Wal-Mart the worst shopping experience in America. Is Wal-Mart too Big to Challenge? Wal-Mart Review

A lot has been said about Wal-Mart. It has been said that it puts other businesses in the community out of business. It is said that it underpays its staff, doesn’t provide medical cover for its employees, and that its many goods, far from being the cheapest around, are actually, quite often, quite expensive. Everybody has also shaken their head at people killing each other to get heavily discounted goods on certain public holidays. You’ve also heard that the owners of the company could pay for all of America’s debt and have change over (that’s true). Except for consumer complaints all over the web, nobody has done indepth research on this. They say that there are companies too big to fail (but they do, eventually). The problem is that, for most people, and even for some governments, Wal-Mart is too big to challenge!

Ordering Home Goods Online
A little over a year ago, I relocated to Houston. I didn’t bring furniture along because the cost of carting it here was more expensive than replacing it once in Houston. I didn’t have a car so I ordered bed, desk, sewing cabinet, chairs, shelves, and whatever else comprises basic furniture in a home. Without exception, when the goods finally did arrive, they arrived broken. There wasn’t a single item of furniture that was intact. Yes, one had to put it together, but wood was broken, metal structures that were supposed to fit into each other didn’t, and surfaces were scratched. The thought of sending the entire lot back to Wal-Mart palled, so I email them and they gave me a 10% refund, and I lived with it.

A while later, thinking that the experience couldn’t possibly be repeated again, I ordered some other items. You’ve guessed it. It arrived broken.

So what’s going on here?

Wal-Mart Review: Cheap Labor and Cheap Materials
Wal-Mart underpays for everything. It does not pay a fair wage for a fair day’s work. And people who a) are not paid what they are worth are not generally keen to do a fair day’s work. b)People who are paid 50% below the poverty line (that’s what they are paid) don’t have sufficient money to buy healthy food, and over a period of time, their health goes. When one’s health goes, one does not perform well. The result of these two factors is that Wal-Mart furniture and many other goods is of poor quality.

Diverse Ways of Life – The Cyclist
There are no bike racks outside any of the Wal-Mart stores so if one bikes there, then one has a problem with where to put one’s bike. My bike was stolen despite the fact that it was locked and tied to a tree. Their security is weak. The security guards are also rude, unhelpful, and couldn’t care less. When I reported that my bike was stolen and that it had been directly outside the store, the security person would not go and look at the cameras. He really couldn’t have cared less and his attitude showed it. Since then, I’ve tried biking to several Wal-Marts. If one is lucky, one of the ‘greeters’ will keep an eye on it; mostly they will tell you it’s not their problem.

Product Expertise
I tried to buy a bike at Wal-Mart for about three months. Throughout that time, I was never able to find someone at the biking department. I kept being directed there and told that there would be somebody there, but there never was. In addition, after I finally did buy a bike and wanted to buy some extras – pump, lock, basket, etc., I couldn’t find anyone to serve either. After one finally got somebody sent to the apartment, every time I asked a question about a product, the sales person would take the product and start reading it. My jaw drops at this. Do these people not think I’ve already done that? Where is the product knowledge that all salesmen are supposed to have about their products. Certainly, at Wal-Mart, it’s non existent. What is also interesting is that I’ve visited three different bike departments at three different Wal-Marts and there has never been anyone at those departments. Obviously, Wal-Mart might have specialty products but it sells them without knowing anything about them. The onus is on the customer to do their own research, and if the customer doesn’t, the customer is going to buy the wrong thing. It’s much better to go to your neighborhood specialty shop. You may pay a few bucks more, and you’ll get a lot better information about what you’re buying, and you might also see that the product might look the same but has actually been made from better quality components.

English Speaking
It would be nice if I could find English speaking staff at Wal-Mart. Currently, it seems I need to be fluent in Spanish, Chinese, or a couple of other languages. At Wal-Mart, they mostly don’t appear to speak English. Trying to get an answer out of someone is like trying to get blood out of a stone. I have no doubt that they would help you if they could understand what you were saying, but it’s quite clear from the numerous interactions I’ve had with many of their members of staff that English is something they know little about.

The Meat
Wal-Mart introduced me to a new concept in meat. Every single bit of their red meat indicates that it has been soaked in ‘broth.’ I wish I knew why. Do people who shop at Wal-Mart like broth soaked meat? Or is the broth disguising the chemicals that is put into the broth – as in, the broth contains chemicals, but we’ll just put on the cover that the meat contains broth. I don’t know. I do know that I wouldn’t touch Wal-Mart meat with a 6’ barge pole and a health inspector on the other side. To add insult to injury, it is incredibly expensive compared to places like Trader Joes and even Whole Foods at times.

Service on the Floor
What service on the floor? There isn’t any. If you want something, you can spend a good fifteen or thirty minutes trying to find someone to assist you with something. I really wish I were exaggerating, but I’m not. Yes, one can be lucky and find the answer in five minutes, but rather more often than one would wish to, looking for someone to help you find something is like looking for a needle in a haystack.

So Why Do People Shop at Wal-Mart?
Essentially, it’s convenience and the brainwashed delusion that it’s cheaper. One can do all one’s shopping under one roof. There is no other store that has this range of products that Wal-Mart has. Where else can you get fabric to sew a wedding dress, food for your pantry, and movies and music to entertain? You can’t. There just isn’t that range elsewhere. Put that together with the heavily publicized myth that it’s the cheapest store on the planet, and people will gravitate towards it.

The Most Frightening Factor of All This
There’s another factor over here that has never been mentioned and that is the objectifying of human beings. The fact that Wal-Mart has repeated its annual publicity stunt to draw ‘people’ to its stores so that they trample and kill each other is frightening. You don’t honestly think that they don’t anticipate this, do you? Of course, they do, and it’s all free publicity. As they say in the classics, “Even bad publicity is good publicity.” The Wal-Mart owners don’t care. They honestly see the type of people that shop at Wal-Mart as cannon fodder. They see the people that work there in that light as well, but that’s been heavily publicized. What I’m getting at here is that the Wal-Mart Shopping Experience is the worst shopping experience, not only in America, but on the Planet!

So What are the Options?
It’s time we turned local, and I mean local. We need to stop finding our way to stores like Wal-Mart, and start finding our way to the local co-op or neighborhood store and buying there. Of course, these days, as a result of store owners not wanting to go to market at the crack of dawn, they no longer stock fresh fruit and vegetables. So your best bet is to start growing them. I’m not joking. With the advance in agricultural growing systems, it’s more than possible to supply a good 50% of your greens by using hydroponic and other systems. For the rest, if there isn’t a store near you, find something on the web, and keep to the small names. Some companies, like Wal-Mart have become too big to fail, and in doing so, they’re messing with your health, your safety, and your wallet.