Saturday, August 02, 2008

From Death To Walmart

The questions just keep on coming. My last post discussed my mind's battle with the death penalty. Today, I battle a less important, but maybe not, issue of to shop or not shop Walmart.
A few months ago, while having some friends over, we had a big debate on whether to shop Walmart or Target. Most of my friends were appalled when I told them I shopped Walmart regularly. It's more convenient for me and the prices are lower. When I've gone to Target, I have not had an easy time locating items, primarily because I do not know the layout of the store as well as Walmart, and I have paid a bit more at Target than at Walmart for the same items. My argument when my friends told me how unfair Walmart is to their employees and to the "causes" Walmart supports (mostly conservative, Republican causes), was that both stores are just as bad, or just as good. My opinion was both stores get their merchandise from child-slave labor, and both are just as good or bad to their employees. I even did an extensive google search of Walmart vs. Target, and for every bad thing I learned about Walmart, I learned something just as bad about Target.
However, just the other day it was reported that Walmart made their managers attend a meeting in which the managers were basically told not to vote for the democrats in November, and then given the reasons why a democratic president would be bad for business. The primary reason is Walmart is afraid its employees will stand a better chance of becoming Unionized under a democratic run legislature and president. Walmart has denied this, stating that managers were informed of the negative consequences should a democrat win the White House in November, but never were the managers coerced into voting Republican.
I wrote to Walmart asking them to stay out of politics and informing them I may not be shopping in their store any longer if this is true. Last night I needed an item and I made my way to the local Target to make my purchase. Maybe this will become a new shopping tradition for me?

1 comment:

Pax Romano said...

I thought of you when I read about Walmart's latest indiscretion ... live and learn.