Dredging up a great little thread
about whom do you boycott, I thought it might be time to find out how everyone is doing with their personal boycotts and if they have had a change of heart or added any new companies.
I have broken a few of my boycotts:
**Kmart ** I have started going back to because a) I beleive in second chances b) this local store has improved by 75% c) Martha Stewart stuff was on sale.
**Starbuck’s ** I hate their prices and their sizing, still, but the Starbuck’s that is in town is across the street from the movie theater and I like meeting other mom’s there before a movie.
and the Teenage baristas (baristo?) boys are really nice.
**Addition to the boycott **
** Walmart ** over their business practices that are on the dark side of shady.
I’ve boycotted Exxon ever since the Valdez incident. It’s nearly put me on foot with a gas can in hand several times but I’ve managed to stick with it.
I dislike the hell out of Walmart but have had to shop there at times since they’ve put everyone else in town out of business that ever carried certain products.
I wasn’t around for the original thread, but I’m boycotting all businesses that have the words in their name spelled incorrectly. For example, ‘Kitty Korner’. Is it any wonder that kids don’t know how to spell when they see signs everwhere that scoff at the English language?
I got screwed over by an on-line mac place named PowerOn. Sadly, they continue to operate, but I take comfort in the knowledge that I will be spending over one-hundred-thousand dollars on computer equipment this year, and they will see not-a-dime.
I have an idiot friend who is proud that he’s still boycotting grapes “to support the farm workers”. I hated to tell him that the strike was over for years, lots of their demands, such as banning the shot-handled hoe had become labor law, and now those farm workers depended on grapes for their income.
Since I read * Fast Food Nation * I have boycotted McDonalds, and Taco Bell, along with most chain resturants. It was hard at first with the cravings for a Double Cheeseburger and fries, but after a while, they tapered off, and now the idea of eating fast food is actually a little gross to me.
It’s going really well. Since refuing to dine at chains, I have found a lot of wonderful mom-and-pop resturants.
That’s wonderful, because as you know, the meat at small, independently-owned restaurants comes from humanely treated animals who lived long, healthy, happy lives, and died of natural causes. Not like the animals killed at slaughterhouses for use at McDonald’s franchises. THAT meat is completely different from the stuff independent restaurants buy.
I didn’t say it was because of inhumane slaughter methods. That’s only a small part . . . I mainly object to the piss-poor way they treat their workers, their corporate irresponsibility, and the idea of the chains wiping out small businesses, among other things. (By eating a privately owned resturant, I’m helping to keep it in business.)
If you read the book, you know it wasn’t only about slaughter methods, but also the chains’ resistance to worker-safety regulations, and other worker’s rights legistlation.
I’m boycotting ESSO (Exxon for you americans) for their sulfur content and because most of their oil is from the middle east and not local.
Any and all trips to the US are also boycotted due to…well, a lot of reasons. This is why I’m going to cuba in 10 days.
I’ve been boycotting UPS due to their “broker” fees. I have not ordered from any company online that deals with UPS (I had to wait up to 6 months to get the stuff I wanted locally).
I boycott two companies. The first is Hallmark. I won’t buy anything from a company whose policy it is to start displaying Christmas items in August. There’s only so much consumerism I can handle.
The second is Petro-Canada. Like a good Albertan, I resent the central government’s double-dipping, oil-industry damaging policies and I refuse to support their fuel company, since half of my gas prices anywhere else already go to them anyway (give or take a few percentage points). I just wish someone – anyone – would present a credible opponent to the bastard Liberals in the next election.
As of today, neither of my boycotts has done anything to the companies in question, although it has satisfied my personal sense of moral outrage.
