NationStates Jolt Archive

Ive seem some threads on the evilness of walmart. The explanations were way too long to read so I just didnt care.

So can someone tell me (in ONE paragraph) why I shouldnt shop there?

I personally dont shop there because 90 percent of the merchandise is disposable items made in China.

I guess there is nothing wrong with it, provided your tetanus boosters are up to date.

well at my local asda (the yookays walmart), its always stuffed full of fat sweaty people. hence, i avoid it at all costs.

Ive seem some threads on the evilness of walmart. The explanations were way too long to read so I just didnt care.

So can someone tell me (in ONE paragraph) why I shouldnt shop there?

In order to keep their prices down, Wal-Mart gets their goods from overseas mass-manufacturing facilities, many of which force their workers to work 16 hour days and on the weekend to keep pace with orders. Moreover, they pay their workers so little that many qualify for welfare. . .which incidentally, Wal-Mart helps their workers get on. So buying from Wal-Mart has the triple whammy of 1) undercutting American workers in favor of cheap exports from factories that have labor violations, 2) undercut American unions by preventing unionization, and 3) use the government to effectively subsidize the low wages that Wal-Mart pays its workers with tax money.

I personally dont shop there because 90 percent of the merchandise is disposable items made in China.
Bullshit. Wal-Mart carries the same damn things any other grocery store does, just at lower prices. It is a common misconception that they carry inferior products, but if you'd take the trouble to actually go in one sometime you'd quickly come to notice that the majority of their products are no different than your local safeway or food lion.

Walmart is an evil empire. Like Starbucks...standing on the backs of the weak workers of the world to overcharge you for (primarily) useless crap you don't actually need. It's the American dream...demonized.

Bullshit. Wal-Mart carries the same damn things any other grocery store does, just at lower prices. It is a common misconception that they carry inferior products, but if you'd take the trouble to actually go in one sometime you'd quickly come to notice that the majority of their products are no different than your local safeway or food lion.

I used to shop at Walmart. Then I noticed that it is unclean and generally things I buy from there are not that good. So I stopped.

There is also the issue of them forcing the Mexican govt. to allow them to build within site of the Pyramids of Teotehuican. That's just a wrong thing to do.

Because if you paid a reasonable amount of profit on the items you buy instead of being squeezed out of every penny their market research says they can get out of you; you would only spend about £10/$10 on each shop.

theres nothing wrong with shopping at walmart. especially if you are on a tight budget. why go to the mall to pay $20 for a pair of panties when i can get 15 pairs for the same money at walmart?

you do have to be careful though, not everything is cheaper at walmart. if you shop the sales at the other stores, esp grocery stores, you will save money over walmart.

I read in a crazy liberal book... quite possibly by Michael Moore... that because of the sheer size of the stores, they can get the largest shipments = cheapest costs, grossely undercutting the local stores in the towns that this big warehouse has been built on the edge of. The presence of a Walmart also encourages business out of the town centres, and the large store is soon flanked by Home Depot and whatever. Local stores die. Town becomes like every other town.

So Walmart rip the heart and soul from a town.

I don't like Walmart because when they build a store within driving distance of a town, the family-stores that have existed in that town for sometimes over a century slowly start being drained as people seek the 'deals' at WalMart. They can't compete with a corporation that can buy that much in bulk. Since I moved to this town, I've seen four local stores go under. One was actually a SAAN store...one of the last 'Canadian' stores around. WalMart has bought out SAAN. So in essence, the SAAN store, is just a little WalMart. Four families and their many employees can no longer support themselves, and goods here have become homogenized. And that's even without a full-fledge WalMart...just the WalMart diguised as SAAN :(

Damn it people...buy localy!!

*disclaimer* No, I'm still not back full time. But things are stalled right now at work as we wait for templates to arrive, and I am sneaking in some NS time. Yes, I accept I have a terrible addiction to NS. I accept that I am backsliding, that I have failed to sever ties with NS. I accept all of this, so hush. Don't even bring it up. This is a visit only, I SWEAR IT!*

I read in a crazy liberal book... quite possibly by Michael Moore... that because of the sheer size of the stores, they can get the largest shipments = cheapest costs, grossely undercutting the local stores in the towns that this big warehouse has been built on the edge of. The presence of a Walmart also encourages business out of the town centres, and the large store is soon flanked by Home Depot and whatever. Local stores die. Town becomes like every other town.

