Oh, just cuz I’m feeling frisky, I’ll post once more.
First, thanks for invoking Christ on Easter. I had no idea you were such a fan that you just couldn’t avoid His name. And bringing J. P. Morgan into it? In the same breath? Good call.
Care to rant about Target, K-Mart, Gordman’s, Bed Bath & Beyond, Home Depot, Lowe’s, Kroger’s, Menard’s, Taco Bell, McDonald’s, Burger King, Pier One, Victoria’s Secret, Frederick’s of Hollywood, Sears, JC Penny’s, or any other corporation that seeks the lowest price from distributors to maximize profit while selling at the lowest price?
Didn’t think so. I’m not even going to waste a rolleyes on this one.
duffer, I really don’t understand this. I agree with you (see a previous post of mine, don’t remember the post number) that Wal-Mart does a better job than other companies at, say, their inventory control, etc. They’re more efficient, and deserve the rewards they get for their innovations. The “Wal-Mart sells cheap merchandise”, “Wal-Mart forces manufacturers to price their goods cheaply”, and “Wal-Mart supports sweatshops in other countries” are non-starter arguments if one really puts any effort into thinking about them.
What I’m not getting here is this: as far as you’re concerned, how does that excuse the other issues? As others have pointed out, the other chains you listed above don’t seem to have these same issues. Furthermore, when they do, I believe there are objections and cries for reform. (For instance, I remember some brouhaha regarding Taco Bell not too long ago regarding employment of illegal immigrants.) But how does all this translate into your defending and/or excusing the part of Wal-Mart’s business practices that aren’t up to snuff?
Before a Wal-Mart moved to my town, I had to pay high prices, endure poor selection, or drive long distances to get stuff.
WM came to town and fixed many of these problems.
You say they adversely affect the small businessman? How about helping the small consumer? Here’s how they affected the ones I know about. The local mom’n-pop stationery store went out of business, possibly because WMhad a bigger stationery department than their entire store and better prices. Makes a difference when you are outfitting your kids at back-to-school time. Result: better for the consumer.
The local hardware store took a different angle. Instead of going out of business, they remodelled and expanded, and seem to be doing just fine. Result: better for the consumer, who now has a larger choice, and if the proprietor is making more money, he’s happy, too.
Employment? More people shop locally, since now they can. So our town now has more employees, including some retirees that had no job at all before. Result: better for the consumer, and are now more of them.
The WM store is open 24 hours. There has never been anything like this in this town before; most stores closed at 5PM and stayed closed on Sundays. Result: better shopping conditions for the consumer.
The WM store is always bustling. This means that people LIKE to go there, at least compared with other stores that aren’t often open, charge high prices, or exist only at great distances. No one is forcing these consumers to shop at WM, but they do. Doesn’t that tell you a whole bunch?
Over the past few months, I’ve been amused with the threads about Wal-Mart being just this side of Hitler. When I come in and offer a defense, I’m soundly shouted down.
Meanwhile, the cites given are cherry-picked for a few stories from the thousands of stores to “prove” the company is evil and must be stopped. Everything from putting mom-and-pop stores out of business, to causing sweat-shops, to wreaking poverty on entire counties.
Yet, they buy from the same distributors as the rest of the “big box” stores.
All I want is a little honesty. Either you’re against discount retailers, or you have a problem with individual examples of store owners. No matter the chain.
But Wal-Mart is the whipping boy I guess. End that chain and we all live in Euphoria.
You may be so blinded by your rage that you only see cheap crap. Personally, I have rarely seen cheap crap at WM, and it’s unlikely that I would buy it if I did. Here are some things I recently purchased at WM:[ul][]water filters, cheaper than the plumbing shop, and work fine[]copy paper, cheaper than the stationery store, works fine[]a Goldstar dehumidifier, cheaper than the local appliance store, works great[]furnace fulters, work fine[]CD & DVD blanks in bulk, cheaper than anyplace else locally except the Internet, work fine and I’ve gone thru hundreds[]ice melter, good price for a big bag, works fine[]2-cycle oil, choice of many name-brands, I bought the cheapest, works fine[]a bathroom rug, looks great and works fine. The old one lasted for a long time and came from WM, too[]name-brand Kleenex, better price than the grocery stores[]name-brand light bulbs, cheaper than the hardware store, work fine[]HP inkjet print cartridge, cheaper than the stationery store, works fine[]a handful of spiral, blank notebooks, at $.10 each; couldn’t resist. Very handy, good paper surface and binder, work fine[/ul]Cheap Crap? I don’t think so. If you are only seeing cheap crap, you must be looking pretty hard for it.
Having not seen your defenses outside of this thread, I wonder if it’s not a matter of presentation. Really, when framed as passing along savings and/or creating an infrastructure that simply allows them to operate the business more efficiently, I don’t see how people can object (although, of course some will anyway). But there’s more…
Here’s the thing – I don’t think various studies are “cherry-picked”. It’s not that one store in one area has led to the various conclusions. It seems to be pervasive, and especially correlated (if not caused) by Wal-Mart.
And again, the issues of intentionally scheduling people for less than 40 hour workweeks, sexual discrimination regarding pay-rates, etc. seem to be endemic to Wal-Mart’s operation. If these things were resolved, it would be much easier to dismiss people’s objections. Furthermore, if other chains do the same things, I’d hope there would be an uproar there also. But it doesn’t excuse Wal-Mart, and I don’t understand defending them on these points.
