A Happy Wal-Mart Holiday
December 10, 2006 on 10:30 pm | In Main, Wal-Mart |
[Photo of Sam Walton’s original Walton’s Five and Dime, now the Wal-Mart Visitor’s Center, Bentonville, Ark., courtesy Bobak Ha’Eri.]
[Update (12/14): Nice column in The Courant this morning by Owen Canfield on the shopping scene in Torrington.]
Went to my son’s basketball game yesterday in Hartland. Where’s that, you ask? On the other side of Winsted, just east of Colebrook, I think.
Hartland is a beautiful but odd town. It is cleaved in half by the gorgeous Barkhamsted Reservoir (over which there is no bridge, except a drive-over dam at the southern end). So if you want to go from East Hartland to West Hartland, you have to drive north almost into Massachusetts and then down, or all the way into Pleasant Valley and back up Route 181.
Speaking of the Heartland (how’s that for a lame segue?), on the way there we stopped at the garden spot of the county, the Wal-Mart on Route 202 in Torrington. This is not a Wal-Mart Supercenter with a large grocery area. Since there is a beautiful Price Chopper next door, there is no need for the Supercenter.
I’d venture to say I’m one of the only people in the Northwest Corner who uses the name of a big-box store and the word “beautiful” in the same sentence. But there is a good reason for this. So before you get ready to bombard me with comments about what a rube I am, hear me out.
As I have pointed before (here and here), I have a love-hate relationship with the giant retailer. Truth be told, though, it’s mostly love.
With apologies to our local retailers in the Northwest Corner whom I patronize often, I get a real kick out of walking into Wal-Mart and reveling in the vastness of it all — the low prices, the expansive variety, the average (mostly blue-collar) crowd that shops and works there and — best of all — the utter lack of pretense that pervades the place.
No one shops at Wal-Mart to make a statement. People go there to find what they want at a price they can afford — period. If you can afford to shop at a tonier place offering fancier wares, then good for you.
I bought a 24-inch TV, art supplies for my son, 8 pairs of underwear (briefs, if you must know), 6 pairs of sweat socks and miscellaneous holiday food items. I got out of there for around $238 including tax. Sure, sales help isn’t easy to find, but when you do locate a clerk, the service is prompt and friendly.
You would think from listening to the Wal-Mart bashers (and let’s face it, they’re mostly the left-leaning upper-middle-class who wouldn’t be caught dead there), employees of the Arkansas behemoth are indentured servants working for $2.50 an hour with health care that won’t cover anything less than a heart attack on the job.
Sure Wal-Mart could pay its employees a lot more and offer better health care in the short run. But when your mission is selling goods at rock-bottom prices, you can’t pay your associates $25 an hour and offer Blue Cross/Blue Shield master medical. After a few years the business model would collapse and then you’d have 1.8 million people looking for work.
And there is a popular assumption that the mom-and-pop hardware store must be a better place to work simply because it’s smaller. Do you really think the clerk at the True Value in Winsted makes more than a Wal-Mart associate and has better benefits?
Think again. The small shop doesn’t have the economy of scale needed to offer better compensation than the big box. Bigger is not always worse. In fact, sometimes it’s actually … [gasp] … better. Shame on me for thinking inside the box.
P.S. There’s lots of construction activity going on behind the Wal-Mart. Word on the street is they’re building a Target. Oh my. When it’s finished I’ll be spending half my weekends in Torringford. Where is that, you ask? It’s that section of the east side of Torrington cleaved in two by lots of big stores.
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Thanksgiving with the neighbors in their new McMansion. The subject of Wal-Mart comes up when I ask the lady of the manse if the local Wal-Mart is for buying small appliances (I need a toaster oven).
My hostess flies into a five minute tirade about Wal-Mart’s various crimes against humanity. “Besides”, she says, “those people who shop there, Oh My God!”
In response, I declare that I rather enjoy the company of my fellow shoppers at Wal-Mart.
The hostess shifts uneasily in her chair. Silence falls over the table. The host saves the day by shifting the conversation back to mortgage rates, or TV, or something similarly vacuous.
I’m still wondering if I’m one of “those people”, or not.
Comment by Jake — December 11, 2006 #
Hello fellow bloggers, my name is Marshall Miles. I am a Wal Mart shopper.
Uh oh….
I do most of my shopping here locally…
BUT….
I do shop Wal Mart occasionaly..
