As a conservative (rambling here)
who believes in little government intervention and letting markets decide what is right, I come up at loggerheads with other conservatives on the whole WalMart subject.
Throughout history, there have been periods of time when cheap imports threatened the viability of US businesses and some people called for protectionism, which mostly failed.
However, there has never been a threat as big or sweeping as WalMart. Even when A & P was threatening all the little grocers 100 years ago, they did not have the size and scope of Walmart.
However, bad business practices (although legal) have been around for some time. Sears was famous for some pretty disgusting stunts. Go back 50-100 years. What Sears would do, is say you made widgets. They would offer you a fair price for widgets. They would find out who else you made widgets for. Then they would up their orders and insist on priority. Many companies would have to give up their smaller customers to focus on Sears. Once Sears found out about your loss of other customers, and that they were selling solely to Sears, boom, they would inform the company that they would only pay 50-75% of what they were paying for the product. If that drove the widget maker out of business, too bad.
Predatory business practices are not new, sadly. I have a problem with the scale here. When customers start losing choice, I get angered. Conservatives and WalMart lovers will say, "too bad for the other businesses if they can't be competitive, they should not be in business". That's fine, unless of course, this is YOUR business. People with this idiotic thinking conveniently forget about all the associated businesses that die with the small business...all THEIR suppliers, and businesses that feed into that one and support that one. These are just pushed to the side.
I guess the one that grills me the most is the same people that just love WalMart to death are the same people that scream about any lack of service.
I got into a major "argument" on another website around the service topic. I mentioned that while I don't do alot of shopping at Nordstrom, I like to buy my dress shirts there. The opposing "argumentor" basically said I was stupid, as he buys his shirts at WalMart for 1/3 the price. I asked him if they helped fit, had 1/2 sized incremental selections, replaced merchanise if the threads loosened, and if his shirts lasted dry clean after dry clean. He didn't have much to say, other than I was stupid to shop there. I informed him that my strong belief was that he suffered from sheer jealousy, that I had the ability to shop at a high-end, service oriented store whenever I did and that his meager finances allowed him to top out at buying three for one shirts at WalMart. As expected, he went ballistic. Truth hurts I guess.
More to the point, there is this idea that good service is free and should be part of bargain basement prices. I like ask people of this mindset what they do for a living. When they say, I work at Barnes and Noble, for example, I ask them how often they carry their customers' books out to the car for them, or run across the store to hold open doors, or ask people who are browing if they can help. I usually get blank stares. Ah, they expect glowing service everywhere they go, but discussions on THEIR time and effort in providing top service are off limits.
If they work in an office, I ask them how often it is that they leave at 5:00. After all, if we are talking about providing the best service up and down business, why stop at 5? Why not that extra mile? Ah, they've got things to do, places to go, etc. So staying a little late for free is rarely observed.
If they are a sales person, I ask them how often they get beaten on price. They will usually tell me that is how they get beat, but they are always trying to sell how good their service is.
Ah, I get it. When THEY are trying to sell anything, they complain by losing to low grade competitors with a cheap price. And they cry about it. But they have no problem with shopping at WalMart, and making dumba$$ arguments about how others should not be in business if they can't compete on price.
I find it amazing that there are people our there so self-absorbed that they are unable to make these simple connections to what is going on. Everyone wants to treat any retailer out there as if they are getting stiffed by some low grade used car salesmen, but expect customers and employers to pay them top dollar for THEIR time and service on the job.
Astonishing, isn't it.
