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!