Yes, I can proudly say..I am one of those people…
I wear brown shoes with black tuxedos
Marshall
Comment by Marshall Miles — December 11, 2006 #
I love Wal-Mart. Like you said, Terry, you can get decent stuff cheap there. I try to shop locally, but I don’t need art or real estate or expensive housewares, so there’s not much for me here. So off to Wal-Mart it is. And if they really are building a Target, God help me and my bank account. I love Target more than I love Wal-Mart!
Comment by Amy — December 11, 2006 #
Terry!
Hello my name is Dana S . . . I am a Walmart Shopper!
Yes it is true that I shop locally for convenience and to support other local businesses like myself - however on behalf of the many 2-parent working families like ourselves in this community - I go to Walmart to get variety at a great price. Do I feel I am one of those? Yes - but I usually am carrying my Louis Vuitton which I can afford because I shop at Walmart.
Comment by Dana — December 11, 2006 #
Marshall and Dana.
Thank you for opening up with your personal experiences in today’s Wal-Mart Shoppers Support Group. Only with honesty and openness can we overcome the damage that Wal-Mart shopping may have done to our souls.
Marshall’s admission that he wears brown shoes with his tuxedo brought a lump in my throat. Dana’s acknowledgment that only with “everyday low prices” can she afford the necessities of life brings to the forefront some real and not always pleasant facts of life. This kind of honesty in the face of life’s harsh realities is what makes this support group so … necessary!
Next week’s focus… electronics and “Is it OK to buy 1080i HDTV now, or should we wait until Sam’s Club offers 1080p at under $1000 per unit?”
See you next time!
Comment by Jake — December 11, 2006 #
I wonder if being a Wal-Mart shopper is like being an alcoholic. You’ll always be a Wal-Marter, recovering or practicing. Easy does it, one day at a time, 14 cheap step-ladders to recovery.
Comment by Terry — December 11, 2006 #
I shop at Wal-Mart quite often and on many occasions have bumped into several of our wealthy part time residents there. One woman is even a decendant of Thomas Jefferson, yet shows no snobbery about rubbing elbows with us common folks in a great bargain store. That shows real class!
Comment by Judy Jacobs — December 11, 2006 #
from my experience, bigger is not always better.
my counterparts at a wal-mart pharmacy make $5 less an hour than I make at the independant Salisbury Pharmacy.
Comment by fred — December 12, 2006 #
How would everybody feel if Wal-Mart opened in Millerton where the Grand Union is now? Would Millerton be a better town for it? Would Salisbury and Amenia? I doubt it.
Comment by ZenMensch — December 12, 2006 #
ZenMensch,
It wouldn’t necessarily be a better town, but I would have more use for a Wal-Mart than the store that’s there now.
Comment by Terry — December 12, 2006 #
My hypothetical Wal Mart in Millerton would put Saperstein’s out of business for sure. You cannot duplicate the kind of service they provide. I one day shopped there without my wallet and they let me take my purchases home and call in with my credit card. I feel very loyal to Sapertsteins. A Wal Mart would also put Oblong Books out of business, too. And once those stores were gone, there would be a domino effect of decline. Wal Mart is not a force for good in the world. Low prices are not the holy grail. If they are then we are in serious trouble.
Comment by ZenMensch — December 13, 2006 #
So ZenMensch
DO you ever shop at a major supermarket? They put Mom and Pop supermarkets out of business.
No one is saying that you should do ALL your shoping at a Wal Mart, what we are saying, is that it should not be considered a blow against local stores if you shop elsewhere at times
Marshall
Comment by Marshall Miles — December 13, 2006 #
ZenMensch, have you ever ordered anything from Amazon.com?
Comment by Paul Henrici — December 13, 2006 #
Hey, I think all of us do what we can to patronize the local merchants. This isn’t a contest.
Marshall, I agree with what you said on your show this morning. Wal-Mart and its ilk have put a lot of medium sized chains (Caldor, Ames, Bradley’s) out of business. I’m not so sure about the small retailers.
I recall a few years ago, the Waterbury Republican did a survey of local hardware stores near the new Home Depot that opened on Rt 202. Doom and gloomers were predicting they would all go out of business. If I recall correctly, two years later, all but one were still operating.
They did so by offering a level of service Home Depot (and Wal-Mart) cannot match. If I go to Herrington’s, for example, someone will come over and fawn over me even for a small purchase.
ZenMensch, a Wal-Mart in Millerton might put Saperstein’s out of business. But I’m not sure about that. Lew Saperstein is a great guy and has strong customer loyalty for the reasons you cite. His late father, Irving, is a legend. I don’t see Oblong going under at all. Different market entirely from Wally.
