The Wall

wal-mart. I hate wal-mart. It is trying to take over the world. It already runs some third world countries including Bangladesh and Honduras and soon will be taking over more of our lives via the mortgage business. Prepare yourselves folks, because soon you will be able to drop off your film and prescriptions while your oil is getting changed, as you shop for cheap burger meat and deodorant before you head up to the counter to get a money order for your electric bill and pay your monthly mortgage. And if you get side tracked in the electronics section and find that you don't have the time to go home to make dinner, you can just grab some Mcdonald's or Taco Bell or whatever other fast grease restaurant they have INSIDE their store. And if your contact falls out because your eye dries out from staring at all the deals, fear not: just swing around the cosmetics section to the eye doctor.

I've been bitching about wal-mart for so long now that I am drained of it. It is really common knowledge that they have very shady business tactics and are responsible for forcing tons of american businesses to either move overseas or go under. Annmarie took an English class last year and had to write a paper on wal-mart. Her professor provided her with a website with a really informative pulitzer prize winning series of articles on wal-mart. Here's the link:

http://www.pulitzer.org/year/2004/national-reporting/works/

On top of all the other things wal-mart does that piss me off, here are a few from my own personal experiences rather than from the wealth of articles, news stories, etc. Maybe they're silly. I have been told I am often too analytical. But really, I can't help it. When I don't trust something or someone, I become suspicious. I begin to analyze, to inquire in my mind until I reach a satisfactory answer. It's the overactive part of my human condition. Anyway, here we go:

1. Why are the aisles in wal-mart so discombobulated? The usual mission of department stores is to elicit convienence. You know, the "everything under one roof" phillosophy. Like when I used to go to Ames, for instance, and they had a specific corner for seasonal items that would CHANGE with the seasons: if I was in a last minute rush for halloween candy, I would run through the doors, turn left, jog down a straight-a-way and boom: I was surrounded by candy, face paint, hair glitter and orange porch lights. (For those that don't know, Ames was a popular department store chain that had been around forever until wal-mart spread like the black plague.) When I go to K-mart for socks, I can see the well situated signs posted on the walls or suspended from the ceiling and I know right where to go. Perhaps wal-mart has these signs but I never noticed them. The only signs I can clearly remember seeing are the big yellow "slashing prices" smiley face signs. Maybe their directional cues are hidden behind the maze-like aisles that reach almost to the ceiling. Forget trying to find anything in an efficient manner and definitely forget trying to find all the holiday items in one place. If they're not scattered throughout the aisles, they are floating haphazardly throughout the store on little islands of their own. Convience? No: one must embark on a treasure hunt for the fairy wings, fake blood, candy corn, and the "scary sounds" cd, and just hope it doesn't take over an hour. My logical conclusion to this madness? They WANT you to spend hours at a time in their store. They figure while you're wading through masses of cheap shoes, generic Tide, and slave wage made clothes to find the faux spider webs, you might be tempted to grab the air freshener, fruit roll ups and 50 cent tank top that caught your eye. Their scheme is working. People love wal-mart becuase their prices are SO cheap, and their subconscious mind has picked up on the inconvience factor, so they consciously work around it by making wal-mart a day! Once a month or so, they go to wal-mart to browse and shop, maybe eat, maybe throw on a lay-away. It's smart, really. What a great way to make more money to negate the dirt cheap prices: people go in for the 99 cent 80 pack of Charmin and come out having spent a hundred and fifty bucks.

2. What the hell is up with the senior citizen greeters always killing you with kindness at the door? And the farewellers bidding you adieu at the other door? wal-mart's (I can't even bring myself to capitalize them at the start of a sentance!) tidy response to this is that they are taking the plight of the lower class seniors to heart: in a supreme act of generosity, they have created a wealth of jobs for the struggling elderly, so that they don't have to eat cat food anymore. And if they still must because their pay sucks, at least they have the store discount so they can get 10% off the 19 cent can of nine lives. My logical conclusion to all this generosity? They hire people to "man the doors," to "be on the lookout" in an effort to minimize shoplifting. I betcha during training there is a nice long lecture from some expert on "noticing the signs" and what to do if you suspect that someone is smuggling a twenty dollar VCR out in their baby stroller. Yet another smooth move on wal-mart's part: "Secret shoppers? Who needs 'em? That will just make the shoppers untrusting and resentful. We want them to love us, to love the wal-mart esperience. So let's put an old man with a big blue and yellow smiley face apron in front of the door to hand out carts. And when they think, 'I could've gotten my own cart...it's right there,' it will be immediately followed by, 'oh, but it's so nice that that old man found a job.'" And I'm sure there is someone up in a cushy office somewhere doing the numbers and figuring that the amount of money they save in stolen merchandise cancels out the pittance that they pay the seniors.

3. Why do all the wal-mart flyers feature their employees and families posing as models? Is it really because they value those employees and they believe in a work environment centered around fellowship and loving teamwork? PAHLEASE. Can you imagine how much money they're saving in not paying real models?!? Pretty slick, right? Make their extremely underpaid employees feel like superstars, save butt-loads of cash, and take advantage of some great word of mouth advertising as the employees and families tell everyone they know that they were in the wal-mart flyer, or that their sister was, or that the Down's Syndrome daughter of a friend's cousin's ex-husband was, and everybody's wonderful image about wal-mart the great just keeps getting greater!

It's all one big conspiracy. For a company to feign such generosity and high morals while they bully starving chinese women to sew more and more buttons faster and faster for less and less, is nothing more than evil. They take away american jobs and are glad to do it so that all those people that lost their jobs to overseas factories will be FORCED to shop at wal-mart because their prices are all that unemployment and welfare checks will allow. It works out great for wal-mart. The poorer and more desperate we are, the more money they will make. wal-mart, otherwise known as Hell-mart (with a capital "H") makes me sick. They shall hereafter be refered to as "banging your head against a wall-mart."