December 15, 2002
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I hate Wal-Mart. It is one of the last bastions of corporate paternalism, it is a company that unabashedly endorses greed and cut-throat marketing, and it grossly exploits its workers. Some time ago, Wal-Mart got some deservedly bad press when it came out that the company was buyinh term life insurance on its employes, but not telling them. Cute–they don’t let their workers have union health benefits, then they profit when their workers die. Yea verily, Wal-Mart sucks big time.
Another thing I hate about Wal-Mart is the insensitivity and utter hypocrisy of one of their feel-good corporate ads. You may have seen it, this stupid looking cartoon character zooming around the store and lowering prices, accompanied by a bouncy and strangely familiar tune. The tune is “Workin in the Coal Mines,” a song protesting workers’ exploitation.
Wal-mart was in Rotten news twice today–in an editorial comment, the Rotten folks said they hadn’t planned it, it’s just that Wal-Mart is so evil. One store threatened to file criminal charges against an employe–her heinous crime? She’s a volunteer firefighter, and used her employe discount to buy about $1000 in toys for her fire company to raffle off. Hey, nice community spirit, you Wal-Mart assholes. In the other story, a nice upper-middle class woman (her hubby’s a doc) dropped off a roll of film to be developed, and the store assholes called the police. Why? Seems there was a snapshot of her 3-year old’s bare bottom. Horrors! Wal-Mart, you can go straight to hell.
(And yes, I do hold my nose and shop there, even though I am one of the small retailers Wal-Mart has vowed to wipe out. Oh, and one more thing–don’t look for a Spyderco knife at Wal-Mart–they violated so many Fair Trade agreements that Spyderco no longer does business with the bastards.)
Comments (6)
Glad there aren’t any here!
(but if there were, I’d probably shop there too 
) ~Spot~
I can’t believe you didn’t mention this…straight from the A.P. :
ABC News Channel 7 (Denver, Colorado) 5-Dec-02
http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/1821982/detail.html
MAKE a great day!
Just forget about trying to get an uncensored cd outta’ there.
By the way, did you see Al Gore making fun of Trent Lott on Saturday Night Live this week? I didn’t know whether to shit or go blind.
So many people don’t like Walmart and they don’t like Microsoft. The way to get over this is to invest in them. That there’s the Amurrican way. But maybe you shouldn’t try this with the latest peeve, Martha Stewart. Even I have decided not to invest in Philip Morris, but it follows the normal American course, disliked and the most successful stock around.
I personally know of a former Wal-Mart employee who had a heart-attack while on the job, who was denied disability from the company. She & her husband searched for over a year to find a lawyer willing to go up against that corporation (they are self-insured). Once they did, it took another year for W-M to concede to granting her the disability compensation.
Consider this though… Sam Walton has been dead for many years (he died a year before that woman had her heart-attack). The loss of his influence on the board of trustees is why some of this shit is happening!
Additionally, anyone can buy a life insurance policy on anyone else & collect on it, as long as the premiums are paid up & there was no foul-play suspected in the death of the insured. I could even take one out on you, if I had the information an insurance company requires (SSN, etc.)! Wal-Mart just got exposed for doing so, but I would bet that many other big corporations also do this. It is called PROFIT!