The Wal-Mart You Don't Know

Fast Company magazine ^ | november 2003 | charles fishman

[em2vn]

A gallon-sized jar of whole pickles is something to behold. The jar is the size of a small aquarium. The fat green pickles, floating in swampy juice, look reptilian, their shapes exaggerated by the glass. It weighs 12 pounds, too big to carry with one hand. The gallon jar of pickles is a display of abundance and excess; it is entrancing, and also vaguely unsettling. This is the product that Wal-Mart fell in love with: Vlasic's gallon jar of pickles.

[1066AD]

130,000,000 + shoppers a day file in and out of Wal-Mart
Not this one, I refuse to go in the places.

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

disrepear?????????????

Yeah, huh? Not once. Not twice. But thrice. Elucidate please.

[karen999]

"You know what is really sad is that our "standard of living" is now determined by how many cheap goods we can buy . . ."

Amen to that. The enviro-whack jobs and taxes have done in our real standard of living. You want a standard 3 bed/2 bath house in a non-crack neighborhood? FORGET IT unless you are highly paid, or BOTH parents work full time....vacation time with the family? Ha---if you can manage to snatch it a few days at a time, otherwise there will be "hints" at work that you aren't as "dedicated" [a wage slave] to the company as someone else. Tens of thousands of dollars have to be spent before a new housing project can go up...satisfying the envirowhackjobs...and uncle sammy hasn't kept pace with the PERSONAL deductions people can take on their taxes. When adjusted for inflation a family can deduct only a fraction of what they could back in the 50s...children and teens are brought up by baby sitters and the "me, me, me" attitude is everywhere....but, by God, we can by a DVD for less than 20 bucks at the freakin' Walmart.

[LittleRedRooster]

To even have a POSSIBILITY at a CHOICE of reasonably-priced consumer products, you spent the weekends driving 100 miles to one of three major metropolitan areas, each of about 500,000 population. When Wal-Mart arrived within 20 miles of my home...it was like the falling of an economic Berlin Wall that local merchants had benefitted from for maybe 50 years. Those local merchants had grown FAT AND RICH. They had NOT given us ANY reason to even just LIKE them more than that Wal-Mart 20 miles away. In fact, they had simply p-ssed us off.

First of all it sounds like many people didn't make the 100 mile drive and shopped in town since the local merchants were getting rich.

Secondly the merchants whom you say grew fat and rich and pissed you off, kept their money in town and spent their money in town unlike Walmart, which tradeed the incomes of hometown merchants for minimum wage jobs without benefits and sends the town's money to Bentonville AR.

My guess is your home town is poorer for Walmart coming, they don't support little leauge teams, local charities or give back to local commmunities in anyway.

Since you supported a union picket line and condemed local retailers as rich fat bastards you really need to send a check to Howard Dean, he is your man.

[peter the great]

I totally agree with you. As a matter of fact, since that story appeared, I started shopping at K-Mart and Target a lot more. The reason being is in good concious what kind of a message does that send to thecountry and to the world. Think about it, K-Mart played by the rules and is in bankruptcy, as did Target who no where nearly as successful. To ignore that whole incident by saying nothing or doing nothing would be wrong and who is to say that it can not hapen again.

[VOA]

First of all it sounds like many people didn't make the 100 mile drive and shopped
in town since the local merchants were getting rich.

The local merchants did do well.
Until the free market came to town.

Secondly the merchants whom you say grew fat and rich and pissed you off,
kept their money in town and spent their money in town unlike Walmart, which tradeed
the incomes of hometown merchants for minimum wage jobs without benefits and
sends the town's money to Bentonville AR.

Well, there must have been some sort of trade-off. Because my hometown is still an island of
relative affluence, even when WalMart was located 20 miles away, then opened a SuperCenter
in our town.

Down-turns in our economy? Only from an overzealous state environmental agency
putting a sqeeze on a major local employer that actaully made a product 99% of
America wants (energy products).

My guess is your home town is poorer for Walmart coming, they don't support
little leauge teams, local charities or give back to local commmunities in anyway.

