FLY ON THE WAL: UNDERCOVER AT WAL-MART, THE HEARTLAND SUPERSTORE THAT MAY SAVE THE ECONOMYThe rest of the story is very insightful.
By CHARLES PLATT
Some people, usually community activists, loath Wal-Mart. Others, like the family of four struggling to make ends meet, are in love with the chain. I, meanwhile, am in awe of it.
With more than 7,000 facilities worldwide, coordinating more than 2 million employees in its fanatical mission to maintain an inventory from more than 60,000 American suppliers, it has become a system containing more components than the Space Shuttle - yet it runs as reliably as a Timex watch.
Sheltered by rabble rousers who forced Wal-Mart's CEO to admit it "wasn't worth the effort" to try to open in Queens or anywhere else in the city, New Yorkers may not fully realize the unique, irreplaceable status of the World's Largest Retailer in rural and suburban America. Merchandise from Wal-Mart has become as ubiquitous as the water supply. Yet still the company is rebuked and reviled by anyone claiming a social conscience, and is lambasted by legislators as if its bad behavior places it somewhere between investment bankers and the Taliban.
Considering this is a company that is helping families ride out the economic downturn, which is providing jobs and stimulus while Congress bickers, which had sales growth of 2% this last quarter while other companies struggled, you have to wonder why. At least, I wondered why. And in that spirit of curiosity, I applied for an entry-level position at my local Wal-Mart.
I've had a love-hate relationship with Wal-Mart (and big-box stores in general) for years. The "hate" part stems from my own experience in entrepreneurship and small business. As an employee and later owner of a small business that specialized in shortwave radio equipment I lived the struggle of a small store against the giant Discount Electronic Whorehouses (as I labeled them) that undercut our prices without providing any specialized knowledge of the products they were selling. We'd often expend our time and expertise to educate a shopper only to have him tell us that he was going to buy the radio from the local Discount Electronics Whorehouse in order to save $10. (Seriously -- they'd actually tell us that, as if they thought it was perfectly OK to take advantage of our services for free, then give someone else their cash for the actual product.)
The "love" part of the relationship stems from convenience. As much as anyone else, I lamented the closing of the small local booksellers that I grew up patronizing -- but in the end, I came to realize they never had what I was looking for; Barnes & Noble did. Same thing with the local hardware stores suffering from the Home Depot invasion. Ditto the appliance stores, record stores, shoe stores, computer stores, and all the rest of the local shops that, seemingly overnight, just disappeared. Platt hits it on the head:
When I first ventured from New York City to the American heartland, I did my best to patronize quaint little places on Main Street and quickly discovered the penalties for doing so. At a small appliance store, I wasn't allowed to buy a microwave oven on display. I had to place an order and wait a couple of weeks for delivery. At a stationery store where I tried to buy a file cabinet, I found the same problem. Think back, if you are old enough to do so, and you may recall that this is how small-town retailing used to function in the 1960s.My first Wal-Mart experience didn't come until later in life. Bergen County, NJ was a Wal-Mart Free zone, protected by pro-union politicians despite being littered with malls and other big chain retailers. So I was pretty insulated from the Wal-Mart phenomenon until I started living outside the union-dominated NYC-Metro area. Closter, NJ, where I gew up, has no Wal-Marts within a 10-mile radius; Sussex, NJ, has but one store. In my new hometown of Waco, TX, I find 3 local stores less than 10 miles away -- all three of them "Supercenters" which sell groceries (something I never saw up north). At Wal-Mart, the big problem is not finding what we need; it's fitting everything into one shopping cart. What used to take a trip all over creation to two or more stores back in the old days is now done in a single trip to Wal-Mart.
As a customer, I don't see why I should protect a business from the harsh realities of commerce if it can't maintain a good inventory at a competitive price. And as an employee, I see no advantage in working at a small place where I am subject to the quixotic moods of a sole proprietor, and can never appeal to his superior, because there isn't one. [Emphasis mine]
But surely this convenience must come at price, right?
Um... well... no. Not really. The prices are great -- we still marvel at how little we spend for two shopping carts of groceries compared to what we spent in NJ, or even at other supermarkets in TX. The people that work there are always friendly and helpful, the store are always clean, and there's always a Wal-Mart nearby, no matter where you are (except, apparently, in
For all of this, it's curious to find that Leftoids hate Wal-Mart. They moan and groan about health care, salaries, non-unionization... but the simple fact is, Liberals are elitist pricks who look down with disgust at the people who shop there as well as the people who work there. They think that the only people who shop and work at Wal-Mart are gun-and-religion-clinging rednecks, most of whom are fat, stupid, toothless and drive pickup trucks. It matters not that Wal-Mart creates jobs for almost 2 million unskilled workers who might otherwise be unemployed, on welfare, dependent on government...
Come to think of it, that's exactly why they hate Wal-Mart -- they don't give a shit about Wal-Mart muscling in on the turf of small businesses; they're angry because Wal-Mart is muscling in on the turf of government. Wal-Mart is a shining example of the private sector doing what leftists believe is the state's function: creating jobs, helping people feed their families, providing health benefits.
Never mind the consumers who enjoy good products at fair market prices. Never mind the sales tax revenues generated by Wal-Mart that go straight into the coffers of government to be squandered by politicians. Never mind the fact that all this job creation and economic pump-priming is done without a single "stimulus" dollar spent by government. (Maybe if the Obamunists really want to stimulate the economy they should buy $1T in Wal-Mart stock.) All Leftoids see at Wal-Mart (besides toothless, stupid rednecks) is a company that epitomizes free-market capitalism, one that proves their economic and social theories wrong. Wal-Mart drives them fucking insane.
Which is the biggest reason of all that I love Wal-Mart.
Update 2/11: Public Enemy #1 picked up on this story today.
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