The Wal-Mart Supercenter

Then again, I was still floored by the giant mall in (near?) Cary, North Carolina (Chapel Hill/Raleigh-Durham area), largely because it's not only huge and all-encompassing, but it's actually sort of pleasant, which makes it even more frightening. The whole thing feels vaguely like a bustling downtown, and all the people who seemed conspicuously absent from downtown Raleigh and Chapel Hill appeared to be hanging there instead. Barnes and Noble, movies, restaurants, every store you can think of, etc.

I live in Jersey City right now, which is sort of like a cross between New Jersey and New York -- so I have a mall and a Target Greatland, but I can walk to both of them.

not so improbable since rough trade went bankrupt a couple years before.

Another thing that makes grocery shopping at Wal-Mart Supercenter worth it to me -- it truly is a one-stop shopping center. If I'm running low on the CD-Rs I use, I can get a five-pack of them at the Supercenter for $2.97. If I need a mailer or a box of envelopes -- right there. If I need a couple of new towels -- there. Batteries, lightbulbs, pet food, tennis balls for my baby puppy, greeting cards (most of the time it's Hallmark, my favorite kind), a new oil filter for my vehicle, a watch, a calculator (recently replaced my TI-86 at a Supercenter), socks (also recently got me some new socks there), bras (wearing one purchased at a Supercenter right now), jeans, casual tops (I have nothing at all against wearing clothing bought at Wal-Mart) -- all of it and more I can get at Wal-Mart. Sure, it may sometimes feel a bit bland, generic, and sanitized, but when I get out of that store with multiple shopping bags filled with all kinds of things that my tight schedule wouldn't have normally allowed me to get in one weekend, that's a good feeling.

-- tokyo rosemary (rosemarygilber...), March 25th, 2005.

Indeed, the nightmare that is Shop Rite is a block from where I live.

*and cue jingle*

surreal addiction in the new wal-mart spot! all kids in tow. ha! might need to tighten up that copy though. needs more...jazz.

No, my schedule's tight for decidedly non-child-related reasons. Anyway -- ha. That DID sound a bit like a Wal-Mart ad spot, didn't it? Except for the whole "bland, generic, and sanitized" part. Which they could cut out in editing, yeah.

teeny: What in life CAN'T be bettered by nuro synths, I ask you? ;)

Obviously, it's a mild shock or it would've made the national news that people's heads were exlploding at a retail center in Arkansas. However, the store has made attempts to correct the problem by attaching little metal chains to the wheels of the carts. Somehow, this grounds everything and people get shocked only every once in awhile now.

Still, for me, if it comes down to "One-Stop Shopping" where I get electrocuted or having to go to Kroger and the hardware store, I'll pick the latter.

Ha peak times = all the time! I was too lazy to try walking to A&P tho.

Isn't Meijer the chain that Wal-Mart got the inspiration to start off its Supercenters from? I heard that from a friend of mine who's from Michigan whose father works for Meijer. She told me all about that store in 1997, before the Supercenters came to town, and I was filled with awe that that many things could be purchased from one store. Fast forward some eight years and now it's sorta become vital to my life.

Upon entering around 8:30pm, I was completely blown away by how disgusting this entire store was, I had to go out to my car and grab my camera. I could not believe my eyes. This place was absolutely filthy.

It appeared that nothing had been cleaned, stocked or put back where it belonged for weeks. The shelves were empty and had every imaginable type of spilled product crusted on and completely ignored for what must have been several weeks.

The 'Produce' section was unspeakable. Empty bins with crusty scraps of produce were everywhere. Rotten fruit and wilted vegetables had random merchandise strewn about amongst them throughout their containers. A carton of orange juice sat on the shelf of Windex.

The rest of the store was just as bad. A bottle of dishwashing detergent sat next to cans of soup. Shelves of sugar were a granulated spilled mess. What appeared to be dry cat food was spilled underneath the shelf of fabric softener, and a partially consumed BlowPop had cemented itself to the shelf amongst the Febreze bottles.

Mr. D'Herrera held a 12-day hunger strike, shedding 17 pounds from his already spare frame. He said Wal-Mart's building permits contained irregularities, a charge that Wal-Mart denied. The record has not been made public.

parsed somehow as

The Wal-Mart Supercenter Inside Me

Wal-Mart has a history of discrimination against women: 1.6 million women are currently involved in a class-action suit against the company charging it with paying women less and offerring fewer opportunities for advancement. A CSU study found that on average at Wal-Mart female hourly workers earn around 37 cents less per hour than their male counterparts and female managers earn about $5000/year less than men. They make up 74% of the company's total workforce but represent only 33% of its managers.

