Wal-Mart's women in an unhealthy relationship

[odannyboy]

A good read on how the mega-retailer Wal-Mart operates and how many women, even though they might be disgusted by their tactics, still may shop, and even work there.

Wal-Mart's women -- employees and customers -- in unhealthy relationship

By LIZA FEATHERSTONE
GUEST COLUMNIST

On the day after Thanksgiving, the biggest shopping day of the year, Wal-Mart's many progressive critics -- not to mention its business competitors -- finally enjoyed a bit of schadenfreude when the retailer had to admit to "disappointing" sales. The problem was quickly revealed: Wal-Mart hadn't been discounting aggressively enough. Without low prices, Wal-Mart just isn't Wal-Mart.

That's not a mistake the big-box behemoth is likely to make again. Wal-Mart knows its customers, and it knows how badly they need the discounts. Like Wal-Mart's workers, its customers are overwhelmingly female and struggling to make ends meet. Betty Dukes, the lead plaintiff in Dukes v. Wal-Mart, the landmark sex-discrimination case against the company, points out that Wal-Mart takes out ads in her local paper the same day the community's poorest citizens collect their welfare checks.

"They are promoting themselves to low-income people," she says. "That's who they lure. They don't lure the rich. ... They understand the economy of America. They know the haves and have-nots. They don't put Wal-Mart in Piedmonts. They don't put Wal-Mart in those high-end parts of the community. They plant themselves right in the middle of Poorville."

Betty Dukes is right. A 2000 study by Andrew Franklin, then an economist at the University of Connecticut, showed that Wal-Mart operated primarily in poor and working-class communities, finding, in the bone-dry language of his discipline, "a significant negative relationship between median household income and Wal-Mart's presence in the market." Although fancy retailers noted with chagrin during the 2001 recession that absolutely everybody shops at Wal-Mart -- "Even people with $100,000 incomes now shop at Wal-Mart," a PR flack for one upscale mall fumed -- the Bloomingdale's set is not the discounter's primary market and probably never will be.

Only 6 percent of Wal-Mart shoppers have annual family incomes of more than $100,000. A 2003 study found that 23 percent of Wal-Mart Supercenter customers live on incomes of less than $25,000 a year. More than 20 percent of Wal-Mart shoppers have no bank account, long considered a sign of dire poverty. And while almost half of Wal-Mart Supercenter customers are blue-collar workers and their families, 20 percent are unemployed or elderly.

Al Zack, who until his retirement in 2004 was the United Food and Commercial Workers' vice president for strategic programs, observes that appealing to the poor was "Sam Walton's real genius. He figured out how to make money off of poverty. He located his first stores in poor rural areas and discovered a real market. The only problem with the business model is that it really needs to create more poverty to grow." That problem is cleverly solved by creating more bad jobs worldwide.

In a chilling reversal of Henry Ford's strategy, which was to pay his workers amply so they could buy Ford cars, Wal-Mart's stingy compensation policies -- workers make, on average, just over $8 an hour, and if they want health insurance, they must pay more than a third of the premium -- contribute to an economy in which, increasingly, workers can afford to shop only at Wal-Mart.

To make this model work, Wal-Mart must keep labor costs down. It does this by making corporate crime an integral part of its business strategy. Wal-Mart routinely violates laws protecting workers' organizing rights (workers have even been fired for union activity).

It is a repeat offender on overtime laws; in more than 30 states, workers have brought wage-and-hour class-action suits against the retailer. In some cases, workers say, managers encouraged them to clock out and keep working; in others, managers locked the doors and would not let employees go home at the end of their shifts. And it's often women who suffer most from Wal-Mart's labor practices. Dukes v. Wal-Mart, the largest civil rights class-action suit in history, charges the company with systematically discriminating against women in pay and promotions.

