Why Walmart Really Sucks

The bloom has finally come off the Walmart rose for me. It took longer because I'm not a sheep who takes social stands whenever prodded by the mainstream media. I'm saddled with student loans and a severely anemic economy that is hemorrhaging what few jobs there are left. If I took social stands on everything, I'd be out on my arse, living under a bridge somewhere.
I am a huge fan of the show The Simpsons, I know the intrinsic details of it better than most people and definitely better than most all the members of my gender. There is an episode where Homer gets a job at a store mirroring Walmart appropriately called Sprawlmart. The show goes on to mock Walmart and poke fun at the legal troubles they have had regarding labor and treatment of employees. The adage that there is some truth behind every joke is supported by this episode. While we have laws in this country regarding labor codes and regulations that should be followed, most of the hand wringing and bemoaning about Walmart in the mainstream media has more to do with social axes to grind--mainly their disgust at Walmart's history, the Walton family and the corporation's conservative leanings as well as their largest demographic of shoppers: conservative, rural Americans who support the military, the NRA and the blue collar way of life. The arch nemesis of the elitist media. Oddly enough no one is wringing their hands over the objectification of women employees at Hooters or their physical requirements for their employees. So I've come to learn that it's all relative to what the media deems hang wring worthy. That being said, out of touch employees with socialistic expectations is one thing but discriminatory corporate practices and similar behavior by management that keeps women out of management positions because of antiquated, backwoods notions about a woman's place (barefoot, pregnant, at home cooking, yada yada yada) is quite another. More to the point, the latter is AGAINST THE LAW. Another adage comes to mind about how for every rat you see, there are ten you don't.
About four or five years ago shopping at Walmart was so much fun. Seriously. I was in college and a person could decorate their apartment, buy groceries and toiletries while saving a bundle. Coupon savings on top of huge price cuts on thousands of items is a joyous thing for anyone who is on a budget. And it was all under one roof with many different brand choices offered! Comparison shopping which was an arduous task became a thing of the past. Walmarts started popping up all over the place. No one could match their prices, they were Godsends whether you were in the middle of nowhere or the middle of a bustling metropolis.
I got the party line from social standers in my life when mentioning that I shopped at Walmart. Sometimes I made an issue out of it like when a guest at a family event blurted out 'only white trash shops at Walmart!' in front of me and sometimes I let it slide. Last time I checked this was a free country and if an employer isn't treating their employees right, you have the right to up and leave. I've worked for plenty of companies who treated their employees like indentured servants and the nightly news was never loitering around outside wanting to hear my grievances. Most everyone's employer is imperfect, that's what binds together the train wreck known as the collective American workplace.
While in college, I heard it through the grapevine (through friends who interned at big consumer product companies) would give Company X a price point at which they would sell their product. There was no negotiation about that price point. If Company X didn't want their product sold at that price, hard cheese. Then Walmart wouldn't carry their product all all. Weird, I thought, but if Walmart's objective is a low price no matter what then the real winner was the consumer.
I then moved to a location where there were relatively few Walmarts in close proximity and I started shopping elsewhere or on the Internet. About a year ago, I was once again situated in a Walmart friendly area and began shopping there again. I went there during the summer and fall for a military care package I was putting together and for a back to school package I was putting together as part of a program for lower income students in nearby districts. What I found was really shocking. To me Walmart had always meant lower prices without compromising quality. What I found was another Target, another Kmart, another Meijer. The items that were cheap in every respect. Cheap price, cheap quality. Recognizable brand names were regularly priced, the same as any other store in its category in the toiletries and school supply departments. There were no big deals. Depending on the coupon, the item could be brought into a decent price range but nothing praiseworthy. You got a deal on something that had reduced quality which isn't a good trade off in most scenarios.
A few months after that, I began big cost cutting moves due to being laid of from my job. I took a trip to my local Walmart to see what items were good deals. Armed with an envelope of coupons and a shopping list, I started working my way through aisles. First thing I noticed is that the shopping baskets that made it convenient to pick up more than a few items without having to get a bulky cart were gone. I had inquired about the baskets whereabouts at an urban and a suburban Walmart. At the urban WM, they said they were all stolen and they weren't going to replace them. At the suburban WM, the excuse was simply that they didn't offer them to shoppers anymore. Nothing more than a sly marketing ploy to force shoppers to either fumble like a nervous footballer player with more than three items in their arms or relent and commandeer a cart with the standard single erratic wheel, filling it with a lot of unnecessary items. Very clever WM.
What I found on said trip to WM: Cosmetics department was amputated from the rest of the beauty/toiletries department and banished along with hand lotions/sun care to the other side of the store. The regular prices of cosmetics mirrored the prices found at Rite Aid. Right coupons at the right time brought their prices into a reasonable range but that's not the point with WM. The point is their regular prices were supposed to outshine all of their competitors. There are only four facial skincare lines carried at WM and their prices twin Rite Aid's. A lot of shelf space is taken up by WM's private label Equate. "Rollback" prices are a joke and scarce to find.
Diversity in selection of hair care brands is no more. Two items had lower price points than most other chains but that was out of at least 30-40 items. Presentation of products was awful even for a discount mass retailer. It looked like a dump truck backed up to the shelves and unloaded the products with the pull of a lever and the employees left the products as is. When I worked in retail, there was such a thing as fronting (pulling product from the back to fill in gaps where customers had picked up items to purchase). That way everything on the shelf looked nice and uniform. Fronting is the least of WM's product problems.
Lastly, and most noteworthy, is Walmart's policy on MasterCard debit card use as an acceptable means of payment. WM has told MC sorry there is no more room at the inn. I had heard years back that WM and MC were at odds over usage fees, neither side wanted to cover them. I guess in the end WM called MC's bluff and denied them at the door.This is where the runaway ego alarm should be sounding. When a discount mass retailer bars the door to one of the country's largest credit card companies, someone needs a reality check. When their weekend sales flyer pales in comparison to its peers' robust circulars, it shows a secure cockiness.
And I guess that is the lesson learned here. Runaway egos, when it comes to the well being and rosy outlook of a company, end in calamity. Because when WM plateaus and then declines, which is a 'when' not 'if', what will become of the concrete behamouths they have constructed spaced ten feet apart? WM already stands as a symbol of the mythology behind the idea of a true discount mass retailer.