So Walmart rip the heart and soul from a town.

America is just one big strip-mall today anyhow. These chains have already gutted us of our independant stores that used to be America. Instead of shopping at your local hardware store, you have Home Depot. But hey Americans seem to prefer cheap and crappy instead of well-made.

In order to keep their prices down, Wal-Mart gets their goods from overseas mass-manufacturing facilities, many of which force their workers to work 16 hour days and on the weekend to keep pace with orders. Moreover, they pay their workers so little that many qualify for welfare. . .which incidentally, Wal-Mart helps their workers get on. So buying from Wal-Mart has the triple whammy of 1) undercutting American workers in favor of cheap exports from factories that have labor violations, 2) undercut American unions by preventing unionization, and 3) use the government to effectively subsidize the low wages that Wal-Mart pays its workers with tax money.

Wal-Mart is great for getting customers low prices... for customers, Wal-Mart is great.

if you believe in unionization (i hate unions... they help nobody in the end because they hurt businesses), or that giving low-paying jobs to poor people in poor countries is a bad thing (they may be underpaid, but at least they're getting paid and have jobs... everyone mentions how bad the jobs are... but nobody ever can tell me what these people would be doing if they didn't have those jobs), then Wal-Mart is not for you.

If you're a capitalist, Wal-Mart is a model organization.

If you're a socialist, they are not.

There is also the issue of them forcing the Mexican govt. to allow them to build within site of the Pyramids of Teotehuican. That's just a wrong thing to do.
I suppose you mean "within sight". There's actually no Federal, State, or local Mexican law that prohibits that. The protests came mostly from commerce people in the area that saw their business threatened and used the archaeological site as a lever.

Walmart does affect local businesses. I prefer to buy from my local ma and pa shops, even if it's more expensive, but I don't demonize Walmart. Small shops usually can't carry as many products as Walmart, and if they have something I need, I buy from them.

Walmart is an evil empire. Like Starbucks...standing on the backs of the weak workers of the world to overcharge you for (primarily) useless crap you don't actually need. It's the American dream...demonized.
:O!!! Starbucks is evil too??? And i admire those workers.. if I worked there id be like "WHAT THE HELL IS A VENTI MACHIOTO WITH SOY MILK AND A SHOT OF.... WHAT????" *explodes*... or something

i live in a town with little to no local business, mostly in part due to wal-mart and i fucking hate it. the simple fact is that wal-mart is pretty damn convenient and cheap, and there are a lot of people who would rather have the easy way instead of considering the effect that they're having on the community. never mind that i find a lot of their products to be badly made and their selection to be extremely limited, there are plenty of local shops with crappy merchandise, too. if you shop at someplace like wal-mart, where's that money going? back into your community like it would if you shopped at local businesses? hell no. or at least not in any way more than it pays local people a very small amount of money to work there.

wal-mart is a monopoly. monopolys are a bad thing for a capitalist economy. wal-mart itself is particularly insidious because of the broad spectrum of local industries that they effect. there are plans for a wal-mart bank. there are suits in some states claiming that wal-mart corporation stores should be exempted from local planning and environmental laws, for no reason other than that the company is so fucking big.

and this is just a personal thing, but even if it is slightly cheaper, why the hell do you want to have all the same crap as everyone else? there's something to be said about variety, on a purely materialistic and aesthetic level. there's something to be said about locally-made products offered by local businesses. it adds signifigantly to culture. what does a place like wal-mart have on that? it saves you a bit of money? fuck it...i'll take less stuff that's better and more original and benefits the people around me and gives me the discretion to put my money where i want it, over more stuff for cheaper and that's peddled by a monopoly that's doing things which i find to be unethical and immoral at a very base level--and a monopoly that knows exactly what its doing. good riddance.