Given the poverty they have in common, it makes sense that Wal-Mart's workers often express a strong feeling of solidarity with the shoppers. Wal-Mart workers tend to be aware that the customers' circumstances are similar to their own and to identify with them. Some complain about rude customers but most seem to genuinely enjoy the shoppers.

One longtime department manager in Ohio cheerfully recalls her successful job interview at Wal-Mart. Because of her weight, she told her interviewers, she'd be better able to help the customer. She understands the frustrations of the large shopper, she told them: " 'You know, you go into Lane Bryant and some skinny girl is trying to sell you clothes.' They laughed at that and said, 'You get a second interview!' "

One plaintiff in the Dukes lawsuit, Cleo Page, who no longer works at Wal-Mart, says she was a great customer service manager because "I knew how people feel when they shop, so I was really empathetic."

Many Wal-Mart workers say they began working at their local Wal-Mart because they shopped there. "I was practically born in Wal-Mart," says Alyssa Warrick, a former employee now attending Truman State University in Missouri. "My mom is obsessed with shopping. ... I thought it would be pretty easy since I knew where most of the stuff was." Most assumed they would love working at Wal-Mart. "I always loved shopping there," says Dukes plaintiff Dee Gunter. "That's why I wanted to work for 'em."

Shopping is traditionally a world of intense female communication and bonding, and women have long excelled in retail sales in part because of the identification between clerk and shopper. Page, who still shops at Wal-Mart, is now a lingerie saleswoman at Mervyn's (owned by Target). "I do enjoy retail," she says. "I like feeling needed and I like helping people, especially women."

Betty Dukes says, "I strive to give Wal-Mart customers 100 percent of my abilities." This sentiment was repeated by numerous other Wal-Mart workers, always with heartfelt sincerity. Betty Hamilton, a 61-year-old clerk in a Las Vegas Sam's Club, won her store's customer service award last year. She is very knowledgeable about jewelry, her favorite department, and proud of it. Hamilton resents her employer -- she complains about sexual harassment and discrimination, and feels she has been penalized on the job for her union sympathies -- but remains deeply devoted to her customers. She enjoys imparting her knowledge to shoppers so "they can walk out of there and feel like they know something." Like Page, Hamilton feels she is helping people. It makes me so happy when I sell something that I know is an extraordinarily good buy," she says. "I feel like I've done somebody a really good favor."

The enthusiasm of these women for their jobs, despite the workplace indignities many of them have faced, should not assure anybody that the company's abuses don't matter. In fact, it should underscore the tremendous debt Wal-Mart owes women: This company has built its vast profits not only on women's drudgery but also on their joy, creativity and genuine care for the customer.

Will consumers return that solidarity and punish Wal-Mart for discriminating against women? Do customers care about workers as much as workers care about them? Some women's groups, such as the National Organization for Women and Code Pink, have been hoping that they do and have encouraged the public not to shop at Wal-Mart.

While this tactic could be fruitful in some community battles, it's unlikely to catch on nationwide. A customer saves 20 percent to 25 percent by buying groceries at Wal-Mart rather than from a competitor, according to retail analysts, and poor women need those savings more than anyone.

That's why many women welcome the new Wal-Marts in their communities. The Winona (Minn.) Post extensively covered a controversy over whether to allow a Wal-Mart Supercenter into the small town; the letters to the editor in response offer a window into the female customer's loyalty to Wal-Mart. Though the paper devoted substantial space to the sex-discrimination case, the readers who most vehemently defended the retailer were female. From the nearby town of Rollingstone, Cindy Kay wrote that she needed the new Wal-Mart because the local stores didn't carry large enough sizes. She denounced the local anti-Wal-Mart campaign as a plot by rich and thin elites: "I'm glad those people can fit into and afford such clothes. I can barely afford Shopko and Target!"

A week later, Carolyn Goree, a preschool teacher also hoping for a Winona Wal-Mart, wrote in a letter to the Post editor that when she shops at most stores, $200 fills only a bag or two, but at Wal-Mart, "I come out with a cart full top and bottom. How great that feels."

