In this thread, many people claim thney despise Wal Mart and won’t shop there because it is evil.
Personally, I like Wal Mart, and I’m happy to shop there. There are things we can’t get there (he ones around here don’t yet sells meats and such) but for a lot of household things, dry goods and the like, their prices are excellent. I don’t really believe theyre any meaner to their employees than any other entry level employer - they certainly can’t be worse than some I know of - and they’re not driving the downtown out of business. The evidence that Wal Mart is bad for the economy is lacking, to say the least. Cheaper products are good for people.
I get the things I need at a really good price, my family saves money, I’m happy. So there you have it. If you hate me, well, give me a call on Saturday when I’m at Wal Mart.
Hell, it hurts, to ask, but I’d like to see a cite that says “Cheaper products are good for people,” that includes all people, not just the buyers, but the sellers.
I am in the unusual position of admiring Wal Mart and generally thinking that Wal Mart detractors are dipshits . . . but I hate shopping there. I just don’t think the stores are attractively designed and they may have a million products, but they never seem to have what I need.
Last time I went there I was off to go fishing and realized I was short on sinkers and worm hooks. I expected Wal Mart’s sporting goods section to be the perfect choice for such a basic need. They had plenty of fishing equipment, but it was all prepackaged plastic Zebco rods and reels you would get for a little kid. I needed a picture frame in a common size. Their selection looked like it had been looted by delinquent teenage badgers. I wanted a trashy paperback to read during a long conference call. Need I describe the horrors of the Wal Mart book section?
Low prices are good for everyone and I know a few Wal Mart employees. They have little education or other job prospects and I have to say that Wal Mart treats and compensates them fairly. I hope they keep taking over the world and maybe someday I will go there and actually find what I want.
I try really hard to boycott Wal*Mart, but 15-packs of Pop Weaver microwave popcorn for $2.50 or so break down my resistance. And the bottles of Lipton green tea for next to nothing. And the seven-buck DVDs. And while I’m here, I might as well get some wiper blades. Oh, and I need a new comforter. Some AA batteries. Hey, look there, lighting timers for three bucks each!
At least, last time I was in there, I passed on getting a garden hose reel as I found a nicer one for less dough at Big Lots. YAAAAAAAA! Stickin’ it to The Man!
The only thing I really have against walmart I have against major retailers in general. Namely the whole “we only stock games M and below and movies R and under with a few random exceptions.”
It gets to the point developers and directors get paranoid of getting something that should legitimately be “just another rating” because their sales will plummit tenfold or more because its not going to be on shelves anymore. And I know many people will say “well anything that gets those ratings is just smut anyway” but the thing is after following the development of many things it seems they’ll have them cut one or two seemingly minor things (a minor sex scene may be more “points” than a gruesome violence scene or a game based on gratuitous violence for some reason), and its really killing (in my opinion) at least to a certain degree artistic freedom. It’s not the rating boards, though they start the issue with their seemingly arbitrary system (mentioned above), its really boiling down tot eh major retailers (Walmart is often cited as the biggest) for not carrying them making no studio fund/produce a film of that rating because it wont turn a respectable profit.
I don’t hate Wal-Mart, but I don’t like the stores very much. In this area they tend towards the dirty and cluttered side. Their checkout people tend towards the dumber side and then their are those “delinquent teenage badgers” roaming the store.
I don’t find their prices enough better then lets say Targets or Kohl’s to put up with Wal-Mart except for on their no name stuff. The problem is that their no name stuff tends to be crap that breaks easy or doesn’t quite do the job.
I don’t like the stores themselves. They always end up trashed and I sometimes feel like I should shower after shopping there. We had a new one open up around here a few years back (making 8 of them now within 20 minutes of my house), and for the first month, it was GORGEOUS inside. Eventually, the crowd tookover, and now it looks just as trashy as the next. I won’t blame this entirely on WalMart, given the cleanliness of some of their clientele, but I don’t see them making an effort to fix it, either.
I make sure that if I’m buying something “important” I do my own research beforehand. I no longer (did I ever, really?) expect their staff to be able to give me advice on any product, except maybe to tell me where in the store to find it. That one’s hit or miss. But, honestly, I don’t trust the staff anywhere to give me product advice.
I worked for a WalMart in my teens, and I have to say they were pretty good to us. We got flexible hours so people could go to school or deal with their kids, we were never asked to do anything I would find unreasonable, and believe it or not the pay was quite good. Sure we dealt with bullshit sometimes, but I went on to work in several other retail situations (I’ve had quite an illustrious career), and bullshit abounds in retail, whoever the employer is. In my hometown most of my friends were treated worse working at the local grocery store, and they made less too.
My issue is with people who hate WalMart without having any really good reason - they are just jumping on the hatred bandwagon. I actually think it is pretty classist - it doesn’t take a genius to see that WalMart is designed to appeal to people on a limited budget, people for whom saving money is important. It’s easy to act all high and mighty when you’ve got a great job and lots of disposable income. I’m at the point now where I wouldn’t consider buying, say, clothes at WalMart, but I don’t need to look down on the people who do.
I have to wonder what it is exactly people are comparing Walmart to when they complain about the atmosphere or the decorum. They are no better or worse than any other big box store I’ve been to, but then again, I DO compare prices, and their stuff isn’t always or even usually the cheapest around.
I mean, do you expect marble floors and chandeliers or something? Because I would actively avoid shopping in a place with those kinds of things. There are some items for which I may be willing to pay extra for nice surroundings and knowledgeable help, but if I just want a carton of eggs and a box of toilet paper I don’t need the store to look like Versailles.
Well, the whole premises of capitalism is that goods trade for a price that is fair to everyone. If you artificially rig the market so that the seller gets more money than he deserves, that may be “good” for the seller, but only at the expense of the buyer (it’s not as if the extra profit for the seller came out of thin air), and the economy as a whole certainly suffers, because just as in any other kind of protectionism, someone is benefitting unfairly at the expense of others.
I don’t expect marble floors, but I expect the staff to tidy the shelves after a mob moves through. Wal-Mart is always ghetto and trashy when I have gone there (3 times, I think)- it was worse than the old K-Marts and Pic N Saves.
On the other hand, both of my Target stores are always clean and neat, and the staff is usually doing something. They also are quite friendly and usually able to answer questions.
No Wal-Mart for me. Low prices or not, it’s an active displeasure to shop there.
My WalMart is neat and clean. Now, KMart, on the other hand…I decided never to go back the day I was in line and the little girl being carried in a cart behind me put her cotton candy in my hair…admittedly that wasn’t totally the store’s fault, but they were the ones selling cotton candy!
I worked at Wal-mart during the summers while in college. They were not the worst company I’ve worked for. Whenever people complain about how terribly they treat employees, I can’t fail to notice that they never provide a location for said abuse. It’s always just “at some Wal-marts workers are…”
That said, I don’t like or hate Wal-mart. It’s a place to buy stuff, so that’s good. They often don’t have what I want, so that’s bad. That shakes out to indifferent acceptance in my book.
Rickjay, You might explain to this Canadian why you shop at the American Wal-Mart when prices and selection are just as good at Zellers, a division of the Hudsons Bay Company.
I miss wal-mart. They have stuff there that I can’t get here. All in one place. Sigh.
I guess the stores must vary around the country, because the ones in Arkansas are always clean, well lit and organized. Not glamorous, but I’ve never seen the filth and squalor so many people complain about. The ones I’ve been to are much like Target, only with less pretty home decorating items.
I compare them with Target and Costco. I love bargains, but WalMart just doesn’t do it for me. The stores are messy, poorly lit, and don’t carry stuff that I want to buy.