Wal-Mart is great for getting customers low prices... for customers, Wal-Mart is great.

if you believe in unionization (i hate unions... they help nobody in the end because they hurt businesses), or that giving low-paying jobs to poor people in poor countries is a bad thing (they may be underpaid, but at least they're getting paid and have jobs... everyone mentions how bad the jobs are... but nobody ever can tell me what these people would be doing if they didn't have those jobs), then Wal-Mart is not for you.

If you're a capitalist, Wal-Mart is a model organization.

If you're a socialist, they are not.

1) You don't have to be a socialist to have a beef with Wal-Mart.

2) Wal-Mart is not a model organization, unless you are modeling a race to the bottom. Other places, like Costco for instance, actually sell more per unit of floor space than Wal-Mart, by a considerable sum.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/09/05/treating.workers.right/index.html

Note that Costco workers are unionized, yet they still manage to be competitively advantageous because they offer a superior quality product.

3) If you benefit or have a family member who benefits from any of the following, then you damn well ought to be a supporter of unions, because it was unions who made it possible:

A) 5-day work week
B) 40-hour work week
C) Child labor laws
D) Workplace safety laws
E) Worker's compensation
F) Unemployment benefits

Note that this is far from a comprehensive list. To be honest, I can't think of a single individual in America alive today who hasn't, by just that cursory list, benefitted from the existence of unions. Children can go to school instead of work in factories, people don't have to worry about 1) getting their fingers or hands mangled in unsafe machinery and 2) being made a permanent member of the unemployed because of it, people who are unemployed can still get money until they can get a new job, etc.

I guess it depends on how socially conscious you are and if you put your own personal needs above society needs.


The Democratic Staff of the Committee on Education and the Workforce estimates that one 200-person Wal-Mart store may result in a cost to federal taxpayers of $420,750 per year – about $2,103 per employee. Specifically, the low wages result in the following additional public costs being passed along to taxpayers:
• $36,000 a year for free and reduced lunches for just 50 qualifying Wal-Mart families.
• $42,000 a year for Section 8 housing assistance, assuming 3 percent of the store employees qualify for such assistance, at $6,700 per family.
• $125,000 a year for federal tax credits and deductions for low-income families, assuming 50 employees are heads of household with a child and 50 are married with two children.
• $100,000 a year for the additional Title I expenses, assuming 50 Wal-Mart families qualify with an average of 2 children.
• $108,000 a year for the additional federal health care costs of moving into state children’s health insurance programs (S-CHIP), assuming 30 employees with an average of two children qualify.
• $9,750 a year for the additional costs for low income energy assistance.

Walmart is not the only company we should be concerned with. Home Depot, Lowes, McDonalds, BK are just a few others that operate in a similar manner.

Confession: I work at Walmart.

Yes, i am one of the drones that works at the evil empire known as Walmart. I'm paid 7.50 (in Florida) w/out benefits. Now, you should know that, I, as an "associate" of the Walmart family, do affirm it. Yes, it is evil.

I've seen how expansionistic Walmart is, and how unfair it is towards the lower class associates. We are paid low, and treated, by both managers and customers, as crap. They are almost slavers.

It is known that Walmart will do anything to stop labor unions. In texas, one store's butcher's section, made of 7 people wanted to make an union. Just for Walmart butchers. They closed the whole store for it. And the official response was: "We are not anti-union, we are pro-associate." Now what does this mean?? That explains nothing. That's just the kind of talk POLITICIANS use.

I hate Walmart. I hate how i can be treated so bad only for 7.50 an hour. I've had it with this company. They make themselves look nice when they say, "We donated 20 million to Katrina", while they make 1 million average per sector a month, which is about five stores. Walmart has thousands of stores. All over the world. With a total capital of thousands of millions. Number 1 company in the world. And they say they are good because they donated 20 million?? And half of the money comes from the account associates have for special situations, so in the end, it's not their money??? And don't ask me for sources, this i took from meetings that managers sometimes have with the associates. Of course, completely embelished.

I'm quitting. I'm tired.