Lacking a local Wal-Mart, Goree drives over the Wisconsin border to get her fix. She was incensed by an earlier article's lament that some workers make only $15,000 yearly. "Come on!" Goree objected. "Is $15,000 really that bad of a yearly income? I'm a single mom, and when working out of my home, I made $12,000 tops and that was with child support. I, too, work, pay for a mortgage, lights, food, everything to live. Everything in life is a choice. ... I am for the little man/woman -- I'm one of them. So I say stand up and get a Wal-Mart."

Sara Jennings, a disabled Winona reader living on a total of $8,000, heartily concurred. After paying her rent, phone, electric and cable bills, Jennings can barely afford to treat herself to McDonald's. Of a recent trip to the LaCrosse, Wis., Wal-Mart, she raved: "Oh boy, what a great treat. Lower prices and a good quality of clothes to choose from. It was like heaven for me." She, too, strongly defended the workers' $15,000 yearly income: "Boy, now that is a lot of money. I could live with that." She closed with a plea to the readers: "I'm sure you all make a lot more than I. And I'm sure I speak for a lot of seniors and very-low-income people. We need this Wal-Mart. There's nothing downtown."

It is crucial that Wal-Mart's liberal and progressive critics make use of the growing public indignation at the company over sex discrimination, low pay and other worker rights issues, but it is equally crucial to do this in ways that remind people that their power does not stop at their shopping dollars. It's admirable to drive across town and pay more for toilet paper to avoid shopping at Wal-Mart, but such a gesture is, unfortunately, not enough. As long as people identify themselves as consumers and nothing more, Wal-Mart wins.

The invention of the "consumer" identity has been an important part of a long process of eroding workers' power, and it's one reason working people now have so little power against business. According to social historian Stuart Ewen, in the early years of mass production, the late 19th and early 20th centuries, modernizing capitalism sought to turn people who thought of themselves primarily as workers into consumers. Business elites wanted people to dream not of satisfying work and egalitarian societies -- as many did at that time -- but of the beautiful things they could buy with their paychecks.

Business was quite successful in this project, which influenced much early advertising and continued throughout the 20th century. In addition to replacing the worker, the consumer has also effectively displaced the citizen. That's why, when most Americans hear about Wal-Mart's worker rights abuses, their first reaction is to feel guilty about shopping at the store. A tiny minority will respond by shopping elsewhere, and only a handful will take any further action. A worker might call her union and organize a picket. A citizen might write to her congressman or local newspaper, or galvanize her church and knitting circle to visit local management. A consumer makes an isolated, politically slight decision: to shop or not to shop. Most of the time, Wal-Mart has her exactly where it wants her, because the intelligent choice for anyone thinking as a consumer is not to make a political statement but to seek the best bargain and the greatest convenience.

To effectively battle corporate criminals like Wal-Mart, the public must be engaged as citizens, not merely as shoppers. What kind of politics could encourage that? It's not clear that our present political parties are up to the job. Unlike so many horrible things, Wal-Mart cannot be blamed on George W. Bush. The Arkansas-based company prospered under the state's native son Bill Clinton when he was governor and president. Sam Walton and his wife, Helen, were close to the Clintons, and for several years Hillary Clinton, whose law firm represented Wal-Mart, served on the company's board of directors. Bill Clinton's welfare reform has provided Wal-Mart with a ready work force of women who have no choice but to accept its poverty wages and discriminatory policies.

Still, a handful of Democratic politicians stood up to the retailer.

California Assemblywoman Sally Lieber, who represents the 22nd Assembly District and is a former mayor of Mountain View, was outraged when she learned about the sex-discrimination charges in Dukes v. Wal-Mart, and she smelled blood when, tipped off by dissatisfied workers, her office discovered that Wal-Mart was encouraging its workers to apply for public assistance, "in the middle of the worst state budget crisis in history!" California had a $38 billion deficit at the time, and Lieber was enraged that taxpayers would be subsidizing Wal-Mart's low wages, bringing new meaning to the term corporate welfare.

