Volume!
It is with deep shame that I can tell you the name of Sam Walton’s favorite bird dog.
At the end of our large quarterly company meetings they play country song “God bless the USA”. I think it’s gross, others dig it and take it waaaay too seriously.
I’m pretty sure the SDMB is not associated with WAL-MART.
A couple times a year, my wife and I take short vacations to the Shenandoah Valley in rural Virginia. It’s really the only time we go in to Wal-mart because the shopping options are limited in the town. Every time I leave the store shaken by the experience, seriously. There is always some really depressing scene of human retchedness, often involving a relatively young, but morbidly obese person on a motorized scooter.
Last week when we were coming out of the store, my wife asked, “what is it about Wal-mart that’s so scary?” and I answered without thinking, “deep down we’re afraid we fit in.”
“…next time we might not be able to find the exit.”
Curse you CreepyWalMart for making me sympathetic to WalMart for the first time ever.
That is actually pretty creepy.
There is a WalMart a mile from me. It’s clean, the people who work there are normal, the shelves are stocked, the people who shop there are normal (well, as normal as anyone). There are morbidly obese people on scooters in all stores, not just WalMart.
Sam Walton was the world’s greatest Job Creator since Czar Peter the Great. His four children have a combined net worth (and therefore contribution to American Greatness) larger than Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett combined.
Why do you communistic zombies hate successful people?
I dunno–beyond the fact that he closed-down tens of thousands of mom & pop stores, that offered good paying jobs & self-employment, & good service, & threw all that in the garbage, & created wallymart?
Slowest moving on down evah.
It’s doing the zombie shuffle…
It isn’t just Walmart, my brother worked at Sam’s for six months, and they had those silly, ridiculous cheers, and you had to come up with your own, and it was mandatory at his place. I remember walking in on a Walmart once in the morning, where sure enough they were doing those ridiculous cheers. No way I would ever put up with that, even if it meant me losing my job. I’m a damn good worker, and with a very good attitude for the most part, but that is just too damn much.
Do a google or youtube of funny pics of people that shop at Walmart. You see all types.
When I go there, I know full well it’s basically a self-service operation. In all the years I have been going there, I can only really recall maybe twice, that somebody actually asked if I needed any help. I’ve never seen so many depressed employees working in one place.
Often we generally will drive out further across town and go to our United Market Place for groceries, and there is a world of difference in employee’s attitudes that work there, along with the kind of customers they attract. You probably get greeted a minimum of 3-5 times from employees and others easily, when you’re damn lucky for the Walmart greeter that gets paid to do just that to even make an effort.
When I had a gf from Rome, Italy that visited me for the first time in the States at our Walmart, I think it happened to be an unusually bad day. The look on her face which I’ll never forget which was one of truly disgust and disbelief, when not one, two, but probably the third 400lb+ customer come rolling by on their electric cart within probably less than a minute, and some of these were barely clothed. My gf was truly disgusted, she asked me what was going on, and why are people so fat here.
It’s more of a shamble, though, isn’t it?
Upon re-reading this thread, I see I haven’t posted my Wal-Mart story yet. Anyway, it’s not really my story, just an awful picture I saw in a newspaper.
Circa mid-1990’s, a Wal-Mart had its grand opening in Paso Robles, Ca, amidst much anticipation (and controversy) for several months ahead of time. There was an article about it in the local newspaper a week or so before the grand opening.
It showed a group photo of the staff, taken in the parking lot. There must have been about 30 people in it. They were all dressed alike in their Wal-Mart uniforms, I think. They all had their hands palm-together (in conventional bedtime prayer position), they all had their eyes cast upward to the skies, and they all had the most mindless-looking silly grins on their angelic faces.
I found the whole scene utterly revulsive. It reminded me of the brainwashed cult folk of The Unification Church (“the Moonies”).
Well, I sure feel better about working in a warehouse for 50+ hours a week. At least we can be snarky on the PA without being yelled at.