Walmart is an evil empire. Like Starbucks...standing on the backs of the weak workers of the world to overcharge you for (primarily) useless crap you don't actually need. It's the American dream...demonized.

Superb, much akin to ASDA or Costa, I really, really hate ASDA, and therefore, Walmart.

Ive seem some threads on the evilness of walmart. The explanations were way too long to read so I just didnt care.

So can someone tell me (in ONE paragraph) why I shouldnt shop there?
I don't shop at Walmart for a number of reasons. I'll list them.

1) Walmart actively discourages unionization of their employees.

2) Walmart buys almost all of it's products from China, where employees have few protections and often work in very unsafe conditions.

3) Walmart's massive buying power forces wholesalers to drop prices, which in turn decreases the ammount of money available to the wholesaler to pay workers salaries and benefits.

4) Walmart's massive buying power means that they get deals that smaller retailers can't compete with. With one big box store selling items that would normally be stocked in many smaller stores there's a need for fewer cashiers, janitors, security guards, and so on. Fewer available jobs and a steady ammount of people looking for work means lower wages and higher unemployment.

Ive seem some threads on the evilness of walmart. The explanations were way too long to read so I just didnt care.

So can someone tell me (in ONE paragraph) why I shouldnt shop there?
Walmart sells cheap, poorly made merchandise.


On the other hand, that's what our consumer society demands. Personally, I'd rather pay a little more to buy a t-shirt that doesn't tear apart in a month. I'd also pay a little more to shop in a store that had excellent customer service -- clerks that knew their products and where they were located. And I'd pay a little more to buy merchandise in a store that was conveniently close to my home. Last, I'd pay a little more to buy merchandise at a store where there was one or two cashier stations that were always staffed, not an available thirty that are only staffed at 10 percent.

Bullshit. Wal-Mart carries the same damn things any other grocery store does, just at lower prices. It is a common misconception that they carry inferior products, but if you'd take the trouble to actually go in one sometime you'd quickly come to notice that the majority of their products are no different than your local safeway or food lion.


Calm yourself.
We dont have the Walmart with groceries here-just the regular department type store.

You wonder why the US has such a big problem with it's trade deficit, eh?
China is so happy with Walmart.

I wonder why ASDA (a Wall-Mart company) dosen't have the same reputation here?

i get my groceries at wal-mart...

1) You don't have to be a socialist to have a beef with Wal-Mart.

2) Wal-Mart is not a model organization, unless you are modeling a race to the bottom. Other places, like Costco for instance, actually sell more per unit of floor space than Wal-Mart, by a considerable sum.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/09/05/treating.workers.right/index.html

Note that Costco workers are unionized, yet they still manage to be competitively advantageous because they offer a superior quality product.

3) If you benefit or have a family member who benefits from any of the following, then you damn well ought to be a supporter of unions, because it was unions who made it possible:

A) 5-day work week
B) 40-hour work week
C) Child labor laws
D) Workplace safety laws
E) Worker's compensation
F) Unemployment benefits

Note that this is far from a comprehensive list. To be honest, I can't think of a single individual in America alive today who hasn't, by just that cursory list, benefitted from the existence of unions. Children can go to school instead of work in factories, people don't have to worry about 1) getting their fingers or hands mangled in unsafe machinery and 2) being made a permanent member of the unemployed because of it, people who are unemployed can still get money until they can get a new job, etc.

i should have phrased my complaint differently -- I know that there was a time when businesses in the US treated workers horribly... and yes, unions did do a great deal to help the working man. But now it seems that the only reason unions are around is to hurt businesses. It's like the unions got their work done -- got us those benefits/improvements you mentioned in your response -- but now that we have those, how exactly are unions helping anyone? I knew a guy in MBA classes who bitched and moaned every class about how union workers would take 3 hours of breaks on a 9-hour shift (not counting the 1 hour for lunch)... how union workers did a good job when they were actually working, but that their production was far below that which might be expected of a non-union worker. That, at higher pay than a non-union worker would be paid. And then there's the philosophical question as to whether or not workers should tell management how to do its job... and further, whether or not non-stakeholders should be able to take decision-making rights away from those who own a company.

stuff like that

and

in terms of maximizing floor space, you're right, Wal-Mart is not THE model organization. They do, however, score high marks in terms of being able to control their suppliers (though the ethics of their supplier relationships is highly debatable).

