Walmart Super Centers

[catnapper]

They call WalMart the Beast of Bentonville.

LOLOLOLOLOLOL

As for how they treat their employees...... that all depends on how compassionate and caring the manager is. My dad worked at one Walmart with a jerk of a boss who didn't give a flip that he's disabled and pretty much told me dad t hat if he didn't find a way to perform ONE task, he'd be fired. Now he's in another store and the manager bends over backwards to accomodate dad's disability.

One of my best friends is a store manager. She's one of the good ones who cares about her employees and they know she's out to protect them as best she can, yet they know she's got to be on them for doing their jobs since her job depends on them doing theirs (did that make sense)

Its like every other job in a large retail corporation. Be it a supermarket, chain clothing store, etc. My job at the pet supply store (name witheld for now ) drives me nuts because they cut my hours. My manager fought it for me, but corporate in their wisdom thought dog trainers only need be in the store when training. How on earth am I to get students if I'm not there to talk to people about our classes??? Ok, back to the topic of the hour Walmart just seems to constantly be in the line of fire because they are so big.

As for Target -- I always hated that place. I agree with Debbie about annoying commercials! I also think Target is much more expensive than Wal Mart. I did a test once and bought all the same supplies I typically buy at Walmart. Same brands, same sizes, everything. I spent almost $20 more on the same stuff! And it wasn't even fun stuff -- it was toilet paper, shampoo, Lysol, etc.

[christa]

You mean to tell me there are other options besides Super Walmart?

LOL

I never even gave it a thought!

[Edwina's Secretary]

This will probably be a shock....but I refuse to shop at Walmart for political reasons..... I do not like their tactics in building new stores, but most of all I do not like the way they go about offereing such low prices....btw....grocery stores have about the lowest margins of any business...they make about a nickel in profit on every dollar in sales...so a couple of pennies makes a big difference.

Walmart mistreats their employees (They are being sued for discriminating against women....violating wage and hours laws....locking employees in the store and forcing off the clock work, etc.) they are horrible to their vendors. A store manager may treat the employees in a store well but you can't overcome the corporate policies. Internal memos have been published about the number of employees receiving public assistance for medical insurance because they don't provide it and their plan to hire younger workers to reduce medical costs.

So the money you save at Walmart you are simply paying somewhere else...higher taxes, etc.

Eventually, we in the United States will be selling each other hamburgers and real estate because all the manufacturing jobs will have gone off-shore. But we will be able to buy things cheap at Walmart....

[Lady's Human]

Let me start this by saying I am a member of a union, but I shop at wal mart, sam's club, target, kmart, or wherever the best prices are.

Having been in a non-union workplace that a union was trying to "organize", I have to question how one sided the reporting on Wal-mart's tactics were in dealing with the union organizers. Much of the reporting on Wal Mart has a blatant agenda. When the company I used to work for was targeted by a union, the employees were given pamphlets on their way in to work (at the entrance to the plant, which was a public way, so they weren't trespassing), and supervisors and mangement were harrassed. The union pamphlets were full of half truths, telling the workers how much their hourly wages would go up under the proposed union contract, but left out the fact that overtime would disappear (by the proposed contract, a third shift would be added, instead of 2 shifts), and that the plant that was working under that contract was closed 3 months out of the year because it was cheaper to run the plant 24/7 for 9 months and then lay everyone off for three months than to keep it running all year. The plant owners were threatened, their CHILDREN were threatened, etc.. It was fairly ugly for a while, the employees looked at the proposal, and did not even hold a vote once everything was on the table.

There isn't a major employer out there that hasn't been sued for discrimination, sexual harassment, labor law violations, you name it. While I was a supervisor in another company, I had 13 employees working for me. All but one was of hispanic extraction (salvadoran, columbian, and mexican). Out of those 12, I had one who was constantly threatening me and the company with lawsuits for race discrimination, labor law violations, and harrassment. He even went to the local congressional delegation with his complaints. They went nowwhere, but you could easily add the company to the list of "bad employers" because of the multitude of complaints filed by one person.

There are other experiences I have had with this issue, including the product demands of the big box stores, but I have no problem with them. They are just trying to get the most from the supplier, and if the demands are unreasonable they aren't going to find a supplier.

Again, I shop wherever the cheapest prices are, and that includes the local grocery store, which frequently beats Wal Mart on both price and quality.