on my trips.
Everybody hates Wal-Mart, so nobody goes there anymore.
Maybe that’s why it’s so crowded and they’re making so much money.
I rarely shop at Wal-Mart except when I’m on road trips. Apart from Target, there just isn’t a good option for one-stop shopping when I need a bunch of miscellaneous items.
I have shopped in Wal-Mart twice, mainly because I had no other options. Not my style of shopping but I don’t mind going to the Super Target occasionally.
With all the hate seen in this thread, I wonder how they can stay in business?
Possible explanations:[ul][]Dopers are not a typical cross section of the economy, but a minor sub-section* Dopers are hypocrites and shop at WalMart but don’t admit it[]Dopers are following the crowd. The alternative crowd. Y’know – the one WalMart doesn’t care about and doesn’t cater toDopers who like WalMart are afraid to stand up because they’ll be shot down.[/ul]
If I didn’t know better, I’d say you live in my town. Maybe you do.
Our mall is almost dead, but now that Sears is closing I give it a year. Just about everyone else, all the small stores, are gone. We have one supermarket still hanging on, and their prices are higher than Wal Marts, but I really try to go there for my food. I fill my prescriptions at CVS although that’s not really a local business. The town is full of empty buildings that no one will ever rent. I blame Wal Mart, but I also blame the people who flocked there, myself included, thinking the other stores would hang around.
Well, there it is. “I hate it, but I go regularly for…”. Walmart exists because we value price over all else. If we were truly concerned about Walmart’s business practices or treatment of their employees, we would shop somewhere else, even if it took us out of our way. We are hooked on cheap and convenient. Walmart doesn’t force anyone to shop there or to work there. They make money because we give it to them.
Should we vent our spleen at a company that provides the service we’ve asked for? Hardly fair.
WalMart is The One Ring of retail stores. It promises you everything, but is only interested in taking.
The goods you take out of WalMart are like the smelly physical evidence on your nethers as you sadly drive home from a really bad relationship choice. And when you get home, taking shoddy junk out of the box, you’re increasingly unsure just how consentual your experience really was. You self-loathe and there is somehow never enough hot water to get yourself clean.
I live in the city that has many stores. I hate shopping so I try to limit as much as possible. I enjoy enough of a disposable income where I don’t have to pinch every single penny. I don’t like the layout of the store or its colossal size. And I don’t care for Walmart’s reputation.
These are the reasons I don’t shop there.
I’m a little surprised about all the people talking about junk. Every Walmart I’ve ever been in has the exact same national brands and manufactured goods that everybody else has, but they are often cheaper.
I prefer Meijer, but if WM has a significantly better price on something I’ll go there for stuff. They also have a much better website that shows everything they carry, and an inventory system to tell me if it is in stock. Everybody else’s website is crap in comparison.
Maybe Canadian Wal-Marts are different, I don’t know, but the arrival of Wal-Mart in Canada had no visible effect on other stores unless those stores were even shitter cheap-end department stores.
Generally speaking they’re also clean and, as someone else has pointed out, the products there are pretty much the same products you’ll find anywhere else. A bottle of Heinz ketchup is a bottle of Heinz ketchup.
Every Wal-Mart Super Center I’ve ever been in was trashy…merchandise scattered all over, bargain bins of random crap cluttering the aisles, stains on the floors, and so on. It’s not unusual to find broken/damaged merchandise too; I think this is mostly due to shoddy manufacturing though. For the record, I would rather go to a Wal-Mart than a K-Mart…that place combines everything that’s bad about Wal-Mart with an additional level of filth and neglect.
I do remember enjoying the novelty of Wal-Mart in the pre-Super Center days though.
It’s quite possible they’re not the same. Walmart squeezes producers so much that many of them are forced to carry a lower-quality version of their products than in other stores. Rubber Maid comes to mind, and I know this holds true for some electronics.
We have two Walmarts within 15 minutes of us, and we manage to avoid both. One is a Super Center, and the other is a horrible, dirty, crowded one we call the ghetto Walmart. I’ve found that Fred Meyer is coming closer and closer to Walmart on their prices, with a MUCH more pleasant shopping experience.
[quote=“Musicat, post:27, topic:679979”]
With all the hate seen in this thread, I wonder how they can stay in business?
Possible explanations:[ul][li]Dopers are not a typical cross section of the economy, but a minor sub-section* Dopers are hypocrites and shop at WalMart but don’t admit it[]Dopers are following the crowd. The alternative crowd. Y’know – the one WalMart doesn’t care about and doesn’t cater to[]Dopers who like WalMart are afraid to stand up because they’ll be shot down.[/ul][/li][/QUOTE]
Agree.
I don’t mind shopping at Walmart. It’s no worse than any other store IME.
The way I see it, any hate towards Walmart’s business practices should be guided towards the lack of Government over site and regulation. I’m totally fine if Uncle Sam wants to force higher wages on Walmart or any other employer. Even if that means I have to pay 50cents more for a crappy cheese grater that’s probably going to break 2 years from now.
There should be a good Yogi Berra-type quote in this thread: “No wonder no one shops there; it’s too crowded.”
Or something like that.
Here’s why I hate Walmart: their parking lot is retarded; they changed the self-checkout so that it is no longer convenient to use if you have more items than you can hold in your hands; there are never enough staffed checkout lanes open; the other people shopping there do stupid things that annoy me, as do people in general but they are concentrated there. If I can schedule shopping trips at midnight, Walmart becomes significantly less bad. It really has nothing to do with their business practices or how they treat their employees. And I say that as someone who worked there as a teenager.
What I like about Walmart is that I can go there and find every single thing I need in a timely manner with minimal fuss, despite my above complaints. Grocery stores, aside from being insanely more expensive, rotate their inventory in such a way that I can’t find items from one week to the next. Because I now only buy perimeter foods at the local grocery store, this frustration has been eliminated and my life is better for it.
I haven’t compared prices for toiletries and things against Target because it’s a longer drive (neither store exists in my town). I think there’s a Costco in this state now but it’s at least an hour away, assuming it’s in the closest major city to me.
I don’t have anything *against *Wal-Mart, but I much prefer Target. Every time I’ve been to Wal-Mart it’s been insanely crowded with like 4 checkout lanes out of 20 open and the store just seems messy.
I thought this was just a strawman until I searched through this thread. Two posts out of 40 mention WM being crowded in a negative way. so congratulations I guess.