
Life at Wal-Mart - lackbeard
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/02/01/life-at-walmart.html
======
Mistone
Its so annoying to me that many people (esp in Bay Area) loath Wal-Mart, and
then turn around and gush over how cheap they got this or that crappy chinese
made product for at Target.

Both are massive big box retailers, both threaten smaller businesses by
discounts and volume. Both pay their employees entry level low wages.

Target def has better marketing and gives money to school. But that hardly
accounts for the difference in opinions people hold for the two companies. Its
nice to see some other opinions about these companies.

~~~
smhinsey
for the purposes of a conversation about loathing, i think you're presenting a
false equivalence here. in such subjective terms it's hard not to admit that
despite whatever flaws it may have, target has at least not had books written
and movies made [1] about their misdeeds.

[1] on amazon, "target" had one result on the first page related to the
company that was positive, whereas with walmart the second result is " How
Walmart Is Destroying America And The World: And What You Can Do About It" and
it doesn't really improve from there

~~~
pj
People attack the giant and the giant is Wal-Mart. They are bad because they
are golliath.

The truth is, they provide one stop shopping for millions of customers who
previously had to drive to many different stores to buy groceries, clothes and
other household items -- and gas too!

In this way, not only does wal-mart save customers money, but they also save
them time. This is true of Target, et al as well, but my point is that Wal-
Mart does good things for a lot of people.

~~~
zach
Exactly, everyone with their knives out end up going for the biggest target.
Same story with McDonald's, which gets dissed at every turn [1] while Burger
King doesn't have to deal with any of that baggage and can happily, you know,
sell burgers.

1 - <http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28967905/>

~~~
pj
MCD is still doing really well for itself despite the critics. The food there
now is much better than I remember it being in years past. I have a lot of
respect for how they handled the whole Super Size Me thing.

It's kind of sad that people would break up that statue like that. Regardless
of your opinion of MCD, the Ronald McDonald house does a lot of good things
for a lot of people.

------
mattmaroon
I've been defending Wal-Mart (not that they need my help) against idiots ever
since I work there. People never consider the alternative. Wal-Mart may pay
little, but the stores they replaced pay less. One Wal-Mart may use a lot of
electricity, but the 20 stores they replace would have used more. And so on
and so forth.

It's very easy to look at Wal-Mart in a vacuum and call it an atrocity, but
when you compare it to the real world alternatives, it's one of the best
things to ever happen to America.

~~~
mattj
This is partly based on stuff said in the BB thread:

Wal-mart might treat it's employees better, but it's cut-throat treatment of
suppliers forces them to cut their (the suppliers') employee treatment to the
bone. When walmart might jump ship on sourcing from you (their purchasers are
known to have zero loyalty) because it costs you $0.25 more per decorative
lamp than the guy using questionable labor practices, you don't really have a
choice on what to do. That $0.25 might mean very little to a small main-street
(to beat the dead-horse) store, but to a company that does billions of
decorative lamp sales a year, that's a ton of money.

So, sure, Walmart employees might be treated fine, but the people actually
producing the goods walmart sells (their non-service, indirectly employeed
workers) are hurting.

~~~
showerst
In theory, if that becomes a big enough hole, the market should rectify it on
its own.

You can already go to Starbucks and buy $10/lb 'Fair Trade' coffee, and many
'hip' brands (American Apparel comes to mind) trade on their humane wages and
treatment of workers.