Lieber was angry, too, that Wal-Mart's welfare dependence made it nearly impossible for responsible employers to compete with the retail giant. It was as if taxpayers were unknowingly funding a massive plunge to the bottom in wages and benefits -- quite possibly their own. She held a news conference in July 2003, to expose Wal-Mart's welfare scam. The Wal-Mart documents -- instructions on how to apply for food stamps, Medi-Cal (the state's health care assistance program) and other forms of welfare -- were blown up on poster board and displayed. The morning of the news conference, a Wal-Mart worker who wouldn't give her name for fear of being fired snuck into Lieber's office. "I just wanted to say, right on!" she told the assemblywoman.

Wal-Mart spokespeople have denied that the company encourages employees to collect public assistance, but the documents speak for themselves. They bear the Wal-Mart logo, and one is labeled "Wal-Mart: Instructions for Associates." Both documents instruct employees in procedures for applying to "Social Service Agencies."

Most Wal-Mart workers I've interviewed had co-workers who worked full time for the company and received public assistance, and some had been in that situation themselves. Public assistance is very clearly part of the retailer's cost-cutting strategy. (It's ironic that a company so dependent on the public dole supports so many right-wing politicians who'd like to dismantle the welfare state.)

Lieber, a strong supporter of the social safety net who is now assistant speaker pro tempore of the California Assembly, last year supported a bill that would require large and midsized corporations that fail to provide decent, affordable health insurance to reimburse local governments for the cost of providing public assistance for those workers. When the bill passed, its opponents decided to kill it by bringing it to a statewide referendum. Wal-Mart, which just began opening Supercenters in California this year, mobilized its resources to revoke the law on Election Day in November, even while executives denied that any of their employees depended on public assistance.

Citizens should pressure other politicians to speak out against Wal-Mart's abuses and craft policy solutions. But the complicity of both parties in Wal-Mart's power over workers points to the need for a politics that squarely challenges corporate greed and takes the side of ordinary people. That kind of politics seems, at present, strongest at the local level.

Earlier this year, labor and community groups in Chicago prevented Wal-Mart from opening a store on the city's South Side, in part by pushing through an ordinance that would have forced the retailer to pay Chicago workers a living wage. In Hartford, Conn., labor and community advocates just won passage of an ordinance protecting their free-speech rights on the grounds of the new Wal-Mart Supercenter, which is being built on city property. Similar battles are raging nationwide, but Wal-Mart's opponents don't usually act with as much coordination as Wal-Mart does, and they lack the retail behemoth's deep pockets.

With this in mind, SEIU President Andy Stern has recently been calling attention to the need for better coordination and funding of labor and community anti-Wal-Mart efforts. Stern has proposed that the AFL-CIO allocate $25 million of its royalties from purchases on its Union Plus credit card toward fighting Wal-Mart and the "Wal-Martization" of American jobs.

Such efforts are essential not just because Wal-Mart is a grave threat to unionized workers' jobs (which it is), but also because it threatens all American ideals that are at odds with profit -- ideals such as justice, equality and fairness. Wal-Mart would not have so much power if we had stronger labor laws and if we required employers to pay a living wage. The company knows that, and it hires lobbyists in Washington to vigorously fight any effort at such reforms; indeed, Wal-Mart has recently beefed up this political infrastructure substantially, and it's likely that its presence in Washington will only grow more conspicuous.

The situation won't change until a movement comes together and builds the kind of social and political power for workers and citizens that can balance that of Wal-Mart. This is not impossible: In Germany, unions are powerful enough to force Wal-Mart to play by their rules.

American citizens will have to ask themselves what kind of world they want to live in. That's what prompted Gretchen Adams, a former Wal-Mart manager, to join the effort to unionize Wal-Mart. She's deeply troubled by the company's effect on the economy as a whole and the example it sets for other employers. "What about our working-class people?" she asks. "I don't want to live in a Third World country." Working people, she says, should be able to afford "a new car, a house. You shouldn't have to leave the car on the lawn because you can't afford that $45 part."

