Why I don’t shop at Walmart

I used to shop at Walmart until a girlfriend who is a manager at Costco forbid me from ever shopping at there. She really enlightened me! She has been a manager there for about 5 years and she makes a decent living. She told me her counterparts at Walmart who have been there 10 years and longer still only make $10 per hour! Who could live off that? Feed their kids?

Walmart is the largest public corporation in the world, with over 50% of the shares still owned by the Walton family. They have over 2 million employees. It is the largest retailer, not just in the USA, not just in North America. It is the largest retailer IN THE WORLD.

11,000 stores in 27 countries, under 55 different names. Think about how much power that is!!

Every year there are about 5000 lawsuits filed against Walmart. That’s 17 new lawsuits per day! That really got me thinking about this, so I researched it some more. My sources are Forbes Magazine, NY Times, CNN, Money Magazine and countless websites.

1 WALMART IS UNAMERICAN

Walmart is as UnAmerican as you can get. You may as well say that it’s a chinese company that now has a direct pipeline into our livingrooms because you will not find a single product in Walmart that doesn’t have a “made in china” stamp on the bottom. Even all the Florida souvenirs.

If you thought the days of slave labor and sweatshops were over you would be mistaken. In China Walmart employees earn $3 per day & work 7 days a week, & are forced to live in tiny cramped quarters at the factory all so you can buy a cheap toy for your kid. They are trained to lie when human rights inspectors come.

Walmart clothes are produced in Bangledesh by workers 14 hours per day, who get paid 17cents per hour, and brush their teeth with fingers and ashes from the fire because they cannot afford a toothbrush and toothpaste.

In Honduras it’s cheaper to wash the blood off the clothes before they ship them, than it is to buy gloves for the fabric cutters.

2. DRIVES DOWN WAGES

Stats prove that Walmart drives down retail wages by 3 billion a year! Walmart stays purposefully short staffed so that everyone is overworked, everyone is asked to work overtime, yet they do not pay overtime. There is a certain amount of work to be done each day by each person, you must stay to finish it, but there is no overtime pay. You have no choice because there are 10 people waiting for this job that you hate. It is common for staff to work 10 – 15 hours extra each week “off the clock”. Full time employees live far below the poverty level.

They are taught by management how to apply for food stamps, how to get on Medicare/Medicaid and how to get subsidized housing. Walmart turns full time hardworking employees into welfare queens.

WHAT THIS MEANS, IS THAT WE (YOU AND ME, THE TAXPAYERS) ARE SUBSIDIZING WALMART’S BUSINESS. They are getting rich on our backs! Are those cheap trinkets worth it? Walmart employees in the USA receive $2.66 billion in government aid each year. These are Full time employees, who work physical sometimes difficult jobs, of a company that makes billions and billions per year, tell their employees to go get food stamps and medicaid, and apply for housing subsidies. How ridiculous!!!!!!!The reason people work is so they can be self sufficient and take proper care of themselves and their families, why work if you still have to get food stamps!!!! How degrading! No dignity, no pride, why bother working then? All they ask for is a livable wage and healthcare, that is pretty basic isn’t it?

2A. ANTI-UNION

You will be fired if you ever even say the word UNION. There is only one store in the history of Walmart in North America that successfully formed a union. It is in the province of Quebec. Once the union was formed, Walmart closed the store, citing economic reasons. The union took them to court and won, so Walmart said it would give them all their jobs back at other non-unionized stores. Pretty slick huh? All the other stores in the province who were trying to start unions gave up.

3. DESTROYS SMALL BUSINESS

All Mom and Pop stores go out of business after Walmart moves into a town. I went into a local pool supply store that was closing and asked him. “How does a pool supply store go out of business in Florida? Everyone here has a pool!” He said “Everyone goes to Walmart now. They come to my store and spend 20 minutes asking me how all the pool pumps work, how the chemicals work, I educate them, and then they leave my store and go straight to Waltmart to buy everything at my cost, so I can’t pay my rent.

Walmart has 0 service and 0 knowledgable staff, but who cares, as long as it’s cheap right? It’s an established fact that when Walmart comes to town, the property values go down. Because everyone knows there will be lots of empty stores shortly that cannot be leased or sold….

When they contemplate moving into a town, the city council gives them free sewers, free water, no taxes, infrastructure, parking, roads, no tax for 2 years, all kinds of grants given to them. They don’t give this to smaller businesses. Who can compete against that? Why are we paying them to come in and destroy and desroy our towns? Illogical? 

One town gave Walmart 150 million dollars while it closed down 3 schools.

Another gave 50 million to Walmart to entice them while it shut down all the fire departments! Yeah! Let’s eliminate policemen, firemen, and teachers, eliminate parks and recreation completely and give all that money to walmart, what a great idea! WTF! Then in some cases, just when they are about to start paying taxes they move! Just over the property line of the city!

Nationwide in a typical year Walmart receives over $1 billion dollars in subsidies, (imagine what that money could be used for instead of giving it to Walmart who doesn’t need it?) Add that to the over $2.66 billion a year it costs us in medicaid, housing, food stamps etc… Still think buying cheap chinese products is worth it?

CONCLUSION

In conclusion I want you to think about where you spend your money. You have a choice! Is cheap underwear so important that was a society we are willing to sacrifice our quality of life? Do you want to give your hard earned money to an organization that puts profit before people? Go to Costco instead! If you still shop at Walmart after reading this, I hope you feel really really guilty and ashamed because you should. You are helping to destroy our country.