I don't shop at Wal*Mart (in this post, now referred to as WM), ever. I haven't for a long time, and I've spent some time trying to convince other people that it's not a good idea to do so. It rarely works; my mom said to me last Thursday, "I did something that'll make you mad." and she was talking about taking my brother to WM to buy some college/dorm room necessities. And I know S's mom goes to WM way more often than I'm comfortable with; "It's so cheap" she says.
The fact of the matter is, none of us is really tied in any way to the WM economy. None of work for companies that supply WM, none of us work for WM, and even though S and his dad work in retail, neither of them work at independent stores that might be in danger because of WM. (Though I suspect that if Mr. S and Mrs. S had stayed in IL, and he'd continued on in his old job, he'd have had to concede that the new WM in my hometown took some of his business away.) Anyway, the point is, our jobs don't hang in the balance of WM. So it makes very little difference to any of us whether or not WM plays fair, or even whether it plays at all. And to be honest, none of us are really in the position that we can't pay a little more for an item. I don't shop at WM, it's true, but I don't NEED to shop at WM.
I just finished The WalMart Effect, and it was a chilling confirmation of what I already felt. The author doesn't seem nearly as disturbed by WM as I am, but he makes points that echo how I already feel. WM is stunningly bad for this economy, in so many ways. The author has said that at WM, people have efficiently shopped themselves out of jobs, and it's a telling statement. We want cheap, and we seem to not care how much wreckage surrounds that cheapness.
My mom said, when she told me that thing last Thursday that she didn't have any choice, which might be true, but also cuts to the heart of the matter. In some places WM is the only dog and pony show in town, and you have to support the beast because there's no place else to buy milk and gallon jars of pickles or cheap salmon. Reluctantly, I can't be mad at people who shop in the only place that they can shop (though, like the author says, we voted with our wallets, and if we're miserably shopping at WM, it's because we chose to miserably shop at WM). But I do feel very strongly that if there is a choice to be made, the choice should be to shift what little buying power you have away from WM.
Vote with your wallets. Avoid WM.
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