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinio...8_focus02.html

[BrianK]

It is a good read because it presents all sides. Some parts I reflect on.

I don't remember reading anywhere that the organization N.O.W & P I N K have employment opportunities available yet, they want to boycott Walmart. Like it or not closing Walmart as an employer would put over a million employees out of work. The domino impact of that would would be devastating to America's economy. Exposing real issues is OK and should happen but to destroy America by recommending radical action isn't the way to go.

Unionization or lawsuits concerning descrepancies in the work place grab attention in the news but in reality are part of how America operates. There are standards set for employers to follow, not operating within the laws are resolved via our legal system. Meanwhile media sells.

There is a negative slant buried deep within the article. The observation that "Sam Walton found a way to make money off of poor people". Positve would have been "Sam Walton found a way to bring affordable products to low income Americans". Nuetral would have been "Sam Walton is a successful entrepreneur " . Goes way back to if you can't say something good don't say anything. Sam Walton isn't on trial for treason so in this instance saying nothing would have been my preferance.

Poverty isn't a condition that can be cured by waving a magic wand and paying every employee 100k a year. Probably the best example would be the differance in the cost of living in America as opposed to Mexico. The cost of living in America is much higher because wages & benefits negotiated over the years has caused the increase.

The pay scale & benefits at Walmart are in the news as being low, with a high co-pay. I haven't read anywhere about the tax base that communties enjoy due to corporate taxes, wage taxes, sales taxes, property taxes, school taxes that are generated by having a job at Walmart. If communities are suffering from Walmart being in business then an article explaining the monetary gain or loss employment causes throughout America would be interesting.

[Caldric]

Wow lot of that article was just shear high end conspiracy theory and ill will towards Wal-Mart by the writer. She is obviously hateful of the company and so obviously stupid and ignorant of the subject. It is so easy to sit around making 100,000 a year writing crap that is fantasy and speak of the lowly slaves of wal-mart.

They do not pay well so that they keep the community poor so that they will shop at wal-mart? LOL Come on ok, in many places Wal-Mart is the only place too work any where near a persons home so lots of people take that job that would normally either have to commute or not have a job. The writer sounds like a modern Lenin complaining about Capitalism and how it enslaves the worker in a perpetual loop. Sounds good but is crap.

Sam Walton found a way to make a business work, I seriously doubt he sat around his fire place rubbing his hands making poor people out white collar business men... Oh? Is that not what is being said, did the people work on Wall Street and somehow get lured to work for 9 bucks an hour at Wal Mart? Did Walton talk teenagers into quitting High School and then snaring them to work for him in slavery of Wal-Mart dungeons... Did he talk a few high paying industrial specialist to leave their high paying jobs to come down to the wal-mart store? This writer is so full of crap it flows from her fingers as she writes.

No he did not the people that many areas in rural America had little other choices of where to work. Lets look at my home state of Tennessee, the majority were always teenagers working there for jobs after school or single moms or perhaps people who could not get a specialist job. If not for Wal-Mart then for the uneducated work force they could work in furniture manufacturing for 5 dollars and hour or work at Wal-mart for 6.50. Or they could work in a chicken slaughtering plant for 6.25 and hour. Or perhaps McDonalds for 5.10 an hour is hiring. Oh yeah Wal-Mart is so evil, I mean this single mom would work herself to death in a factory and look 60 at 40 years old could now be lured into the Evil Wal-Mart Empire assimilated and slaved out to helping some little old granny find a set of ear rings or helping me find the correct set of Windshield Wipers... Such evil, and she makes more money and has actually A CHANCE TO GET BENEFITS. You go work in Cleveland Tennessee furniture factory and see what your benefits are... Liza Featherstone!

