Wal-Mart Vs. Target

[preyer]

soylent green is people? so is arby's roast beef sandwiches. funny how whenever they have those '5 for $5' deals you start not seeing those transients selling flowers on the off-ramp, eh? i'll leave the math up to you....

yeah, sorry, i hadn't realized i'd rambled on like that. a touchy subject for me, wal*mart is. jeesh, now i'm starting to sound like yoda. i'm really not too hep on GM at the moment, either, or folk driving around in a new honda or toyota (no offense if you do, that's capitalism). i've always maintained that capitalism works as long as the limits and laws are abided by, that unchecked levels of greed are actually harmless to the bottom-line in the long run. wal*mart is essentially above the law and inexplicably pretty clean in the court of public opinion despite mountains of evidence to the contrary easily amassed in a cursory research.

i'm in ohio, so perhaps few others can appreciate the width and breadth of how these places and practices affect a community. more specifically, i'm in dayton, a GM town second perhaps only to detroit. literally down the road is/was huffy, and what a screw-job those folk endured. i had even worked at GM and know first hand how it feels to lose your job to a foreign plant.

so what does that have to do with anything? well, there used to be a plant here in lorraine (? it's been awhile since looking this stuff up, so bear with me) that made something or other. the town relied on this plant for employment and taxes. here comes WW, threatening no to sell their wares unless they could bring the cost down to where WW wanted. the only possible way to do this was to close the plant and ship the job to china. needless to say this devastated the town.

and what does WW do next? why, build a super wally*world in lorraine, of course! and what do these idiots do instead of burning it down and crushing each and every brick? they shop there!

wow. i mean, just... wow.

to me, when a corporation flaunts the law, goes against the wishes of a community who actually doesn't want a WW, and controls the lives of people by virtue of happening to own a lot of warehouses to shop in, you've uncovered the basic flaw in capitalism.

i used to shop WW for one reason, to get a particular brand of dog food that i had to buy lots of to save any real money (and even then the savings wasn't that great). i'm not sure why, but they raised the price to more than a store closer. better savings? no.

funny, but as i was wondering around for no apparent reason (i mean, how can i complain if i'm *completely* ignorant about them, eh?), there on an end cap was *snicker* a CARDBOARD grandfather clock! now, imagine for a second what a grandfather clock represents. it's a classy piece of beautiful, functional furniture to be sure, but it's also, well, it's also a status symbol of sorts. it's why a person would opt to drive a GMC over a chevy.

so what does owning a cardboard grandfather clock say about a person? 'hey, wanna grab a milwaukee's best ice, look at my clock, then later check out my collection of plastic spray-painted in indonesia angels?'

i dunno, i just have the idea that target is somehow unwilling to go to such depths. like i mentioned, i believe their core clientele is classier than that, as snobbish as it sounds without really meaning to sound that way. i've been called a snob before, though, lol, though i defend my right to be more discriminate in the cheap crap i buy. (poor as i may be, i still go up to the post office person and say i'd like to ship this the fastest, cheapest way possible.)

my wife actually had a business dealing with WW a few years back. these two guys come in from WW and want to order some trophies for a car show they planned on having in the parking lot. sure, no problem. it wasn't a big order, so we didn't get any money down. (yeah, not the best way to do business, but it's honestly not been an issue except in that one instance. we've found a certain amount of friendliness is generated when you extend this modicum of trust to someone, and people respond positively to that.)

anyway, we did the work and called them up. they never showed up. we left another message, knowing the time was getting close for them. the event passed and they never picked up the work. we now had a problem.

