What do you think of Wal-Mart?

The stores are a mess. It fights very hard to drive US manufacturers out of business. It’s effectively an arm of the Chinese government.

Wal-Mart is the devil. Or would be, if the devil existed.

I used to hate it, because it drove out local business, but I am being forced to take another look because they are actively supporting local farms and farmers, and are beginning to be one of the most ecologically-aware corporations in the world. They have also begun to treat their employees better. I think there is a chance that they really might be beginning to change for the better. We’ll see.

I don’t have a problem with it. I compare prices, if what I need costs less this week at Wal Mart, I’ll buy it there. I need to save money, like most people. The store I shop at is clean, and the employees are kind. I’ve shopped at the same Kroger and Wal-Mart for over 10 years. The employees at Kroger bitch more about management and work conditions than the Wal-Mart employees.

It amazes me. I don’t understand how the same place that sells canned tuna and pet food can also sell bicycles and tiki torches. With multitudinous variations in colour, size and so on in each product.

I wish I could afford to be so self-righteous as to avoid the store. However, I’m poor, so I shop there.

Despite all the concerns about the origin of most of its merchandise, American have long favoured low-price imports over well-made, but much more costly domestic goods.

As evidence I offer the decline of the US auto industry. Low productivity and growing demands for higher wages and benefits have forced many once prominent US manufacturers to close down manufacturing facilities in favour of suppliers in Asia or they have ceased to function entirely. These changes were not due to Wal-Mart. The truth is, their success is based on giving consumers what they want and that for which they can pay.

As a person on a low disability income, I would have to do without many things if I could not buy them at Wal-Mart.

@Seek_Kolinahr It has nothing to do with being self-righteous. You think I’m rolling in money? Far from it. I still dislike it.

I’m with @dpworkin . I have long disliked Walmart for all their underhanded ways like when they closed down a Canadian location that had just voted to unionize. But lately they seem to be trying to do the right thing in listening to the complaints against them. I still don’t like how homogenized the retail market it now, but that is the way it is.

I love it. I shop for the lowest prices. 95% of the time walmart offers the lowest prices around. So why would I go somewhere else and pay more? Sure, I’d love to support our local stores. But I’m too broke to care.

@ItalianPrincess1217 Funny you should say that. I’ve noticed the prices have increased quite a bit on popular selling items. Especially in groceries. And if you do find some stuff cheaper its the same cheap stuff they sell in local grociery stores. In my town. There was a small walmart. The stuff was cheaper and they seemed to pack more. Then they made a superwalmart about 2 miles away closer to the center of town and they carry less stuff because the shelves are lower and smaller for more cart space. And their veg. are not that fresh, and more costly than the local grocery store. Now they don’t carry a lot of items they had in the other store and many of the same items increased in cost with the move. Before their bread was 1.50 and now you can’t find a loaf under 2.00. I’m sure overhead is more because it is bigger, but I thought all of that is calculated with all the stores and allows them to buy larger bulk for cheaper. The only thing getting cheaper is their stuff. Hand soap (same product, same size) use to sell for 1.50 is now 3.29. I get it at the dollar store for 1.00. I don’t mind a little over but thats over the top.

Walmart is not any different than any other successful business – they buy low, and sell below the opposition – therefore the opposition publicizes the nefarious ways they keep their prices low. Nothing about how the oppositions also uses the same nefarious ways.

I will shop at any store that can offer me low prices for quality goods, because I don’t believe any of them make a profit through the goodness of their heart.

The Nazi’s of our generation.

@ru5150 Would you please give a specific contrast between the Nazi’s and the Wal Mart?

I prefer to do business with my neighbors, not make the heirs of Sam Walton even wealthier. These “big box” stores are destroying family-owned local businesses, sell flimsy goods and their customer service is almost nonexistent. I also understand that they treat their employees like shit (at least the lower-level ones).

@stranger_in_a_strange_land—Curious – do you have neighbors who make inexpensive safety car seats, and will sell you food at prices lower than anybody else?

@YARNLADY I’d rather buy products from companies that pay and treat their employees decently, regardless of cost. Most of my food I buy from local producers. To me, cost is secondary to quality and social considerations. Anything I need, I can get from a local shop or, in extremis, by mail order. It keeps more money circulating in the community, improving my neighbors standards of living, instead of going to China or the “big box” stockholders.

@stranger_in_a_strange_land The majority of U.S. consumers apparently do not share your desire or ability to choose higher prices over idealistic values.

As a Wal-Mart employee I have to disagree with most of the hate. I work for Wal-Mart because they were the only ones offering jobs in Michigan’s failing economy. I have been with the company for three years and have received six raises. I have been promoted twice. I have no complaints with how they treat their employees. As far as customer service goes it varies by store. My store is great with customer service because we have to be in order to compete with the local competition (Meijer and Kroger).

Another thing is my Assistant Manager started off as a Lawn&Garden Associate. Wal-Mart is a company that loves to promote within.

I have never been a Walmart shopper. I don’t like their business practices and have not forgotten the big lie from the early days—We Sell American Made Goods —yeah, goods produced in American territories under horrible conditions.

