Thursday, December 04, 2008

Hatin' on Walmart

We interrupt the non-stop Danee news to bring you this special rant! Yes, a rant! Right here in December! It's inspired by my friend Scott, linked on the blog bar to the left... He's a manger of a Hastings store in Eastern Washington. And he posted a Walmart story the other day that was completely typical of my dealings with the big W, and I commented on it as such. Then today, someone else left a comment defending them because of the great levels of community support they've shown her. (she works in a drug & alcohol rehab facility, and they've been huge supporters.) It made me want to clarify my feelings on Walmart. Unlike most who complain about them, I really don't care about their labor practices or how they're running everyone else out of business.

Plus, I haven't had a good rant in quite a while, and I think it's time to let one out!

First off, I'm actually a supporter of Walmart in general. I've heard several stories like the one mentioned above, about the community support they do, and think that whatever other atrocities they're guilty of, those are at least partially made up by these charitable actions. Take a moment to think about how many companies were considered "top notch" just a few months ago, but have now been exposed as giant fraud machines?

And yet Walmart marches on, being one of the very few chains to report increased sales this past November.

A couple years ago, Walmart wanted to put a store in our little town of Fircrest. Almost immediately, attorneys from Seattle jumped all over it. They letter-bombed the city with horror stories, stirring up enough local zealots - and local politicians always looking for the zealot vote - that it got shut down. The plot of land they wanted to build the store on still sits vacant, as it has pretty much forever. There's nothing built on it, never has been. It's not bringing in any tax revenue for our city. Walmart has a store just south of here, only a couple minutes further for me, and the city of Lakewood gets all that sweet, sweet tax revenue.

The first thing I say when I hear my city council complaining about budget issues, is to firmly remind them just how proud they were to run Walmart out of town.

Meanwhile, several nearby businesses - the ones we were warned would immediately fail if we let Walmart into our town, have failed all on their own. My beloved Mad Jack's Ice Cream is one of them. It sits just down the street from the proposed site. I honestly don't think anyone would say "I'd like some incredible, gourmet, homemade ice cream. Let's go to Mad Jack's! Oh wait, there's Walmart - go there instead." I think it's far more likely that people who don't currently drive up and down Mildred Street would have passed Mad Jack's on their way to or from Walmart, and thought "Oooh, that looks interesting... Let's get ice cream!"

I'm not saying Walmart would have saved Mad Jack's, I'm just saying small businesses are struggling all over, and the problems run a lot deeper than Walmart.

That said...

I hate - HATE - shopping at Walmart. I hate everything about the stores. It's like when I was a kid, and had never even heard of Walmart, but there were K-Marts. And I hated them. I couldn't put my finger on it, but there was just something ...icky.. about them. Like I needed to take a shower after going in there. Walmart gives me the same vibe, and always has. When they opened their first western Washington stores in Auburn and Renton, I was excited to finally be on the "always low prices" bandwagon.

Until I went into the store.

But the overall atmosphere is just part of it. When you add to that, the caliber of people that you find shopping, AND working there, you begin to get a picture of why I try not to go there if I can help it.

I'm not an elitist. I have no problem doing life with people lower than me on the socio-economic ladder. Or higher than me. I really don't care. But I have a big problem sharing space with the filthy, rude, completely selfish nature of the "typical" Walmart shopper. Just look at Scott's story, or The Donald's story (one of many), or this classic Walmart Bingo game - which you'd think was obscenely sarcastic, but instead, it's frighteningly accurate.

And let's not forget the horrible, tragic death-by-stampede that took place last Friday. It seems like every year there's a stampede resulting in either a death, or serious injury. And they never seem to happen at Best Buy.

THOSE are the reasons I hate Walmart. I scoff at people who call them "The Evil Empire". That's just nonsense. If you don't like them, don't shop there! Capitalism works, folks... When they do end up offering a deal that's better-enough than Fred Meyer or Target, I'll go there and take advantage of it.

Last Christmas, when I was looking for a heated mattress pad for Cindy, my top two retailers were sold out. Walmart had racks and racks of them, probably because they were merchandised so poorly that three "associates" I talked to couldn't find them, and decided that they didn't carry them. When I asked to speak to a manager, he confirmed what they had told me. Luckily, I ran into a friend on my way out of the store, and she told me that she'd just gotten one not too long ago, and that they were by the water heaters.

Yes, the water heaters. Not the bedding. The water heaters.