Go to this URL:
http://www.thousandpines.com/main.htm
There you will find the phone and e-mail contact info for one Mr. Pate.
Contact him and tell him what an evil, miserly business WalMart is.
And that he must have been deluded with his recent comments about WalMart on
KKLA, 99.5FM (www.kkla.com).
Maybe you'll do a public service by exposing a big fat fraud.

Since you supported a union picket line and condemed local retailers as rich fat
bastards you really need to send a check to Howard Dean, he is your man.

"Supported a union picket line" -- LOL! I just didn't want to get the verbal harrasement
from these folks.

As for YOUR assertion that I called the hometown merchants "rich fat
bastards"...those are YOUR words, not mine.

But it's nice to see you and I apparently both have a decent capacity for
disliking certain parts of corporate America, big, medium or small.

[GatekeeperBookman]

Disrepear, circa 1950, CSWE-MS ( careless southwestern English-with Mississippi influences ).

'For a thing or object or person to just be gone-without explantion, to become unavailable for ordinary, anticipated & expected use-a most unhandy event. Action is attirbuted to some idiot who has misplaced the article, object or person. [ EX:"Son, where the H-- has this box of ammo disrepeared to? Boy-I am asking you for an answer!" ]
From the Instant Dictionary of Careless, Quaint Colloquial Usage. Gatekeeper Bookman Press, 2003.

"The War has many facets; http://aztlan.net/ Look at your enemy."

[GatekeeperBookman]

W looks pretty bad from this vantage point. I am a tax slave to criminal aliens. That makes some people mad-it has led to revolts-the tax slave part.

"The War has many facets; http://aztlan.net/ Look at your enemy."

[Don Corleone]

It used to be called FREE ENTERPRISE!

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

I guess one only need look in the right dictionary. My Merriam-Webster didn't have anything closer than 'disrepair'.

[TradicalRC]

I do not know how it relates to Catholic doctrine. I do not care for the bottom-line mentality of most economic conservatives. I try to avoid buying goods from China, Walmart and Disney. I have asked my extended family to respect that when buying gifts for my four daughters.

I basically believe in the free market but the rootlessness that has been caused by such dubious progress has uglified the land, put strains on families and has put a tremendous burden on the middle class which really is the backbone of any great nation. Even Aristotle knew that.

[GatekeeperBookman]

People are put off when I am too serious-or so they say-now I employ words, just as I use them, like I learnt to talk & I get fussed at. I am very sorry fer tha distraction.

"The War has many facets; http://aztlan.net/ Look at your enemy."

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

...now I employ words, just as I use them, like I learnt to talk & I get fussed at.

So sayeth Polonius;
"This above all: to thine own self be true."

[GatekeeperBookman]

Was he the Daddy of Laertes or was it Guildencrantz Or Rosenstein, in Hamblet jes befo they left out for a sales trip?? ah gets mah SHakspeares all twisted.
Have you ever read the engaging explanations about the Earl of Oxford, Queen E I & the issue of authorship? SObran is the primary source for most of this work-but several very good books are a slo available.

"The War has many facets; http://aztlan.net/ Look at your enemy."

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

Was he the Daddy of Laertes...

Yeppir.

I am currently setting up an old laptop to be my portable e-book and am downloading quite a load of material from Project Gutenberg and from many online University libraries. I'll keep my eyes open for it as well as perusing Sobran. Thanks.

[G.Mason]

"Not this one, I refuse to go in the places."

Really?

Care to say why? And while you're at it, where do you shop?

[Paulus Invictus]

W-M is a metatisizing cancer that cannot be treated, not even with a heavy dose of radiation. W-M is rotting our commercial system, screwing up the trade balance, especially to favor the heinous Chicoms and selling cheap, junky stuff from produce to tools. They pay their workers poorly and generally make US businesses look bad by reflection. Other than these modest statements, I have no string opinions re W-M.

[Dead Dog]

Yah, fast company if for corporate social climbers and wannabe CEO's. The type that use Capatialism as an excuse.

[TopQuark]

I am a CPA in a small town.

Amazing: I thought that on the way to becoming a CPA one had to take economics. Your comments, however, indicate neither the knowledge of economics nor even what it is.

[Dead Dog]

Yah, but Cicuit City, REI, Best Buy, and Brand Source are pretty cool.