Here’s an example from my morning which explains why I continue to support the Wal*Mart Evil Empire:
Got up early to do laundry - loaded my clothes in my car at 8am. By 8.02 am I was cursing as my car wouldn’t start. All it did was go click. I had places I had to go after laundry so I didn’t really need car troubles. My friend happened to call then and after I explained what was going on, we figured it was probably the battery. She was able to go over to WM and buy jumper cables at 8.30 am on Easter Sunday morning, we jumped my car and went back to WM where I bought a new battery and had it installed in less than 30 minutes at 9am on Easter Sunday Morning. All for the price of a new battery with a 3year warranty on it.
I don’t know of any other places where I could have done the same thing on a regular Sunday, let alone a holiday Sunday. So as long as they continue to provide service such as this, as well as having decent merchandise and better than decent pricing, I will continue to support the Wal*Mart Evil Empire.
Hmmmm… let’s see. What are the items I purchase at Walmart most often…?
Tide laundry detergent: You’re right. I probably don’t really need to wash my clothes. And since they probably fill the box halfway with rat poison anyways to save on cost of actual product, it’s clearly a ripoff.
Angel Soft toilet rolls, 24 pack: Another frivolous purchase. After all, I could just wipe my ass with the shower curtain, since it’s right there.
Toothpaste, shaving cream, contact lens solution, other various personal hygiene items: Hey, if the Unabomber got by in his shack without any of these things, so can I!
Underwear: I mean who would need this? Especially since I have no more detergent to clean the skid marks…
Light bulbs: Who needs artificial light, when the sun provides it for free 24 hours a day, right?
Gosh, you’ve convinced me.
Well, you’ve actually got a good general comment here, but… are you claiming that it’s Walmart’s fault that people run their credit cards up and have bad spending habits?
As opposed to… oh… people just having poor money-management skills? Which I would agree is a major problem for a lot of people – that they have never learned how to manage their finances wisely.
Very true. But on the same note… Garbage collectors have somehow become “sanitation engineers”. People who answer phones for a company have become “Customer Service Professionals”. Countless other entry-level positions have job titles with “Technician” in them. Stupid, yet mildly amusing.
Once I see any of those above stores continually violate the law and my ethical standards I won’t patronize them either. You may be able to brush those under the rug of plausible deniability but I can’t. WalMart is a terrible company from their hiring of illegal workers to denying overtime pay to sexual discrimination to selling fake name brand clothes (not knock offs counterfiets) to poor treatment of their workers. I am not entirely sure if you just don’t believe these accusations or you are choosing to ignore them. Perhaps the thought of cheap prices has clouded your judgement and morals.
Not even close, bucko. A biased report isn’t a “source” simply because it’s in print and it says what you want it to say. The Berkley “study” itself, in the section titled “Data Sources”, states:“In the absense of data on actual public assistance utilization by Walmart workers…” blah, blah, blah: Basically “we’re guessing our asses off here”. That’s not anything close to a cite. Try again.
Danceswithcats, acording to e-healthinsurance.com, a family of 4, 2 kids and the parents in their 30s, could get a policy with Carefirst, your standard 80/20 indemnity plan with a 1000/yr deductable, for $264/month.
Perhaps I am not using the right search terms Dave but with 29-28 year old parents and a 10 and 7 year old kid on an indemnity plan with a $1,000 deductible, and 20% coinsurance I can’t find anything close to $250. The cheapest I saw was $525 and that actually had a $3,000 co-pay for families.
Where are you? It’s going to vary, quite a lot, depending on the state. I used Maryland because I live there. E-healthinsurance has it fixed so that you can’t link directly to the page of quotes, but here is a screen shot I took of that page.
And I’m sure the workers who rang up your purchases were pleased as pigs in shit to be out working on Easter Sunday, away from their families.
I sometimes get the feeling that people see Wal-Workers as robots placed there only to satisfy consumerly desires. Maybe it’s not just Walmart; service workers are treated poorly no matter where they work. But I think there’s an exceptional amount of disrespect lodged against Walmart workers. Just because the job is disposeable doesn’t mean that the people are.
BTW, Wal*Mart doesn’t make a whole lot of what they sell. They buy it from people who *also * have no morals. Should I also boycott the products from those manufacturers? Do you have a list of manufacturers who are making their products in sweatshops?
I really don’t buy the argument that Wal*Mart forces it’s suppliers to act this way. Nor do I think that all the products in pricey stores at the malls are made by people with decent wages and heath benefits and living in small US towns.
Hrm this is a bit odd. I was just messing around on site a bit picking zip codes for random areas and checking prices. From Nevada to Colorado to Mississippi all of the prices are in the $600-800 per month range while Maryland is 1/3-1/4 of that. Does Maryland give state aid or something?
spooje-
Yes and the management drills into the workers that they might be fired for using it. Regardless managment locking employees in a store with the only means of exit is a door fitted with a fire alarm is not a desirable situation. Forcing a employee to risk termination plus the added cost of a false fire alarm if they need to leave to attend to their sick child or what have you is not a situation I want to support.
Would you want to be the attorney for WalMart, trying to defend them against the wrongful termanation suit that would inevitably follow firing someone with an actual emergency for using * an emergency exit?
But on the same note… Garbage collectors have somehow become “sanitation engineers”. People who answer phones for a company have become “Customer Service Professionals”. Countless other entry-level positions have job titles with “Technician” in them. Stupid, yet mildly amusing.