They've also got a record of repeated labor violations. They've broken family leave laws on a number of occassions, they've got 53 simultaneous class action cases regarding Off-The-Clock work (and internal surveys have found that the majority of stores are not in compliance with Lunch Break laws), and they've been sued numerous times for breaking child labor laws by having minors do things like heavy lifting and transport.

They've got a record of pollution and using suppliers that are known polluters, like Murphy Oil--who runs all their gas stations--and its record of emitting 20 times the legal level of sulfur dioxide. They were fined $170,000 by the state of Georgia for letting runoff from their construction sites run into state waters and polluting the water supply. A few years later they settled with the state of Connecticut for 1.5 million for polluting state waters over 7 years at 20 stores. They paid another half million to the federal government for violating air pollution regulations in eleven states.

This is to say nothing of their threatening squeeze of local governments, their desecration of Mayan ruins, or their absurdly inaccessible employee health care practices.

There are plenty of reasons not to shop at Wal-Mart, dude.

Arguments FOR shopping there? Well imagine for a second you're not an upper middle class 'let them eat cake' kinda person. You're poor, live off social security, disability, or welfare. There isn't a Crate and Barrel within 100 miles of your home, and you don't know anyone who owns a Jaguar. You don't live in Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Los Angeles or San Francisco, ie no 'bodegas' or all night drug stores. It's midnight and your baby needs milk, your kitchen lightbulb just burned out, and you're all out of toothpaste. Where do you go?

I love your "even evangelical Christians" line, too - like, even THOSE hapless barbarians take exception to WalMart's business practices.

Typical ivory tower, gated community, patronizing bullshit.

Obviously. You don't think this is a bit of a strawman?

Youtube link, perchance?

Wal-Mart sprcntrs have the worst produce EVER. However, they are the only place I know that sells collard greens and BooBerry/FrankenBerry/Count Chocula all times of the year. For $2 a box no less!

http://img397.imageshack.us/img397/7408/smartnetworkwalmarteditej3.jpg

I can't explain why, but I've been laughing at this picture all morning.

She's an alien and she's trying to unscrew the bottom.

"These...strange...Terran...contraptions!"

Now that I've spent some time in Eastern Washington state, where Wal*Marts are aplenty (while non existant in greater Seattle aside from Renton -- and Puyallup and Marysville if those count as greater Seattle), my feelings are a little more neutral than before.

From the POV of their grand plan and corporate mission, I still despise them as much as I ever did, but their effect on a small town's local economy doesn't necessarily fall into the gutting-the-local-character-and-economy-of-the-precious-small-town-OH-SHIT-CUE-JOHN-COUGAR-MELLENCAMP stereotype *nearly* as much as most people think -- the latter of which probably never stepped into a Wal*Mart...

...which is understantable, as it's completely fair for someone in a big city to criticize a company for its practices even if that person has never stepped inside its store *because* that company purposely locates its stores just outside the incorporated city limits of more rural towns.

I was just providing insight, now that I've stepped into Wal*Marts for the very first time in my life as of two months ago, because I had to.

I love threads started by and mostly commented on by people who find huge stores novel and worthy of controversy. I think there are probably four or five of these things within a thirty minute drive of me right now and at least three Super Targets.

Keep in mind that this is the same board that boasts a "Can you drive a car?" poll.

and demonizes anyone who doesn't want to live in a high-density city.

In the year since I've been home, the Wal-mart in my town closed down (leaving a vacant building on a huge lot), and they built a new Wal-Mart Supercenter two miles away, thus regaining the sales tax relief the county grants to "new businesses". Haven't been into the big new one yet, but I have been to the slightly less new and slightly closer Target.
My town is small and has this sales tax relief incentive, so the number of people shopping here in a day or a week is definitely bigger than the number of people LIVING here.

There are so many city signs in my state that say "Wal-Mart Drive", leading up to empty storefronts or second-hand chains, it's ridiculous.

Map showing the flow of new Wal-Marts over time

I didn't realize that the Wal-Mart in my hometown in SE Missouri was the 40th Wal-Mart built out of 3000+. Explains why our modest downtown was completely desolate from the earliest I can remember, I suppose.

wal-marts in china are a spectacle, they are fucking massive, usually with two or more floors