I'm not saying it's a complete solution (some of the costs are still likely
being externalized, although that's more a problem in the case of pollution
than labor), but in general when a savings is made because of a negative
externality (it's 'costing' others, instead of the just the buyers), a 'non-
negative' version will spring up, and sell for a handy markup.

~~~
forthewin
Sometimes the invisible hand gives you the finger; I'm willing to wager that
in a lot of these cases you end up with massive barriers to entry, and so once
a company gets shuttered or pushed out competitively it will take years and
years before a suitable replacement appears.

Not that I have any good ideas on how to make the subject better.

------
bayareaguy
The only conclusion I would take from this article is that a dull and low
paying Wal-Mart job is not too bad when you're there mainly to satisfy your
curiosity about the place and you can go back to your regular job as the
section editor of a magazine whenever you feel like.

------
wallflower
Adam Shepard is mentioned casually at the end. Adam voluntarily placed himself
in a homeless shelter and 'made' it out.

Old and good thread about Adam Shepard:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=116079>

~~~
mechanical_fish
Of course. If you're not a felon, you're not a drug addict, and you're in good
health, escaping a homeless shelter is pretty easy. [1] There are people (some
of whom are my friends) who have full-time jobs trying to help people get out!
[2] And there are a lot of incentives to leave. Nobody enjoys the homeless-
shelter experience.

Almost all of the people who are _chronic_ residents of homeless shelters have
health problems (often, specifically, mental health problems), are current or
former drug addicts, or have spent time in prison.

These problems tend to feed on each other. Mentally ill people often manifest
erratic behavior that gets them sent to prison. Drug addicts get arrested and
sent to prison. Prisons are a great place to be introduced to life as a drug
addict, and can exacerbate certain mental illnesses. And sick people often
attempt to relieve their own symptoms with drugs (a popular choice: alcohol).
The technical term for the latter behavior is "self-medication", and it's a
classic route by which an otherwise well-off person can get sucked into the
poverty spiral.

Meanwhile, it also doesn't surprise me that a white, male, healthy, educated
person with independent means and an active online life can really enjoy
working at Wal-Mart. Slumming can be fun. Every grad student knows that. I'm
told by reliable witnesses, however, that actual chronic poverty is an
entirely different ball of wax.

\---

[1] Note, of course, that "escaping a homeless shelter" is not at all the same
thing as "escaping poverty". Being homeless is only one of the more desperate
forms of poverty. There are many others.

[2] One of the key skills for escaping homelessness: The ability to fill out
forms. Social workers spend a lot of their time just helping people stay
patient while sitting on hold, send in applications, get to appointments on
time... It's easy to forget, from our perspective as high-end employees of the
knowledge economy, that not all of our fellow humans are born with the
requisite knowledge and patience to do these things. And that you and I are
exactly one stroke or car accident away from losing those skills.

~~~
kaens
Another point about homeless shelters is that it is only a small percentage of
the homeless that stayed in them.

I know that when I was homeless, I stayed away from homeless shelters for the
vast majority of my time in any city, except for when I was entirely new to
the city. I opted for staying in abandoned places and couch-surfing, as
staying in the shelters is really hit-and-miss. Your few (and important)
possessions are not safe,they often try to shove religion down your throat,
and a lot of the people staying at the shelter are the mentally-unstable type
of homeless.

~~~
antidaily
You were homeless? What's your story (if you don't mind sharing)?

------
kqr2
_Nickel and Dimed_ by Barbara Ehrenreich was first published in 2001 so
presumably she worked at Walmart sometime before that.

So life at Wal-Mart may have changed since then. Also, he should have worked
at the same Wal-Mart to help control for location.

~~~
wildwood
Also, Ehrenreich didn't just work at a Wal-Mart - her focus was on trying to
make ends meet on a minumum wage. She tried finding an apartment and a
lifestyle that she could afford on a Wal-Mart paycheck.

Since this blogger talks about going home from work and looking some things up
on his computer, I'm guessing that he didn't try to replicate her experiment
faithfully.

------
awt
I worked in the electronics department of the Walmart in Moscow, ID one summer
during college. I liked it much better than my previous (and first) job as a
box boy at Albertsons. The pay was reasonable for someone of my age and
ability, and helped to fund my college education.

------
TimothyFitz
I was _really_ surprised to read that every employee had access to profit
margin data.

Kudos to Wal-Mart for a level of decentralization and transparency many
startups and high tech companies don't even achieve!

