2001-02-21 - 23:59:00

Wal-Mart Sucks

You know, I was playing over the events of yesterday in my mind, and I was thinking: you know, yesterday doesn't sound so bad. Why was I in such a funk? What turned my mood so black? And then I remembered: "Oh yeah, I went to Wal-Mart." I'm going to try to avoid making that mistake again.

I used to be against going to Wal-Mart on principle, but that was an easy moral stand to take because there were no Wal-Marts near me. Then, one opened up on a road I drive past every day. It was in a plaza where there was a supermarket that I shop at frequently. So I started picking up an item or two there. It was easy, and the prices certainly were cheap enough. And from little concessions like that, you sell your soul, a piece at a time.

I know that Wal-Mart is a bad place. I know that their corporate policies are vicious and repressive. In the name of "family values" they try to dictate what goes on the discs we listen to, and even the cover art that goes on them. Wal-Marts have been the death of small American downtowns all over the country. I know all of this. In fact, Wal-Mart almost put ME out of business!

This happened several years ago, during the boom-and-bust years of the mid-1990s. At the time Marvel Comics was trying to turn itself into a Media Empire, in the style of Disney. They'd spent hundreds of millions of dollars buying trading card companies, children's publishing firms, and other related businesses.

Trading cards were big business back then; there was a huge boom in non-Sports cards, and some of that was in comic character cards. Marvel cut an exclusive deal with Wal-Mart to sell their cards, and this pretty much ended me carrying cards at my shop. Wal-Mart was selling card boxes so cheaply that they were charging less than what I was paying for them from my distributor! It made more sense for me not to order them and simply buy them from Wal-Mart when they came out! Of course, the problem was that everyone else was buying them there too.

So because of that, and other reasons, I pretty much stopped carrying cards. I didn’t consider it a big hardship - it really hadn't been a big profit center for me anyway. But that's not how Wal-Mart almost put me out of business.

Because Wal-Mart is so big, when it makes deals with manufacturers and distributors it demands - and gets - special consideration. Wal-Mart can negotiate like Attila the Hun, because it's "their way or the highway." And because Wal-Mart does such huge volume, some companies get greedy and agree to deals that they really shouldn’t. Marvel made such a deal with its trading cards. Not only did they sell them to Wal-Mart at dirt-cheap prices, but they granted them FULL RETURNABILITY. Now when you make a product returnable, you do it on the assumption that the seller is not going to go crazy and order more than they think they can realistically sell.

To cut to the chase: Wal-Mart eventually came to the conclusion that trading cards were not the profit center they thought they were, so they stops carrying them in the former huge numbers. And they also gave Marvel a 40 MILLION dollar card return in one shot. They literally returned whole WAREHOUSES full of cards at one time. This huge hit, along with other problems, drove Marvel right into bankruptcy court. In fact for a while it looked like Marvel was going to cease to exist, and that would have been the END of the comic market, and the end of my store. Eventually Marvel clawed its way out of Chapter 11 bankruptcy, but they still look very, very weak.

So I have every reason not to like Wal-Mart.

On that particular day I had three or four items I needed to get, and it seemed to take FOREVER to find them. I was tired and cranky and felt like a rat lost in a maze. A messy, depressing maze full of other bedraggled looking rats.

I found two of the four things I was looking for and then just gave up. I had other things to do. However, when I got to the front of the store, I was greeted by a huge line at the checkout. There were only two registers open, and each had about ten people standing in line. So I picked the nearest one and waited. And waited.

In the half hour that I was standing there I had ample time to think about why I didn’t like Wal-Mart. Let me count the ways:

1. Every Wal-Mart I've ever been in has been a terrible mess. It looks like a wave of bargain-conscious barbarians have sacked the place. Of course it's because they don’t want to spend money to hire enough employees to tidy the place up.

2. It occurred to me why it was so hard to find things there: in order to cram in as much crap as possible, Wal-Mart uses high shelves, packed rather closely together. Because you can't see where in the store things are, you can't get your bearings. You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all different.

3. The other shoppers. Dear Lord. Everyone looks rather ghetto, like they've just spent the night in an alley somewhere. Most of them look like the light has been utterly extinguished in their eyes. And moreover you feel that you probably look that way too.

4. Nobody there looks like they are having much fun. In fact, everyone looks like they are suffering from a toothache and their only desire is just to find what they want and get the hell out of there.

5. I have to ask - what the hell is with the greeters? The greeter at this particular store is an old, old man who looks like he should be in a hospital bed on life support, not terrifying people with his wrinkled countenance as they enter the store. It's like a cut-rate modern-day version of a Medieval freak show. What's the point? "Shop while you can, for soon you will look like this, if you are lucky!" Memento mori, indeed.

6. One thing about Wal-Mart, they certainly have cheap prices. In fact, a little TOO cheap. Probably most of the stuff in the store is made in some underdeveloped country by an eight-year-old who only has seven fingers left because he caught three of them in a drill-press. Plainly, someone is getting exploited here.

7. Wal-Mart automotive. I cannot comprehend trusting Wal-Mart with my car. Or ANYONE'S car.

So these thoughts occurred to me as I was standing in that long line. (Which is probably why stores should AVOID HAVING LONG LINES) I came to the conclusion that shopping at Wal-Mart is a depressing, demeaning experience. The time I spent there left me feeling soiled, inside and out. Whatever money you save there is added to your karmic debt, and multiplied by 100. It's just not worth it.

So I say, never again! Let's see how long this resolution lasts.