Wally World

 

We shop at Walmart because -- surprise, surprise! -- they drove out almost every locally-owned business in town. We can drive 20-25 miles round trip to buy groceries elsewhere, and at times I do this. Or I take advantage of the fact that I am in a nearby town to do some grocery shopping. But we still wind up shopping at Walmart a lot.

I have friends who work at Walmart. I find the employees to be, on the whole, friendly and as helpful as they can be under the circumstances. On the other hand, shopping there is not a pleasant experience. Register lines have to be a mile long before they open another register. I have told Tom more than once that we might save time driving twenty miles to shop where we do not have to stand in line for twenty minutes once we have our cart filled.

No matter what time of day you go there, the aisles are blocked by stacks of things employees are trying to shelve. Yet the shelves are often almost bare. Items you see one week never reappear. A week or more can pass while the shelves with things like coffee are half-empty. You trip over large displays of "As Seen on TV" junk  or Duck Dynasty chocolate while you cannot find normal food products.

I do not like giving them my money, directly or indirectly. I an horrified that people who work for them are often forced to go on food stamps to feed their families. I have seen too many small downtowns wiped out and local businesses destroyed to have any appreciation for the fact that I can save a few pennies on a box of macaroni and cheese. If, that is, you can find it on the shelf.

I understand that Walmart is having some financial difficulties because the business model they champion has led to too many people no longer making enough money to buy even at Walmart. And because of cuts to things like food stamps, those people who used to spend all their food stamps at Walmart (and NOT on beer) now have fewer stamps to spend. So Walmart is losing money.

No doubt when the crisis gets worse, someone with political power will declare Walmart "too big to fail." The money that could not be found to feed the hungry will magically appear to prop up a business that helped destroy healthy local economies across the nation. The poor will still go hungry.

"Jesus wept." John 11:35