Here are some plain facts for Liza Featherstone,

Most employees of Wal-Mart have very limited options elsewhere because of lack of skill sets or education. Many work there for convenience, in rural America there is no Wall Street Jobs, unlike the writer above they do not drink 5 dollar cup of coffee and have a community per capita average income of 50,000 a year. 8 bucks at Wal-Mart is not a bad job, or you could work at the Chicken Factory... The cost of driving to a more populace area in a city to work for a couple of dollars more lower the wages from working a mile from home at Wal-Mart, not the most labor intensive of jobs I might add very decent days work for the pay.

Here is another fact, those single moms that can get a job at Wal-Mart, at least they have a job, many could work themselves hard all day for another buck or two from the Local Union Shop industry that pays nothing and then demands dues on top of your pay-nothing-salary. Unions are useless these days, especially in small industry. The mom at least is not worked half too death during the day at Wal-Mart so that she is not so tired she can not be a mom at night.

LIZA FEATHERSTONE is a bigot, she does not care about those people, she has no concern, you can tell by her writing her target is some preconceived hatred of Wal-Mart because 95% of the management is not female. That is the real issue here, she obviously is very ignorant of many issues on the matter. Especially her propaganda to make Wal-Mart out to be the Borg. She is not very good at hiding her true intent, she needs more practice.

[Caldric]

By the way Liza Featherstone is a New York city based Feminist Extremist, anti-Capitalist socialist wannabe.

Who has never worked a hard day in No-Where Tennessee or My Community Kentucky yet preaches of how these "simple" folks are slaves and stupid. In essence she is an ignorant pampered child who would not know which end of shovel you work with.

She should leave New York city and the 5 dollar coffee and idiot protests and move to Somewhere Town in North Carolina and work in the local factory and then when she is done after a few years there go over to the Wal-Mart and get a job in the sporting goods and see which she prefers.

I would call her a stupid ***** but it will get filtered. I despise ignorant socialist who have no clue about work or the people who do the work.

[The_Federalist]

"schadenfreude" god I love that word

[BrianK]

This point in the article is typical of how only 1/2 of the story is presented. Not a reflection of what Danny posted but reflecting on what Gretchen Adams has to say.

Originally Posted by odannyboy

American citizens will have to ask themselves what kind of world they want to live in. That's what prompted Gretchen Adams, a former Wal-Mart manager, to join the effort to unionize Wal-Mart. She's deeply troubled by the company's effect on the economy as a whole and the example it sets for other employers. "What about our working-class people?" she asks. "I don't want to live in a Third World country." Working people, she says, should be able to afford "a new car, a house. You shouldn't have to leave the car on the lawn because you can't afford that $45 part."

We definitely have to ask what kind of world we want to live in. Gretchen fails to mention things like this.

[Domestic demand remains weak and to improve consumer sentiment, the German Government plans to implement tax cuts in 2004 and 2005. Although unemployment figures are expected to fall slightly from 10.3 per cent to 10 per cent over these two years, they are still the highest in the eurozone and among the highest since reunification, reflecting structural inefficiencies in Germany's highly regulated labour market. Economic commentators view the German Agenda 2010 reform package which includes measures to tighten qualification for unemployment benefits and changes to health and pension insurance as a welcome first step in loosening up some labour market rigidities. They also emphasise the need for additional reforms in order to improve longer-term economic prospects.]

Not a pretty picture of German economy, yet Gretchen is perfectly willing to promote Germany as the model. The full article explains the impact of the work rules in place now and why they need to be changed. Notice "labour market rigidities" will have to be loosened. That translates to getting together with the unions from now til 2010 to reduce the demands now in place.

Perhaps Walmarts expansion into Germany was pre mature. Maybe Walmarts operating model would have been more well received in another 3 or 4 years. Or it could be that Walmart understands the economic impact of 10% unemployment and is ahead of the competition in setting up for the change the German Gov. sees as needed.