@Pandora Our walmart doesn’t have supermarket foods. I don’t shop for groceries there. Just thing I need for the house. And their prices still beat anyone else’s in my area.

Too big. It smells. The employees are extremely questionable in intelligence and as humans in general. Most of the ones I have encountered are rude and have no social skills. It’s a monopoly in most places. It runs small businesses away. It makes me sad and I don’t like it.

@deni You’re right about the workers. They suck. They never smile. They never say hi. Isn’t being friendly part of their job? I’d be fired from my job if I treated customers the way they do!

@ItalianPrincess1217 i know. im embarrassed for them. it’s like they think they’re living in some other world where it’s acceptable to hardly acknowledge the customers and be so unpleasant all the time. and for what reason? i bet they get decent benefits. i have no benefits and i am happy as HELL at work, lol.

Wow. I would hate to live where you guys do. The employees at my grocery store and my Super WalMart are very nice. They know their regulars and treat them very well. Granted, WalMart doesn’t offer you carryout service like Publix does, but it would take a fleet to handle that kind of a service at their volume.

@deni Exactly! I don’t get any benefits either and I’m always extra friendly with my customers. There’s no excuse.

@Seek_Kolinahr i have never witnessed that. i dont spend much time in walmarts but when i lived in PA and was forced to buy certain things there, they were just always soo bad. grocery stores i don’t find to be bad at all. luckily i now live in Boulder where there is no Walmart and where the grocery store employees are the friendliest people ever, lol.

Oh. And their greeter, never greets. She stands there with a pout on her face and glares at me when I walk in. I actually go out of my way to say hi to her now, just to prove a point.

@ItalianPrincess1217 i forgot about the greeters. that is one thing i will say…the 80 year old man that greeted at the walmart i used to go to actually was friendly and enthusiastic. he was the only one though.

The employees at the Wal-Mart I shop at a so friendly! I’ve gotten to know many of them from shopping there for so long. They know my daughter and take the time to talk to her. Too bad all Wa-Marts aren’t the same.

@Seek_Kolinahr Ours is very much like yours, friendly, clean, fun to shop in and good prices. However, I went into one in the L.A. area which was nothing like that.

@Yarnlady The point is that Walmart sells you lower priced goods by systemic abuse and exploitation of its employees – the cost of which is born by the states in which they operate. Any company that gives out a free application for public assistance is guilty of the worst kind of socially parasitic behavior. If you want to see the true nature of the Walmart managerial elite just ask if you can organize a labor union. You will see the real Walmart so fast you won’t have time to say ‘fair labor practices’. I will not shop at Walmart under any circumstances because my petty greed to obtain everything I can at any social expense is not outweighed by my social conscience for the workers on whose backs I obtained it.

@ru5150 I understand your complaints, but I wonder if you have checked out every store you do use, just to make sure they meet your standards? Most of the highly publicized complaints about WalMart are made by their biggest competitor, Safeway, and the labor unions. The only way to truly avoid this is to grow your own food or buy from local farmers, make your own clothes from scratch, and do without most other things. Do you drive a car? Where was it made, and at what expense to the builders? I could make a case for everything you have in your house.

The high standard of living in the United States is and always has been at the expense of the lesser developed nations. There is a huge disparity in the consumption rate of America when compared to most other countries.

Don’t even get me started on how corrupt the labor unions are.

@ru5150
What do you mean when you state “exploitation of its employees”

I love Wal-Mart. My family and I go there occasionally because the place carries many things——we don’t have to go running from one specialty store to another to get the things we need.

My only qualms are that Wal-Mart doesn’t have the best quality goods. On the contrary, I find that the clothes they sell are cheap and “form-less” (no style, not made with appearance in mind) and when you wash them they look used and worn out right away. Consequently, I don’t buy my clothes or shoes (lol) there, but my wife and children do.

I also find the store excessively busy on certain days, and sometimes the place is not well-maintained.

Call me prejudiced, but I also find many of the people who go there are what you call “trailer trash”—-sigh! Rude and mannerless.

I love walmart—esp the one in Hot Springs Arkansas. The employees smile and say hello (most of them) and seem to appreciate being employed! I was looking at shoes and this man in his sixties told me he was thrilled to be making $9 an hour doing almost nothing in that department. It was a small walmart but brand new, clean and a happy place. I miss it. The one here is enormous and has a dirty look to it. You have to walk ten minutes to get in the back where the milk is. I rarely go; it’s too far from my house anyway. So I pay higher prices plus have a much smaller selection of things where I go now.

Going into Wal-Mart is like wading through a dangerous swamp. Only go that way if there is no other way.

This behemoth is on track to gross over $400,000,000,000 in 2010 (yes thats 400 Billion simoleons). This pretty much sets this retailer as one of our most integral institutions in America. It is convenient and universal but at the same time ruptures the fabric of small-town America. hate to sound anti-capitalist, I like industrial machinery as much as the next American loving man, woman & child… their balance in just out of my favor.. I remember their past slogan of “made in America,” and nowadays that couldn’t be more reversed, as they are one of the top contributors to the trade deficit in this country which continually scalps economic growth, and outsources manufacturing as well.

Target is better