~~~
aaronblohowiak
Please elaborate on what you mean by decentralization.

~~~
kqr2
I guess he means that Walmart floor employees can place products to maximize
their local profit margin since they know what sells well at their store.

~~~
mattmaroon
Not exactly. Most of the store layout comes down from corporate, where it is
determined via a series of tests. They're truly amazing at optimizing sales by
merchandising. Employees don't really choose what goes where.

~~~
nihilocrat
Keeping score here: _At the branch where I worked, all the lowest-level
employees were allowed this information and were encouraged to make individual
decisions about inventory._

I guess that means it's either a lie, a difference in local management, or
true but misleading?

~~~
Xichekolas
It's possible he meant they simply had the ability to control the _number_ of
items ordered for inventory, rather than their placement or marketing.

If the floor employee knows what is selling, it makes sense to let them hit
the 'reorder this' button.

But this is entirely conjecture on my part.

~~~
mattmaroon
Well, it's not even so much that. In general, corporate actually knows better
than the local guy how many of an item are selling, they see it in the
reports. Local guys don't have any better information.

Local guys don't control pricing either, in general. That too is set by
corporate.

What was common, and I think what he may have been talking about, was
employees discounting things for certain people. That's the only time I can
think of when you'd look at profit margins. Maybe something placed in
clearance, or resold open box after a return. Or, for instance, we'd give our
bigger clients a discount on bulk orders of printer paper if they asked. Paper
was pretty close to a loss leader anyway, so we'd sell it at "cost" or maybe
even very slightly below.

The other thing that's ambiguous about what he said (and Wal-Mart's numbers in
general) is exactly how they compute margins. Wal-Mart runs their own
distribution chain, so unlike a mom and pop, who simply buys a product for a
set price including delivery, Wal-Mart buys the product for a lower price and
deals with getting it to the stores themselves.

So they pad their "cost" as seen by the employees by some amount to account
for the supply chain, which can include a profit, or so I was told. Meaning
that a store could still sell an item at what they consider cost, but
corporate Wal-Mart might still make money on it.

Also, the lowest level employees are not empowered to change prices, though
the supervisors (next to lowest level) generally can. However it's very common
for the average floor person to ask the supervisor "hey can I sell this to
this guy for $x because it's open box and I need that space for the new
seasonal products tomorrow anyway" and the supervisor to simply approve it.

Wal-Mart pays generous bonuses to stores for achieving certain profit amounts,
so employees, knowing the margin, are encouraged to not dip below it where
possible. Otherwise for all an employee cared, he'd sell everything for $1.

------
jordanf
This is so cool, and great to hear.

I've never quite understood the anti-Walmart sentiment. What do people have
against low prices? Poorer people can afford to buy (or save) more if they are
fortunate enough to have a Walmart nearby.

One reason to despise the retailer: Walmart has recently been lobbying
congress to raise minimum wage.

If successful, this could force more small businesses to go under because they
cannot afford to pay their employees more, but Walmart can. And they know it.

~~~
doki_pen
I hear this logic about low prices being good for poor people all the time,
and I can never understand it. If prices are low because labor is cheap, then
it seems that the employer/merchant will always make out. It's simple math.
Try applying your logic to every wage earner in the world. If a price is
reduced by 10% because wages are reduces by 20%, then the employee loses 10%.
Sure they can buy everything they need 10% cheaper, but they lost 20% of their
pay check. This only helps two types of consumers, investors and people on
welfare.

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
You're assuming that prices are lower because somebody lowered the wages of
his employees. Generally speaking, prices go lower because someone finds a way
to optimize his supply chain, or a more efficient way to build a product, or
by investing in automation. Lowering your prices by giving your employees a
pay cut just makes the employees look for new jobs.

------
pragmatic
Manufacturing is not much better. I worked in a lot of mfg companies during
college. Starting pay with either at or a little above minimum wage.