we talked to their supervisor who informed us the event had been cancelled. sorry to hear that, pay us. 'but, we didn't have the even,' he said. failing to see how that affected me one way or another, i told him, 'that doesn't affect me one way or another. you contracted work to be done, we did it, and we need to get paid for it.' obviously i wasn't dealing with a vulcan here as his logical processes seemed to be lacking, he continued to insist that since no one picked the order up he didn't owe anything for it. au contraire, jackass. upon informing him the order was his, he owned it when his subordinants put the order in, and he can do what he wanted to with the trophies (i refrained from offering my opinion on what he should do with them), he got the hint that i wasn't going to just allow myself to get screwed and the next day he sent a stooge down with payment. here's the final score:

little guy: 1
piece of management: 0

i'm not sure where this bozo got the gall to think i was one of his suppliers he could just push around, as if i cared whether or not WW burned down tomorrow and if it did that would somehow affect my business. the arrogance in the man's voice was maddening, sounding as if he had the right to bend me over and have his way because he was another brick in the wall of the WW machine. (okay, i know few bricks are actually part of a machine, but i love mixing metaphors.)

you know what they say, 'as long as the economy is good people will vote for the devil.' same thing: if people think they're saving money, they'll keep shopping there. problem is, that 'savings' is costing communities, families, and the economy, nay, the american way of life (won't someone please think of the children!) more than it's worth.

ah, but then again it's hard to make someone understand that of course it costs more than a penny to make a penny, but that's not a valid reason in and of itself to stop making them. (a penny pays for itself within a few transactions. given that a penny can last years, that's a pretty good return on investment.)

[preyer]

interesting....



Green Day lashes out at Wal-Mart policy
AP, May 21, 2009 12:00 pm PDT

Green Day has the most popular CD in the country, but you won't be able to find it at your local Wal-Mart.The band says the giant superstore chain refused to stock its latest CD, "21st Century Breakdown," because Wal-Mart wanted the album edited for language and content, and they refused.
"Wal-Mart's become the biggest retail outlet in the country, but they won't carry our record because they wanted us to censor it," frontman Billie Joe Armstrong said in a recent interview.
While Wal-Mart sells CDs from acts known for raunchy content, including Eminem's latest, they offer customers the "clean" version of those CDs, which are edited for content that may be objectionable. But in Armstrong's view, "There's nothing dirty about our record."


"They want artists to censor their records in order to be carried in there," he said. "We just said no. We've never done it before. You feel like you're in 1953 or something.""21st Century Breakdown" contains curses and some references considered adult.

Wal-Mart said that it's the company's long-standing policy not to stock any CD with a parental advisory sticker.

"As with all music, it is up to the artist or label to decide if they want to market different variations of an album to sell, including a version that would remove a PA rating," Wal-Mart spokeswoman Melissa O'Brien said. "The label and artist in this case have decided not to do so, so we unfortunately can not offer the CD."

But bassist Mike Dirnt said: "As the biggest record store in the America, they should probably have an obligation to sell people the correct art."

Not being sold at Wal-Mart didn't stop the band — which kicks off a U.S. tour summer tour in Seattle on July 3 — from landing at the top of the album charts this week. "21st Century Breakdown" sold about 215,000 copies since it's debut on Friday.

The album is the follow-up to their multiplatinum, Grammy-winning CD "American Idiot," and like that album, deals with weighty topics. While "American Idiot" spoke to the frustration over the presidency of George W. Bush and the Iraq War, this CD speaks to the loss of innocence and confusion in today's society.

While Armstrong, Dirnt and drummer Tre Cool are still top-sellers without Wal-Mart, Armstrong said the store's policy is disappointing, considering it has become the dominant seller of CDs with the decline of traditional music stores.

"If you think about bands that are struggling or smaller than Green Day ... to think that to get your record out in places like that, but they won't carry it because of the content and you have to censor yourself," he said. "I mean, what does that say to a young kid who's trying to speak his mind making a record for the first time? It's like a game that you have to play. You have to refuse to play it."
____
On the Net:
http://www.greenday.com

[Inkfink]

Not a huge fan of Wal-Mart but I had to stop in there today and was surprised the stock was significantly lower store wide. I don't know if that reflects Wal-Marts in general but it might be a sign of the times.