Back to WalMart; Instant Karma Stikes Yours Truly

OK, here's a True Confession: I used to shop at WalMart. ...at least twice a week, frequently more often. Almost all of my clothes, shoes, purses, you name it, came from Walmart.

Heck, the stuff is cheap!

And if the WalMart in my part of town had had a grocery back then, I'm sure I would have been there even more often. Looking back through my checkbook, I spent way more money there than anywhere else.

I had noticed that employee morale was pretty poor there; often I'd overheard employees complaining to each other about work conditions and something about the health insurance situation...but it was years later when I became friends with a woman who worked at WalMart.

That's when I began to learn about the dark side of the smiley face.

After hearing about the way she and her husband had been treated as typical WalMart employees (euphemistically known as "Associates"), I cut way back on shopping there. Despite what they were led to believe when they were hired, they'd been forced to work multiple part-time shifts so that they were kept ineligible for health insurance.

Then about a year or so later, I read some information from the anti-WalMart political action group, "Wake Up WalMart", and found out how truly evil this corporation is. And since then I've learned more from another anti-WalMart group called WalMart Watch.

So what's wrong with Wal-Mart?

Well, for starters, they typically force employees to work off-the-clock. And anybody who works less than 34 hours a week has to wait a full year before they can get health insurance.

Spouses of part-time employees are not eligible for family health care coverage.

Wal-Mart has consistently increased spending on advertising more than its spending on employee health care.

Seventy percent of the commodities sold in Wal-Mart are made in China.

And many of Wal-Mart's so-called "American Suppliers" actually manufacture most or all of their products in China. (An example of an "American Supplier" is Hasbro, the toy-maker, headquartered in Rhode Island; today, Wal-Mart is the largest purchaser of Hasbro products—accounting for 21% of all Hasbro goods or more than $600 million in sales. But Hasbro reports, "We source production of substantially all of our toy products and certain of our game products through unrelated manufacturers in various Far East countries, principally China.")

Wal-Mart shares very little of its $11 billion profits with it's employees. For example, in 2004, Wal-Mart contributed only $570 a year per U. S. employee for profit sharing and 401(k) plans for the United States. And their 401(k) plan is mostly in WalMart stock!

The estimated total amount of federal assistance (that's our tax money!) for which Wal-Mart employees were eligible in 2004 was $2.5 billion. The first ever national report on Wal-Mart subsidies documented at least $1 billion in subsidies from state and local governments.

It is estimated that since 2006, WalMart has cost American taxpayers $9,404,341,266, and that amount climbs rapidly....click on the link above if you want to watch it climb.

Anyway, knowing all this, I stopped shoppping there altogether sometime in 2006. I guess I spent more money shoppping elsewhere, and did without some stuff, but I knew it was for the best.

But in January of 2008, I went back to buy a pair of $7 shoes.

See, they used to sell these very, very soft $7.00 tennis shoes, the only shoes I'd found (that I could afford!) that comfortably fit my deformed right foot. And the three pairs I'd bought years before had all worn out and fallen apart, so I hypocritically removed the anti-Walmart bumper sticker from my car and slunk back to the evil empire for some shoes.

Just shoes. I figured WalMart couldn't profit much from $7 shoes...

Well, I looked all over the shoe department but they didn't carry those shoes anymore. Cr*p!

I should have left, I really should have, but I didn't...I stayed and shopped; I remember I bought three small cutting boards for $2 each, a couple of pairs of cheap knit pants, and, oh, I forget what else, but I left with two bags full of stuff and a very well-deserved guilty feeling...

INSTANT KARMA: I no sooner left the parking lot when my sweet little Honda hybrid was promptly smashed into by a huge, aptly named Dodge Ram pickup truck.

Since it wasn't my fault at all, a witness came up to my bashed car as it languished on the median where it had landed, and gave me his business card. Thank God for good people!

The other driver's insurance ultimately paid for almost everything, but since it was January, I didn't have an opportunity to notice for months that my driver's side window won't go all the way down, so that never got fixed. No biggie; at least it goes up allthe way. I knew I totally deserved what I got; I shouldn't have gone there and remnants of instant karma remind me every time I try to open that window.

Needless to say, I haven't been back to WalMart since, and I've tried to educate my friends and family about why they shouldn't shop there either. (Cousin Marty, this is for you, sweetie!)