I love Oblong but I rarely buy books anymore, opting instead for freebies at the Scoville Library. And back when I bought music CDs I always made a point to go to Oblong and buy there (or order it) rather than buying online at towerrerecords.com. But now with i-Tunes, I buy music at home. ZenMensch, have you ever used i-Tunes?
But the big stores do have an impact. The Canaan Market has a going-out-of-business sign in its window now. Hard to see how that could have happened without the new Stop & Shop.
Perhaps, as one of my colleagues pointed out today in the newsroom, Wally will get so big that it will run afoul of anti-trust laws, as Microsoft and Standard Oil did. Then it’ll get busted up like Ma Bell and we’ll all pay more.
Comment by Terry — December 13, 2006 #
Caveat emptor
Comment by ZenMensch — December 14, 2006 #
Comment by ZenMensch
Posted on December 14, 2006 at 6:42 am
Caveat emptor
My comment on this comment…..
B.S.
Marshall
Comment by Marshall Miles — December 14, 2006 #
Marshall, I’m not sure I know what the caveat emptor refers to, so it’s hard for me to take offense.
Comment by Terry — December 14, 2006 #
I don’t take offense! I just think the saying has no bearing on the thread…Let the buyer beware!!!??? Huh. AsS my grandmother used to say…Baloney Sauce!
Marshall
Comment by Marshall Miles — December 14, 2006 #
We interrupt this performance of Copland’s “Fanfare for the Common Man†by the NW Corner Symphony Orchestra, Terry Cowgill conducting, to bring you this message from the real world:
Shopping at Walmart does not make you a populist hero, any more than shopping at Tiffany’s makes you royalty. Please do not elevate simple pragmatism to a saintly virtue.
There may be other reasons why a “certain†clientele forgoes shopping at Walmart. If I had enough disposable income, I would probably avoid big box discount stores, too, because I could afford higher-quality items at higher prices. (When we lived in NYC, we used to get our furnishings from Ikea. Nearly every one of those darn pieces has broken or fallen apart!) Although, you can’t be sure. It is an axiom in my business (fundraising) that the millionaire may be the guy or gal with the beat-up Chevy out front. You can get rich by being frugal.
As for moi, I do my regular grocery shopping at Price Chopper in GB, and I have, at various times, patronized Staples and other big box stores in Torrington, Home Depot on Route 202, and even the Kingston (NY) mega-malls. (For a true mega-mall experience, however, we had Thanksgiving in Columbus, Ohio, next door to a ten-square-block mall that was practically a Disney World of its own!)
Having said that, there are many excellent reasons, in addition to the issue of workers’ rights, to be critical of big box stores and—if possible—to minimize one’s patronage of them; not to mention, to wish that we not accept big box stores in the midst of our Northwest Corner. Torrington and Kingston can have their big boxes, but our area would be a lot less desirable a place to live if it became just like every other place. True, you can make a persuasive argument that this might be a hardship for those who can’t afford to drive 30 minutes for cheap prices, but I’m not sure it’s worth sacrificing the remaining special qualities of our towns.
On a more global level, there are environmental concerns, the homogenization of everyday life, the loss of local businesses, the consolidation of economic power into fewer and fewer large corporations, and the mass importation of cheap goods from overseas, many of which are manufactured in sweatshop conditions or worse. Though to be fair, it’s nearly impossible to avoid such items no matter where you shop, which leads me to the hollowing out of the American economy and the impending collapse—but let’s save that topic for another day.
Some wag will surely accuse me of spreading “liberal guilt.†I’m not a big believer in the power of guilt, but I prefer being mindful of the consequences of my actions to burying my head in the sand.
We now return you to your concert. Up next: Mozart’s politically incorrect “Abduction from the Seraglioâ€â€¦.
Comment by Fred Baumgarten — December 14, 2006 #
Wow. I was wondering when someone would confer on me the mantle of populist hero. Thanks for so honoring me, Fred.
“Saintly virtue?” I sometimes shop at the big boxes precisely because they are “pragmatic.”
Implicit in your statement about “burying my head in the sand” is the notion that you are simply more “mindful” about your world than automatons like Marshall and me.
Perhaps we should call your essay “Concerto for the Cognizant?”
Comment by Terry — December 14, 2006 #
I like it! Now play me Beethoven’s Walmart Sonata….
–Fred–
Comment by Fred Baumgarten — December 14, 2006 #