Germany has signed on to the pact that supports the Euro as a currency. With a 3 % max limit on debt Germany can't afford to continue as it has been. The Walmart business model could be what eventually saves Germany from defaulting. That IMO won't set well, we'll be ugly Americans again no matter which way it turns out.

I don't even want to get into the $45.00 part needed to repair a car. What about the $79.00 an hour shop rate to diagnose the need for the $45.00 part. Virtually impossible for an average person to diagnose a malfunction now-a-days. Even an oil change can get a do it yourself'er into trouble with enviromental agencies if the oil isn't disposed of properly.

edit = adding the article web address I referred to.

http://www.tradewatch.dfat.gov.au/Tr...micWeb/Germany

[Hoss68]

Ahhhh... To have been on both sides of the fence where this article is concerned... Yep, that would be me!

I worked at Sams Club down in the cities in '97 and '98. When I was hired they send you through a training day and tell you all kinds of history of Sams and Wal-mart.... BORING! One of the other things they tell you right off the bat is DO NOT MENTION THE WORD UNION OR TRY TO ORGANIZE ONE~ YOU WILL BE FIRED FOR IT. Yeppers, that got my attention. My Dad was a Teamster. Enough said.

I loved being a cashier there and was ****ed good at it! I always had a long line when it was busy, not because I was slow, but because of my people skills. Regulars would come to me because I made them laugh and I knew my sh*t. If the bar code wasn't on the item, I knew the number or knew the fastest way to get it and they were outta there! When I worked the early hours for business members only, sales went up those Tuesday mornings. Drastically according to mgmt when it was reviewed. They asked me why and actually had other store managers come in to watch me work due to the sales increase~ That was fun!

We had members that I knew from outside of there and I would yell halfway down the lines for them to get in my line and they would~ Some of the head cashiers would try to divert members out of my lane to equal out the lines and customers would refuse... I was obnoxious, funny and accurate~ Good mix for a very stressful (some days) and low paying job...

I left on Mothers Day, or rather I quit. I went to our head manager and told him~ I'll be ****ed if I take orders from a 19 punk (male) and get cut down in front of the same customers who loved me because I shut down my lane (it was slow) to help a new cashier do a flatbed full of stuff (she was having a very hard time) and told to leave her and go back to my lane. BTW~ I was their lead trainer for new cashiers at the time... No pay raise in it, but they learned from the best and I had fun doing it. Women rarely got promoted at that Sam's Club. I saw it pretty early in my employment and watched it with curiousity from then on.

My people skills also saved the company over $200 when two men tried to shoplift from us~ I made that one transaction of two items last 10 minutes~ Long enough for the cops to show up. They shut down every other lane except mine and said~ Distract and keep them here. Done.

Now the other side of the fence....

Even when I was making $35,000 working for the state I still shopped there. Our union said~ Don't. It's my money, I will spend it where I want. When Ross and I were together with an income double that~ We still shopped there...

I know they discriminate, I know their illegal practices~ First hand. But I also live in rural America with few shopping choices unless I drive 1 1/2 hours. Even then if Wal-mart and Target are next to each other~ I go to Wal-mart. I find the people friendlier who work and shop there and Wal-mart is less trendy than Target.

My sister-in-law used to refuse to shop at Wal-mart because she said it was "cheap" and a store for "the poor". WTF did she think she was? But then she thinks to wear a name on your ass makes you a better class of a person... She now has to shop at Wal-mart and I giggle everytime I run in to her there~ Good thing I live about 100 miles away from her!

This article was pretty negative, I agree with Caldric and BrianK on that.

Unfortunately the wages made by working for either Sams or Wal-mart do qualify many of the single parents for public assistance~ Child Care assistance is the biggest one needed, where offered. The good thing about that is that these single parents will know that their kids are taken care of by a licensed child care provider as opposed to passing them from relative to relative of friends...

Most people in my area look at the local casino they way this woman looks at Wal-mart.