Wal-Mart pisses me off dearly.

I've seen towns that have their own "Mom and Pop" stores and the like selling quality products at reasonable prices go completely fucking under because Wal-Mart and it's buddy Home Depot showed up on the outskirts. And now, it's just a shitload of houses, some roads, a few schools, and Wal-Mart.

Then there's Wal-Mart's little thing where they shut down the entire friggin' store if a few people try to set up a union. A good example was the seven butchers earlier in this thread.

Wal-Mart claims to create jobs. This, is false. What they do is they crush the shit out of the competition, and then "Create jobs" by replacing the jobs that people just lost. They pay their workers fuck-shit-all, at least all of the workers I've asked have gotten paid shit wages, and thus, because they have less money, they have to buy their crap from Wal-Mart.

It's a grassfire that'll burn out all of it's fuel and then we're all screwed. It simply isn't sustainable and steps need to be taken to shut the fucking thing down before something really bad happens.

I've never been inside a Walmart.

Shopping at Walmart turns you into a Walmartian ( :D I made a funny!! :D ).

What's bad about SHOPPING at Walmart is what it turns you into. If you're actually aware of your surroundings and if you know what's going on and if your going there to save money and get cheap stuff, w/e that's your choice. If you ever go walking through Walmart though, the worst part is how there's messes, fatsos, whack-jobs, and snobish weirdos everywhere (hence the term Walmartian). I can't stand anything that Walmart tries to condone because all it supports is survival and progress at the sacrifice of integrity and honor at the personal level. It's almost the same thing that's wrong with shopping in a cheap chinese store in frontier California. The business is out there not for the people but for the buck.

Now Sam (referring to Walmart's founder) had a great idea and it works at a small level since it brings people together in order to work out their problems. Walmart didn't originally target anyone and everyone for shear cheapness. It was made because Sam truly wanted to help fellow citizens.

But people today at walmart aren't helpful and the customers are all running around with their heads chopped off. It's like junior high all over again having to deal with lunch monitors that favored those with the same heritage and having the kids in the hall running off to their classrooms, as fast as possible, at the sound of the bell. There's just no dignified effort at all at Walmart to preserve culture and happiness at all.

1) Walmart actively discourages unionization of their employees.

2) Walmart buys almost all of it's products from China, where employees have few protections and often work in very unsafe conditions.

there is only one union walmart likes, and that's the chinese state labor federation

Bullshit. Wal-Mart carries the same damn things any other grocery store does, just at lower prices. It is a common misconception that they carry inferior products, but if you'd take the trouble to actually go in one sometime you'd quickly come to notice that the majority of their products are no different than your local safeway or food lion.

Are you allowed to swear on your location?

In the free market, there are no wrongs, only different shades of marketability. Shop wherever you want, I dont care about Wal-Mart or its competitors and detractors. Competition is the key to survival, in nature and in business. Wal-Mart won't be around forver, someone will figure out an even better way to do things. Why worry?
I don't.

Although I have never shopped at Walmart (I'm English) we do have an eual monster here....Tesco.

Now The reason I don't like these stores is firstly because of the agression of them. Firstly they do believe they are a better company and are going to ramm it down everyone until we shop there...that I believe is wrong.

Many of these stores are actually more expensive than local porducers....due to loss leaders and also the shipping costs/wastage.

The location of large stores leads to the creation ofout of town centres, of course you can only get to these stores by car...which is great except for the pollution element.

These stores also pay much less than local retailers and generally treat their workers worse. An example would be a friend of mine is a baker who gets paid £12 an hour to work in a bakers...not great but if he worked for TESCO he could earn a monster £7 an hour.

