In Defense of Wal Mart...
It’s cool to hate Wal Mart. Well, cool in the sense that comfortable shoes and mini vans are ‘all that’. Wal Mart is the fat, ugly, beastly bully that everybody bad mouths. And by bully, I mean…
1. Wal Mart uses virtual bull dozers and shoves out the competition to make way for their gigantic super store and…
2. Wal Mart twists people’s arms and forces them to spend millions of dollars a week in their gigantic super store…
But me?
I LOOOOVE Wal Mart. I suppose my little black capitalistic heart is warmed by exceptional values, the fawning customer service, and absolute convenience of the place.
Values? No merchants can beat them. Because of course, if they can, they’ll match them. I don’t pay full price for milk as long as there’s a sale anywhere in the Northern Panhandle. I just ask the cashier to match it. Cha ching, every store in a 50 mile radius just set up shop in my hometown super store.
Customer Service? With the exception of opened videos and software, I have never been denied a refund or an exchange. Nowhere is it easier to do returns. After Christmas, I’ll even return my Target stuff to Wal Mart…that multi line, nearly every other cash register is a return spot? Genius. Messed up internet order? They’ll fix it, even if the screw up might have been mine.
*As opposed to say…Canvas People online. I ordered a canvas of my boys in the mountains; I received a group of smiling strangers at the beach. Three phone calls, an email, and a bad online review later and I’m still getting, “Are you sure you didn’t download the wrong picture?” Hmmm….I do have that rather large file of random strangers in my photo gallery from my stalker days….
Convenience? Open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Ah, be still my beating heart.
Who needs that, you ask? Who shops at 3 am?
Well, there was this one time GI Joe flushed himself down our bathtub drain in pursuit of a storm trooper…and of course they got stuck in a death struggle in the drain trap and until they were either rescued or evacked…no one could shower. So here we were, 2 am Friday night, freshly home from a football game and our little players needed to wash the filth and stink from their bodies. And as bad luck enjoys a good pile on, my oldest son needed to be back up by 6 am for an egghead competition of some sort. Oh, and by the way…did I remember to get him new khakis and dress shoes?
So, off I went….off to Wal Mart in the middle of the night for a drain snake, liquid plumber, khakis, dress shoes, aspirin, chocolate, and wine coolers. And as I stood there looking over my items on that slow moving conveyor belt, I couldn’t help but sigh and think, ‘thank you God for Wal Mart.’
I know, right? My brother tried lecturing me one time on supporting local shops vs. shopping at Walmart. I was like, when you have 6 kids to support and a small paycheck, come back to me and tell me you don't try to find the cheapest place to find back to school supplies, clearance sales, etc.!
ReplyDeleteI do support local shops anyway. I have my share of favorite thrift stores, locally-owned cafes, and eccentric little nooks. But when it comes to grocery shopping, I'm all over the cheap.
Besides, I keep hoping to find a picture of myself in People of Walmart!
Glad I have support. I too shop local, but I would never join a wal mart boycott...and I think I did make the People of Wal Mart...oh wait, maybe that was Glamour's black bar page.
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