There’s a Walmart just a half mile from my house and I will never set foot in there ever again. The store, the parking lot, the employees, the customers, everything about that place is just awful in every possible way. I hate to use the word, but “trashy” is exactly the adjective to describe Walmart. I will drive 15 miles out of my way to hit the Wegman’s, or literally any other store, rather than even drive past the Walmart.
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“…which brings us once again to the urgent realization of just how much there is still left to own.”
And yet the Wal-Mart in our town is clean, safe, well-stocked, has friendly, knowledgeable employees and great customer service. So go figure.
Some Walmarts are nice, some are trashy, and some are nice-ish heading toward trashy. The deciding factors are location and the nature of the area its customers are drawn from. If the area the stores draws its customers from is nice, the stores generally will be cleaner and nicer and with friendlier and more helpful employees. If the surrounding area is a formerly nice area that is going to seed, the Walmart stores in the area will reflect that, and if the stores are located in areas that draw lots of trashy, lowlife types, the stores will generally give off a dirty vibe and its employees will tend to be sullen and not particularly friendly or professional in manner.
Walmart seems to tailor its stores to reflect the nature of their respective customer bases. Either that or it just doesn’t bother to make an effort to maintain nice stores with courteous, helpful employees in low income areas. But either way, you really can’t judge all Walmarts by how nice or how trashy any one store happens to be.
We’ll do the Wal-Mart pick up for groceries (order online, sit in the parking lot, they bring everything out) but my go-to store is Target. I won’t set foot in Wal-Mart willingly.
If you want a Whole foods without the high prices or condescending employees and shoppers, try Sprouts.
Same here. But there’s another on the other side of town which Ok but larger and a total maze.
(bolding mine)
Think you nailed it right here. And you’re right, one or even a bunch of locations are not necessarily representative of an entire chain.
But, the fact that my local store and every other one of their stores I’ve ever visited have treated me to the same piss-poor experience I have to conclude that while Walmart is plenty willing to take our money, they have zero interest in making it a pleasant, or even acceptable, shopping experience. I have no illusions about my neighborhood, it ain’t Bel Air by any stretch, but these are still good, decent people, many of whom are on foot and do 100% of their shopping at Walmart, and they deserve better.
Perhaps they can purchase the picked over corpse of Sears, Roebuck & Company.
A company that was once the ‘Amazon’ of America. Catalogs with pretty much everything, you could even purchase Houses! (some assembly required).
I’ve only been to one Whole Foods store, but I’ve been there many times. The employees have always been very friendly and helpful. One even gave me a free bag of regular flaxseed meal (approx. $5 in value) to try out when they were out of the golden flaxseed meal I usually buy, and there was plenty of golden in stock the next time I went there. And when I was there last night, the young woman who checked me out voluntarily asked if I’d like a bag of ice in with my frozen items to keep them from thawing on the way home, whereupon the very pleasant young guy bagging my groceries happily scurried over to a cooler and returned with a couple of small bags of ice to put in my bag.
The customers at this particular store are quiet and largely keep to themselves while they shop, and while some are obviously well-heeled, none have ever come across as snooty or condescending. Frankly, the most pleasant and enjoyable food shopping I do is at Whole Foods.
I also tend not to begrudge them their higher prices because of the incredible variety of good, healthy stuff they carry, much of which they likely don’t make much money on and which has to be made up for elsewhere.
Yeah, I started to mention that myself. Even in the stores most of us would consider ‘trashy’, the majority of customers are still good people who I’m sure would appreciate a more pleasant shopping experience.
The difference between the two markets, is they have a massive competitor in the grocery store market which is far bigger and more dangerous than anyone they were going up against in the bookstore market - Walmart. Which is one of the reasons I laugh when people start sweating that Amazon is going to somehow drive all the grocery stores out of business; Walmart is a far larger company.
Whoa, Whole Foods’ stock is trading 29% higher today than yesterday. If only I’d known!
Be glad you didn’t…that’s why Martha Stewart went to jail.
That’s not a problem. Prison did Martha Stewart a lot of good. She gets to hang out with Snoop Dog these days because she has street cred for being a convicted felon.
Actually, it’ll be Kalle* an authorized reseller of Kale. Not eligible for Amazon Prime. 5 stars, four reviews.
Yeah, but you obviously weren’t wearing your “Make America Great Again” cap.
Well played! Did you think of that yourself?
Ummm . . . Walmart’s market cap is 225B (482B in revenue) Amazon’s is 466B (136B in revenue). Amazon is twice the size of Walmart but Walmart’s revenue is huge. Walmart’s advantage is 90 percent of the US population lives with 15 miles of one of their stores but that isn’t a huge moat and I would say their logistics are at least equal in capability.
I live in Amazon Fresh county and get free 1-day delivery on most items if Amazon could replicate that nation wide I’m not sure why people would drive the 15 miles (or less) to a Walmart. I agree they just made the first step towards getting an amazon fresh warehouse within delivery distance of all of Walmart’s customers. I would much rather bet on Amazon today then Walmart.
I tend to have a fairly dim view of ranking companies on market capitalization (YMMV). The Fortune 500 ranks companies on revenue, after all. And like you said Walmart’s revenue is huge, but not only is it huge, it’s $100mil above second place, which is a Chinese State owned company. I think it is $200mil above the next privately owned company.
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Oh, yes, doubleplusgood.