Wal Mart Woes
The problems keep piling up for America’s largest retailer.
These days, Wal Mart must feel like they’ve got a target on their back (no pun intended), as they continue to get hammered in the courts.
It started earlier in the year when several Wal Mart stores got jammed by immigration police for using illegal aliens on contracted cleaning crews.
Apparently, the feds believe it’s okay to sell lettuce picked by illegal aliens under a blistering sun, but border jumpers cannot be permitted to do a clean up in aisle nine.
They’re also being sued for various wage law violations.
It seems that it’s against the law to pay minimum wage to people who ARE from this country.
Of course, the folks doing the suing weren’t unhappy with the paychecks when they agreed to take the job, but somehow they realized a few years into their blue-vested career that it’s Wal Mart’s fault they can’t land a better-paying job.
Now, it’s the EPA’s turn.
It seems that Wal Mart has been using their own trucks to ferry hair spray and bleach and charcoal from their distribution centers to their various stores.
Nobody, not even the feds, seems to have a problem with that.
The rub comes when they put the same items into the same trucks to take them back to the same distribution center when the items don’t sell.
When the items don’t sell, they are no longer products.
They are called “hazardous waste.”
According to the federal investigation, these items must be loaded onto special trucks (translation: exorbitantly and unnecessarily expensive trucks) to be returned to the distribution centers.
Wal Mart has always used the haz-mat trucks to take hazardous returned goods to a special disposal facility.
But our wonderful government (too bad you can’t display disgusted facial expressions in a written document) has decided that the haz-mat trucks must back up to every Wal Mart loading dock to transport that incredibly dangerous White Rain.
Once the feds finish beating up our country’s biggest purveyor of discount goods, and succeeds in adding a few more cents to the cost of nearly everything in the store, they’ll be on the lookout for the next big Wal Mart violation.
Don’t be surprised next year when the big W gets jacked up for unlicensed laser beams in the check-out lanes or stock-boys filling racks with Star Wars toys without wearing a Darth Vader mask.
Every day, people gripe about businesses and jobs going overseas.
Meanwhile, the one company which continues to hire Americans (at least for positions that don’t require toilet scubbing), fights inflation with low prices, remains headquartered in this country, and tries to keep this sluggish economy going, must continuously battle the very government they prop up with their enormous corporate taxes.
Doesn’t it make you proud to be an American?
posted by Workman Chronicles at 10:09 PM
6 Comments:
I find it hard to feel sorry for Wal Mart. I do not care for that place and it wouldn't bother me if they shut all of them down.
6:38 AM
I've had my issues with Wal Mart in the past, and I still have concerns with the fact that their existence in an area makes it difficult for smaller, long-time retailers to survive.
But this is too ridiculous to ignore. The government can't seem to stem the tide of illegal aliens coming into this country, but they want to pick on easy targets like Wal Mart.
And now, it is utter nonsense to allow the same products to be carried on the roads in a normal truck on their way to the stores, but require special trucks to bring them back to the warehouse.
And while Wal Mart isn't necessarily my friend, I know for a stone cold fact that "the gub'mint" certainly isn't.
6:01 AM
Very true... but don't you get a warm fuzzy knowing the government is out there watching out for you? Haha, ok, don't answer that.
6:27 AM
I have to say I agree with you. Wal-Mart is the favorite target of so many these days. (pun intended)
As to the other comments, Wal-Mart is not responsible for putting those mom and pop stores out of business, we are. We all say we miss the little corner grocery, or that old hardware store, or whatever it was that Wal-Mart drove out of business, but all it took to keep it in business was for us to shop there.
I'm not a big fan of Wal-Mart from Thanksgiving through the New Year, but that has nothing to do with the store itself. It has more to do with the multitude of slack jawed neanderthals who block me from my power shopping.
If we really want to go after someone, we should go after all those people who refuse to put their shopping carts into the little corrals. Or people who pay with exact change.
7:21 AM
Happy New Year Morris!
Adubya's attitude is the problem (although I doubt Adubya himself is)... "As long as 'I' don't feel sorry for them, screw 'em!"
What does right and wrong have to do with feelings?
The plain fact is, Wal~Mart did the one thing that Americans hate... They succeeded.
America loves an underdog. Play the underdog card and even psychopathic murderers can generate a fan club. Play the underdog and there isn't a crime you can commit that someone won't come to your defend.
But what if the unthinkable happens. What if the underdog makes its way to the top of the heap.
You want to see a bunch of snarling dogs, watch the very people who cheered the underdog to the top bare their fangs.
Wal~Mart isn't pure as the driven snow, but you yourself pointed out the stupidity of the ammunition being used against it.
As for the whole "They're driving other businesses out" myth. I have lived in a lot of states since Wally World took the world by a storm. I am still waiting to see any city, town or hamlet where Wal~Mart stands tall, surrounded by the rubble of what once was a thriving business district. Malls did more to kill downtowns than Wal~Mart could ever hope to.
3:14 PM
My government WATCHING me? Probably.
My government watching OUT for me?
Not a chance.
Cindra, the "cheapening of America" is a dichotomy that I often struggle with.
Everyone wants cheaper prices. Nobody wants to pay more than they have to, which is normal and natural.
But the fact is that "cheaper" still comes with a price tag...loss of American jobs, support of industries overseas, reduced quality control, etc.
Philosophically, I would like to "buy American" exclusively.
However, to do so means to pay inflated prices, which leads me to ponder why I should be so natio-centric when my country (unions, greedy corporations) don't seem to mind charging whatever they can get away with.
I'm also with you on the "Merry Christmas" vs. "Happy Holidays" war. I hate that it took the politicization of the season to finally get retailers to wake up to the obvious, but I've enjoyed seeing the word "Christmas" used more often this year.
Frank, you're right. I'm one of the people helping mom and pop stores go out of business.
Of course, as a corollary to the previous paragraph, I have noticed that whenever a Wal Mart comes into an area, many of the local retailers suddenly lower their prices.
This always makes me wonder, if they can afford to make the price lower now, that means they've been gouging me all along.
I'm sorry to see the mom and pop stores go out of business. But then, I also think the mastodon and the brontosaurus would be cool to have around as well.
Parated, I don't know how we came to a place where success makes you a target, but it's an American reality.
Donald Trump is hated not because he has funny hair or tends to marry girls fresh out of middle school.
He is hated because he's rich and successful.
Ditto for Martha Stewart, who went to jail for something so ridiculous that it's frightening.
It seems we cheer on celebrities to reach the top of the heap just so we can stand in the street and figuratively chant for them to leap from the heap's summit and crash to the ground. (Unfortunately, too many celebrities are willing to quickly oblige.)
As for malls...evolution has caught up with them as well. The high cost of locating in a mall has forced the retailers to go large with their price tags, meaning it's often cheaper to find a stand-alone Wal Mart or Target or Best Buys or even a Walgreens or Rite Aid.
I haven't shopped in a mall in over two years because I know I can find lower prices elsewhere.
Which brings us full circle to running mall tenants out of business because of my search for the best discount...
Happy New Year, everybody!
9:34 AM
Post a Comment
<< Home