Not great.

i should have phrased my complaint differently -- I know that there was a time when businesses in the US treated workers horribly... and yes, unions did do a great deal to help the working man. But now it seems that the only reason unions are around is to hurt businesses. It's like the unions got their work done -- got us those benefits/improvements you mentioned in your response -- but now that we have those, how exactly are unions helping anyone? I knew a guy in MBA classes who bitched and moaned every class about how union workers would take 3 hours of breaks on a 9-hour shift (not counting the 1 hour for lunch)... how union workers did a good job when they were actually working, but that their production was far below that which might be expected of a non-union worker. That, at higher pay than a non-union worker would be paid. And then there's the philosophical question as to whether or not workers should tell management how to do its job... and further, whether or not non-stakeholders should be able to take decision-making rights away from those who own a company.

stuff like that

and

in terms of maximizing floor space, you're right, Wal-Mart is not THE model organization. They do, however, score high marks in terms of being able to control their suppliers (though the ethics of their supplier relationships is highly debatable).

It's certainly easy to believe that unions are obsolete; however, what would happen if they vanished overnight?

One possibility (I will by no means try to pass off this prediction as certainty): Large corporations see a chance to repeal labor laws. They wine and dine politicians and throw money at them to the maximum extent allowed by law, and then they hire hordes of lawyers to troll for loopholes in campaign finance law, so that they can shovel even more money to politicians.

The politicians, now bought off, start repealing labor regulations, one after another. Before long, many of the protections we now have are gone.

Sure, voters could replace those politicians in the next election, but by the time said election comes, the damage will have already been done. Politicians voted out of office are promptly given cushy executive jobs in return for their legislative favors.

Then corporations bribe off the new politicians as necessary.

Unions aren't perfect, but they should have at least some influence to keep us from reverting back to the Gilded Age.

Edit: You can't dismiss all union workers as lazy and unproductive based on secondhand information provided by one person about one union. My summer job was under a union contract (though technically I wasn't in the union because I was a seasonal employee; we just had identical working conditions), and people regularly put in fifty-plus hour weeks when they were not required to. Of course, there was also the money, however...

Hell, I had a check with 134 hours on it, and just about every other check had more than 110.

I hate Walmart. I hate how i can be treated so bad only for 7.50 an hour.
I'm quitting. I'm tired.

I make 6.25 an hour (NJ). Except I get treated well. I'd like to be paid more, but if it meant being treated horribly and wearing the gross uniform I'd rather stay where I am now and get paid the 1.25 less. Ah, the pros of working at a small town drug store. Thanks for making me appricate my job. :D

Whats wrong about shopping at walmart?Nothing.

I've never even seen a walmart, but it just doesn't have a good reputation for offering good quality goods. I 'm sure if I had to shop there I would. It can't be that bad?

I don't shop at Walmart for a number of reasons. I'll list them.

1) Walmart actively discourages unionization of their employees.

2) Walmart buys almost all of it's products from China, where employees have few protections and often work in very unsafe conditions.

3) Walmart's massive buying power forces wholesalers to drop prices, which in turn decreases the ammount of money available to the wholesaler to pay workers salaries and benefits.

4) Walmart's massive buying power means that they get deals that smaller retailers can't compete with. With one big box store selling items that would normally be stocked in many smaller stores there's a need for fewer cashiers, janitors, security guards, and so on. Fewer available jobs and a steady ammount of people looking for work means lower wages and higher unemployment.
2b) Many of the companies that Walmart does business with violate human rights, and Walmart refuses to do anything about it.

Ive seem some threads on the evilness of walmart. The explanations were way too long to read so I just didnt care.

So can someone tell me (in ONE paragraph) why I shouldnt shop there?

Too crowded and parking is a bitch...

;)

I read in a crazy liberal book... quite possibly by Michael Moore... that because of the sheer size of the stores, they can get the largest shipments = cheapest costs, grossely undercutting the local stores in the towns that this big warehouse has been built on the edge of. The presence of a Walmart also encourages business out of the town centres, and the large store is soon flanked by Home Depot and whatever. Local stores die. Town becomes like every other town.

So Walmart rip the heart and soul from a town.

Because we all know Local businesses are kind hearteded generous people who care about their customers :headbang: