OT - Remington Hunting Jacket

Thanks for clearing that up for me. People like me usually only have one point of view and the rest be damned, but your gratuitous insults were just what it took to bring me around to your more enlightened point of view. Your reasoning is hard to follow---well, incoherent actually---but your point is clear enough: anger at people like me who criticize Wal-Mart and don't agree that this is the best of all possible worlds.

Stan

If you shop at Wally World you're doing your part to hasten the transfer of our wealth and jobs to China a thousand times as much as when you shop at Harbor Freight. Maybe being employed at HF is just as poorly paid and hopeless as at WW, but I don't hear about that everywhere I turn like I do about WW.

My personal main reason for not shopping there, though, is that no American corporation I know of is more insistent on the modern commandment Thou Shalt Turn a Profit for Thy Shareholders by Any Means Necessary. If WW found that they could get the best price on an item by buying it from a factory in Asia where children are chained to the machinery and forced to work until they go blind, they would do it and say, "We have an obligation to our shareholders to return the best possible profit on their investment." Wait a minute; what am I saying? There's no if about that. They've been doing that for years, probably from the beginning. If any particular example comes to light which is so flagrant and so horrible that it momentarily nudges the collective consciousness of American consumers into semi-awareness, WW tells any lie they have to to get it behind them and continues to do the same thing---but maybe not from that particular factory or that particular distributor.

And what do shoppers, who are vaguely aware of all this, do to justify continuing to shop there? They say, "My little purchase is so insignificant, why should I penalize myself when WW has the lowest prices on so many things" (which is true.) They say, "If WW didn't buy those goods in Asia, and I didn't buy them from WW, those little half blind children chained to their looms, etc. wouldn't have any jobs at all." They say, "I'm an American and a Christian and those people aren't. They aren't my brothers and sisters. I owe them nothing." They say, "I had the good sense to be born an American and those people were foolish enough to be born Indian, or Chinese, or Pakistani, or whatever. That's the way the cookie crumbles." (It's always easy to be calm about how the cookie crumbles when everyone else is scrambling for the pieces but you've got a thousand more cookies at home.)

If you think shopping at WW is okay because they're practically a force of nature now and your individual contribution is so small as to be almost invisible, why don't you take your used motor oil and your garbage and dispose of them out in the forest. The justification is exactly the same---statistically your individual action is totally insignificant.

Welcome to the future. It's not nice here for most of us, but it's cheap.

All the best, Stan

If someone told you that doing the right thing was going to be easy, I'm afraid you got some misinformation. But you should already know that if you're over ten years old. Wal-Mart has a number of advatages over stores the size of Penney's and smaller. They're the biggest company in the world so they've got more purchasing clout than anyone else. Is that a good thing? People on this forum complain about the poor quality of service they get from AutoZone compared with the quality of service they used to get from the independent parts stores that AutoZone drove out of business. The only department in Wal-Mart where the employees seem to know anything about their job is the pharmacy. There wouldn't be anything wrong with accepting poor service to get lower prices if that's all that was involved.

Does Wal-Mart care about you as a customer? I've been stopped leaving the store when the alarm went off, and treated very rudely until they determined that the fault was with their system. Do they apologize for their mistake? They do not. They say, "Okay, you can go." Is this a rare occurence? It is not. I can only begin to imagine how I would be treated if I were not 60, white, well dressed, clean, and reasonably prosperous looking, unlike much of the regular Wal-mart clientele. There wouldn't be anything wrong with being willing to accept shoddy treatment as a customer to get lower prices if that's all that was involved.

But those things are not all that is involved. Part of the savings you can get on the same item purchased at Wal-Mart instead of at Penney's comes from the way Wal-Mart treats their employees. They are notoriously poorly paid, have no benefits, no job security, and are forced to do things like work unpaid overtime and give up their breaks. They aren't ordered to do those things, in case you're thinking they have legal protection, but they see what happens to employees who refuse to do them, or who try to blow the whistle. They're called ex-employees. And other jobs can be scarce in a small town where Wal-Mart has forced most of the other retailers out of business.

If you can say that those abused Wal-Mart employees aren't your brothers and sisters, then you belong to a club that is way too exclusive for the likes of me.

All the best, Stan

Huh? Does having my sister-in-law work at Wal-Mart for 16 years make it OK for me to say something about Wal-Mart, or my nephew who is working there while he's going to college? I guess we need smart people like you tell us what's good for us.

You can shop at Wal-Mart, Sears or who ever and most of what you are going to buy in certain items is coming from the same factories in China. Now do you want China to get MORE MONEY because Sears or ALCO can't beat them down on the price like Wal-Mart can? What are you some kind of commie lover wanting to give them more of your hard earned American dollars?

Sorry, I didn't mean to insult you. I start out addressing a specific issue and end up on a soapbox ranting at the innocent bystanders. I truly intended no disrespect toward you or your family. Maybe I am a commie lover. I certainly try to make it a point not to hate anybody on account of the miserable system they were born into. I reserve that feeling for the leaders of every country in the world who distort whatever is good about their system to squeeze every single drop of benefit out of it for themselves. Name a country where the leaders don't put themselves first and the people second and I'll apologize to you again.

As far as Wal-Mart using their tremendous clout for the good of America---I think that one pretty much speaks for itself. What if they were to use their clout to refuse to buy from countries that didn't have at least the most basic worker protection laws in place? Why not work for a more level playing field by dragging foreign workers up rather than by forcing American workers down? Is it really going to be a better America when there are absolutely no $17 an hour manufacturing jobs left in this country because our workers have to compete with $1 an hour factory workers in Mexico or $1 a day factory workers in China? If everyone was getting about the same hourly wage, couldn't America again capture the greatest share of the world market because of the quality and craftsmanship of our products?

Wal-Mart's policies are selfish, short-sighted, and will ultimately hurt a lot more Americans than just Wal-Mart employees. I'm not saying it because I'm smart (although I am), I'm saying it because it doesn't have to be this way. We're about one generation away from being like a country of the South American model, with a relatively small incredibly rich class, a huge working poor---or just poor---class, and virtually nobody in between. That's one of the things our founders rejected from Europe, and I'm old-fashioned enough to believe we'd still be better off without it.

All the best, Stan

A bit of info...Walmarts profit is about $6000/ employee where as Microsofts is about $200,000/employee. Now, if those numbers are any good, and they are....you're smart, would you give health insurance/bigger wages/ retirement? How much is health insurance for a employee and family? Would about $10,000/year be a good average?

Products...name me one store or product that doesn't have Chinese or other international components. I suppose you can find one product, but on average, most stores carry overseas produced products. And, while you're at it, check the labels in your clothing and tell me where they were manufactured.

Interesting points. E-mail me if you feel like kicking this around a little more. It makes me uneasy to have a string I'm involved in run off the right side of the screen---particularly when it's gotten so far away from any recognizable connection with tools.

All the best, Stan

On the other note, Stan your off track on walmart. My wife works there. She finds the pay and benifits there better then when she was a pharmacy tech at a hospital. She is now a OTC magager for her store. Been there 5 years come march. Better hrs better pay and better benifits. Also the insurance through is what you want ti to be. There is different levels you can get. So if someone says they are underinsured its thier fault not walmart.
Bob

If your wife's situation is normal for Wal-Mart employees then I stand corrected and I can say sincerely that I'm happy to be wrong. She wouldn't by any chance work in the pharmacy though, would she? That would be a case of comparing apples with diamonds. As I commented in an earlier posting in this thread, the pharmacy is by far the most unWal-Martlike department in the store. They'd be crazy to not run a good pharmacy, wouldn't they? What else draws people to a store and then keeps them waiting there for more than fifteen minutes? I know---oil changes. Last I checked, Wal-Mart hadn't figured out that they'd be ahead to pay enough to get people who could consistently not screw up an oil change. Eventually customers will pass up the good price just to actually get the work they pay for. Customers who take their oil change business elsewhere aren't shopping in your store while they're waiting.

All the best, Stan