Posted on 10/10/2010 9:27:29 AM PDT by KeyLargo
Edited on 07/02/2011 10:15:15 PM PDT by Admin Moderator. [history]
If it's midnight, it must be time to shop
October 10, 2010
BY ANNE D'INNOCENZIO AND DENA POTTER, The Associated Press
Once a month, just after midnight, the beeping checkout scanners at a Wal-Mart just off Interstate 95 come alive in a chorus of financial desperation.
Here in Fredricksburg, Va., and at grocery stores across the country, the chimes come just after food stamps and other monthly government benefits drop into the accounts of shoppers who have been rationing things like milk, ground beef and toilet paper and can finally stock up again. [snip]
These leeches will be rioting in the streets.
The same story ran in the local papers here too. The same after midnight shopping story.
There is definitely more collusion than just the ‘journoulist’ group.
Couldn't they have figured out money was tight after the first or second child?
The same story ran in the local papers here too. The same after midnight shopping story.
This following story written on Sept. 20 and published in the WSJ must have ignited a few others. There have been some others posted on FR over the past week or so. I am not in the stores at midnight so I’d never thought about this happening.
Watching Wal-Mart at Midnight(bread line of 21 century?):
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2594898/posts
snip
Bill Simon, CEO of Wal-Mart’s U.S. business, at a Goldman Sachs conference last week, on behavior at a Walmart store around midnight at the end of a month:
“The paycheck cycle we’ve talked about before remains extreme. It is our responsibility to figure out how to sell in that environment, adjusting pack sizes, large pack at sizes the beginning of the month, small pack sizes at the end of the month. And to figure out how to deal with what is an ever-increasing amount of transactions being paid for with government assistance.
“And you need not go further than one of our stores on midnight at the end of the month. And it’s real interesting to watch, about 11 p.m., customers start to come in and shop, fill their grocery basket with basic items, baby formula, milk, bread, eggs,and continue to shop and mill about the store until midnight, when electronic — government electronic benefits cards get activated and then the checkout starts and occurs. And our sales for those first few hours on the first of the month are substantially and significantly higher.......
end snip
I am sick to death of this story. This is NOT news! From time immemorial, people have been heading to the stores as soon as they got paid. It’s just that now a bunch of people get “paid” all at once, at midnight, by the guvmint.
Check out a military PX or commissary around payday. Duh.
Please understand that my comment was not against you for posting this story. Thanks.
There aren't many photos on the internet of the midnight EBT shoppers or what they buy. I'm guessing many are seriously obese.
Ms Smith finds she is running out of food a week before her new benefits come in. Does she budget out the next month to make things last? Does she heck!
"They can go to the fridge and get whatever they want in the beginning of the month, and we have bigger meals...."
Ms. Bennerson, who is retired and must watch the social security pennies, is fortunate enough to have a Costco membership, a store whose own brand detergent is top of the pile as far as Consumer Reports is concerned, at half the price of name brand detergent. Does she avail herself of this laundretical largesse? Does she heck!
She's "in the detergent aisle at Target, explaining to a reporter why Costco had a better deal on Tide. Costco was offering 20 more ounces for the same price."
And don't even get me started on people who think they will starve to death if they don't get meat at every meal....
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