my second job was at wal-mart. for a whole year i worked in the underwear department (or "softlines" which included fitting rooms...many horror stories involving poo poo and pee pee). it was a fairly new wal-mart at the time and there were truly a huge number of applicants. in my high school kids would always talk about how hard it was to get a job there, so when i was hired i felt like a pretty cool person. heh! i spent the next year hiding VHS tapes behind x-large granny panties to demagnetize and take home at the end of the night. thanks wal-mart, i still love you.

Has anyone seen the Henry Rollins show with the animated part about visiting a WalMart? Fucking hilarious. And sad.

WalMart makes me feel dirty when I go there. I like Target much better, although I don't know how great Target's business practices are, they have got to be better than WalMart's.

Wal-Mart is an absolute machine...
If it weren't fore the lives and communities they leave in their wake, I could respect the efficiencies they have gained in sourcing, vendor negotiating, and keeping HR costs low.

In addition to the deepest deals and special programs, they make the vendors eat many of the traditional costs of doing business.

I knew a guy who was a sales manager for a large vacuum cleaner manufacturer.

To get ONE model added to WM store shelves, the MANUFACTURER had to cough up the costs fabricated my WM for adding that item and marketing that item.

Roughly $300-400K...

This is flat out extortion, and the smaller retailers can not get this type of special treatment.

They are masters at getting special treatment from every possible angle, and the vendors who want to sell to them, and the cities and towns who want that tax base, will happily bend over and take it.

And the droves of people displaced when the retail and local manufacturing jobs are dried up will accept their wages because they are better than nothing.

I do not shop at Wal-Mart out of choice, I always try to support local merchants when I can.

The Wal Mart documentary from 2005 was just on TV. I Hadn't seen it before. God, it made me want to fuck shit up.


The Walton family is worth over 100 billion dollars. Their "full time (28 hrs or more) employees make an average of about $13,000/year.

Employees have an option of giving money from their paycheck to help other employees during emergencies, like fire, tornado, etc.

Walmart employees gave $5 million dollars to help other employees in 2004. The Walton family gave $6000.

This almost made me cry because it made me so angry.

And over, and over and over.

Fuck Walmart.

gravitypinsusdwn wrote:The Wal Mart documentary from 2005 was just on TV.

Are you referencing the episode of "Frontline?" If so, I second this recommendation strongly. You can watch it at the "Frontline" website. It's extremely well done and not a little disturbing.

It was "Wal*Mart: The High Cost to Low Price". I strongly recommend it if you have not seen it, but somehow feel that you should hate walmart.

wal mart's for idiots.

Meanwhile, my town has two Wal-Marts. My town of 40000 people.

They pay well though.

They pay well? They must be the only Wal Mart stores in the country that pay well...

I studiously avoid Wal-Mart. (Believe it or not they have Wal-Marts here, despite the relative scarcity of illegal immigrants coming regularly to steal our jobs.) Basically, because of their business practices and the ramifications thereof for any community Wal-Mart wedges itself into, I've just imagined Sam Walton to look an awful lot like Emperor Palpatine.

For a Christmas gift exchange, however, I got a ten dollar gift certificate for Wal-Mart. This presents a small moral quandry!