Classic Walmart merchandising. Classic Walmart employees.

That's it for this rant. Stay tuned because coming up next, we'll be back to Wall to Wall Baby Danee Coverage!

4 comments:

  1. I am laughing and shaking my head through all of this because I relate so well to it. It's a love-hate relationship with Walmart. Of course, I have found that stores do differ one to another. The one closes to us I hate (though it is a huge step up to the one in Orem), but it's closer. The one next closest is actually great! But often I can't find what I'm looking for and do you think there's any employees around I can ask--of course not. What we do to save a buck.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I seem to have that same love and hate thing going on Emily. I will go to Walmart because it is just a few blocks up the street from me, but more importantly, everything is just plain cheaper there. It really is. Target, Fred Meyer, they may be more aesthetically pleasing but their prices are just no comparison to Walmart's. Actually though, the three Walmarts we have here are not that bad. Sure we may only have four checkers per store that have a full set of teeth. And you can't use words beyond a first grade level when speaking to them, but most of them are friendly and try to be as helpful as they possibly can be. All that liberal unionist crap is just so ridiculous. If a local store can't stay alive with a Walmart nearby, then boo hoo. I don't care how quaint or long established a local business may be, they won't find me in there paying prices up to fifty percent higher than what you will find at Walmart. Nothing lasts forever. Little, local Ma and Pa stores have had their glory days and if they can't keep up it's certainly not my problem.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hi. My name is Janice and I like Wal-Mart. (Hello Janice) I admit to doing 90% of my shopping there, I recognize most of the employees who I find to be very friendly, and the store is always clean. I will admit though, that I usually only go on weekday mornings when they aren't busy. I am also pleased to report that I am seeing more and more items there that are made in the USA. I'm sorry that your Wal-Mart isn't as good as ours.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Ah yes, most of us have a Wal-Mart story, and most of them aren't pleasant. I used to work next to the Renton store, and stopped in there one afternoon on my break from work to pick up a gift for my son. Man, I hated shopping in that store - the customers were rude, pushy, ignorant and loud. But I was desperate, running out of time. After finding what I was looking for (of course, not where it probably should have been), I walked up to what looked like the shortest line. At the point when there was one person ahead of me, the clerk looked right at me and asked me a question. When I replied with "excuse me, I didn't hear you", she gave me a snotty look and said "I wasn't TALKING to YOU!" Turns out she was saying something to the person in front of me, but happened to be looking at me while she did it. Like I'm supposed to know this! So, I just mumbled "sorry" and waited until I got up to the register. When I got up there and she started ringing me up, she was on the phone making a personal call, complaining about how she was supposed to go on her break half an hour before, and nobody had come to relieve her. I understand how frustrating that can be, having worked retail for so many years, but save the personal call until you get your break, right? I had to ask her a question about their debit card machine, since it didn't seem to be working right (another frequent issue at the big W-M); she sighs, rolls her eyes, puts her hand over the phone and says to me "You're just gonna have to WAIT." Well, those of you who know me can only imagine how I reacted at this point. After letting her know in a voice loud enough for everyone within 100 feet to hear that if she worked for me she would be out of a job (that's the paraphrased version - the actual version is not suitable for a family website), I told her to get her manager on the phone and get her up to the register immediately. I honestly believe that nobody ever called this young woman on her bad behavior before; she seemed pretty shocked. I shudder to think of how many customers she abused before I came along. I had a chat off to the side with the manager, giving her all the dirty details. She assured me that it would be "taken care of". Like I believed that. However, when I had to stop back by the store for something else a few days later, I ran into the manager again, who informed me that the young woman's employment had been terminated. Turns out I wasn't the first person who had complained, although I was the most vociferous. If I remember correctly, the manager's exact words were, "That girl has no business dealing with the public." I'll just have to assume that she interviewed well - or maybe Wal-Mart just doesn't care and is looking for nothing more than warm bodies they can pay minimum wage to. I think I did feel a smidgen of guilt, but it passed pretty quickly. And I have never shopped at that store again.

    Strangely enough, I have started shopping in Wal-Mart again, but I only go to the one here in Bonney Lake. It's clean, relatively well organized, the employees are nice and the customers are not painful to look upon. It doesn't seem that Wal-Mart is the problem, just some of the neighborhoods it ends up in.

    ReplyDelete

Commenting is Caring! Plus, it really makes our day!