wal*mart
I have my own feelings about so many mom-n-pop stores that feature shoddy customer service, limited selection, and overinflated prices simply because they're the only General Weed 'n' Feed in town and if ya don't like it, ya can't shop anywhere else, g'hut! This sentiment, however, in no way overrides my disdain for Wal*Mart.
Fortunately, I live in a city, not a small town, so I can choose to shop at stores that actually have reasonable prices like Walgreen's and Target. I'm still hoping Elyria gets a Meijer soon, but seeing as there are plans to build yet another Wal*Mart, the chances of a Meijer occupying the three-year-old empty SuperK building are probably slim to nil. And yes, I did even take the time to e-mail the Meijer company to recommend they contact Carnegie Management about turning the abandoned SuperK into a Meijer, but they said they have no plans to manage a store out this-a-way.
I will only venture (or adventure) into Wal*Mart if I see something in their ad that's on sale that I really need/want and is significantly cheaper than usual (last time this happened was a 2-for-1 sale on microwave kettle corn in 2002).
Elyria's Wal*Mart is always busy, at all hours of the day, every day of the year, which means empty parking spaces are scarce. Once inside, you're greeted by what is apparently a case study for a zoology graduate student's doctoral thesis, complete with simian children racing through the exactly-one-cart-wide aisles and dashing between legs of adults. The parent monkeys put forth limited effort to leash the children, as they are hypnotized by the rock-bottom prices. And that's assuming the prices are posted at all and you don't have to go searching for a bar code scanner.
The checkout lines always back up into the main aisle, making both entry to the store and the hour-long checkout an adventure in claustrophobia. Assuming the exclamations of "yew git down offa that cart" and "jest wait till we git home an' your daddy hears about this" don't cause a brain hemorrhage, you may yet leave the store with your sanity intact, but perhaps with a healthy dose of contempt for Wal*Mart.
And that's just for the store itself; the practices of Wal*Mart as a corporation don't do much for me either.
5 Comments:
Yeah! Down with Walmart!!! w00h00!
Here's an interesting opinion piece from The BG News (of all places), that doesn't really surprise me. What a shock, when you pay crap wages, you get crap employees!
Yeah, Kristy and I have been boycotting Walmart (some of us more *ahem* vigorously than others) ever since a conversation Kristy had at work about them. Something to the effect that Walmart brings in special lecturers to explain to their employees how to get gub'mint benefits like food stamps because they pay them so little.
Meijer's not a bad alternative--it's the only place we will shop in BG now that Kroger's has a Starbucks in it--but what I really pine for is a Costco. They take the exact opposite approach, treating their employees well to keep turnover low and training costs lower. Reminds me of Henry Ford: "If I pay a man enough to buy my car, he'll buy my car!"
Also, while the Walton family gave mad cash to the Bushistas (enough to earn them a boycott from me, were I not already boycotting), the Costco folks were big backers of the Kerry campaign.
Sadly, the nearest Costco is at Avon Commons, so not exactly convenient from where I live. I do have a Sam's Club membership, which more than pays for itself with the lower gas prices and the amount of Eclipse gum I use, but I'd much prefer to shop at Costco.
Sam's club is just as bad as walmart. Don't let the warehouse interior fool ya; those people are getting paid the crap wages just like everyone else is. And, the same folks who brought to you underselling competition to bring you low low prices at walmart are doing doubly so for sam's club, because it's all in bulk.
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