Tell me about WalMart

[Seanette]

@steveroo

I’ll say one thing for Walmart; their $4 prescriptions are a godsend for people without prescription drug insurance coverage.

Except that some 30-day supplies of generics (such as my husband’s 3x/day metformin) don’t qualify. I got charged $6 for that, with no satisfactory explanation. Yeah, I’m changing pharmacies. Walgreens is closer anyway and nowhere near as annoying as that WM (this is the more ghetto one near me), and their pricing is clear enough on their website that I can be sure I’ll get that 30-day supply for $5 and not, say, $7.

Yeah, I know, $2 isn’t THAT big a thing. It’s more a matter of not wishing to reward confusing pricing policy and/or outright dishonesty.

[ralph124c]

Another odd thing I’ve noticed-they mark prices back up! A few weeks ago, the had marked down some men’s t-shirts (from $7.50 to $5.00); yesterday, they were back up to $7.50-kinda weird.

[perfectparanoia]

@Lynn_Bodoni

This is a big part of the reason why I rarely shop at WalMart. It’s the old Sam Vimes boots dilemma. If something has a low price, but it doesn’t work well (or at all), then it’s not a bargain.

That’s why I only shop there for brand name items. It is exactly the same thing for less money. I hate paying more for exactly the same thing.

[Inigo_Montoya]

@perfectparanoia

It is exactly the same thing for less money.

Are you sure?

I don’t pretend to vouch for the credibility of the website or the fiction/nonfiction status of the information therein. However, I’ve heard this before and it meshes well enough with my own casual obseration. I’m willing to believe it in light of harder evidence of WalMart being a shady outfit.

[FoieGrasIsEvil]

@Odesio

Are there a lot of fat people there? Well, yeah, because there’s a lot of fat people in America.

The issue as I see it at my quasi-redneck WalMart isn’t the fat people, it’s the over representation of fat people, especially women, wearing exposed belly shirts with stretchy pants that have “S-E-X-Y” on the butt spread over a four foot wide area.

[dougie_monty]

@hopesperson

Walmart stores are enormous, and there is an enormous number of them. In many areas, they have supplanted all or virtually all other options for discount stores or grocery stores. So you end up with a pretty broad sampling of a given community, perhaps (no cite) skewing to some extent toward the lower socio-economic end of the spectrum. Included among that sampling are often a variety of poor people, odd looking people, mentally ill people and generally weird people. Taking pictures of them and posting them on the internet makes the rest of us feel better about ourselves. Think of any venue that attracts a large number of people across diverse economic strata – state fairs, for example – and you can see a similar distribution. At a Walmart in a middle class or more affluent suburban setting, you’ll probably end up with a more homogeneous, more “normal” looking customer base.

Anyway, that’s always been my take.

I have seen diverse groups of people, since long before Wal-Mart, at two venues–The DMV and jury assembly rooms, and for much the same reason: random selection from drivers’ license databases and voter rolls. At the Wal-Mart where we shop, in the Gardena-Torrance “Harbor Gateway” area in Southern California, there seem to be more Hispanics and blacks, fewer whites and Asians. If there are any strange people around, I’ve never seen them–in or out of the store.

[perfectparanoia]

@The Great Sun Jester

Are you sure?

I don’t pretend to vouch for the credibility of the website or the fiction/nonfiction status of the information therein. However, I’ve heard this before and it meshes well enough with my own casual obseration. I’m willing to believe it in light of harder evidence of WalMart being a shady outfit.

I knew about the electronics. It is true.

I actually only buy some food items and personal care stuff there.

And, actually, almost all the food items are cheaper at the grocery store by my house.