There is no easy fix. Companies don't stay in business by paying people more
than they are "worth" in economic terms.

Capitalism is the worst economic system, except for every other one.

~~~
pragmatic
It surprised me at how many college grads were working in a mfg plant (on the
floor, not in management, engineering, etc). However, a lot had history, poli
sci, or econ degrees. It was a short term job that turned into a long term one
because of kids, marriage, etc.

~~~
hexis
"However, a lot had history, poli sci, or econ degrees."

It may turn out that history, political science, and economics degrees felt
like investments but actually were consumption.

------
s_baar
Unfortunately, It's hard to defend Wal-Mart for all the good they do when they
insist on lobbying local councils for direct subsidies or tax breaks, often
taking money from their small competitors.

------
gojomo
Here's another vigorous refutation of Ehrenreich's 'Nickel and Dimed' mindset:

<http://libertyunbound.com/archive/2004_07/lamon-poor.html>

~~~
wildwood
Yeah, 'vigorous' is about the nicest word I can think of to describe it... :)

People who can barely make ends meet should move to the sun belt to save on
clothing? If you can't afford the deposit on an apartment, it's your own
fault, because people have bailed on a lease before? Huh?

But if you get past the overall obnoxiousness, though, he does actually have
some good points.

~~~
gojomo
Migration has, over thousands of years, been the most effective antipoverty
program.

So yes, if you "can barely make ends meet" in a cold expensive place with no
jobs, you should move to a warmer cheaper place with jobs. Steal bus fare, if
you must.

~~~
wildwood
Yes, that would be a good argument, but that wasn't the one made in the
article. Ehrenreich had a job in Minnesota, which is slightly cheaper to live
in than Phoenix, by most standards. Should she still have moved?

~~~
gojomo
It was not that Ehrenreich "had a job in Minnesota". She chose the twin cities
for her experiment. Here's the passage where she describes the deep thinking
of her selection process:

 _I had thought for months of going to Sacramento or somewhere else in
California's Central Valley not far from Berkeley, where I'd spent the spring.
But warnings about the heat and the allergies put me off, not to mention my
worry that the Latinos might be hogging all the crap jobs and substandard
housing for themselves, as they so often do. Don't ask me why Minnesota came
to mind, maybe I just had a yearning for deciduous trees. It's a relatively
liberal state, I knew that, and more merciful than many to its welfare poor. A
half and hour or so of Web research revealed an agreeably tight labor market,
with entry-level jobs advertised at $8 an hour or more and studio apartments
for $400 or less. If some enterprising journalist wants to test the low-wage
way of lif if darkest Idaho or Louisiana, more power to her. Call me gutless,
but what I was looking for this time around was a comfortable correspondence
between income and rent, a few mild adventures, a soft landing._

At least she did 30 minutes of web research!

(If you read the chapter, you also see Ehrenreich chooses Wal-Mart at $7/hour
over another retail job she was offered that paid at least $8.50 and perhaps
$10/hour. It's page after page of her shooting herself in the foot so she has
something to complain about.)

Also, the critique by Lamon does not suggest Phoenix but rather "the Sun
Belt", which includes many of the cheapest places to live in the United
States.

------
uberc
While this is just one data point, it is refreshing to see a business
journalist actually reporting based on first-hand experience.

I can speak from personal experience in a newsroom that surprisingly few
business journalists have ever actually worked in business in any form.

------
ph0rque
Some of the things described in this article shows that wal-mart is
implementing lean mfg ideas (or lean retail, rather).

~~~
icey
You point out something that is incredibly interesting. Walmart is a
juggernaut of capitalism, but all we generally hear about is how evil they
are.

I bet they have some business practices that are worth learning about, other
than the oft-heard about exploitation of their workers.

As an aside, I've known a few people who have worked at Walmart and they
preferred it to a lot of jobs they'd held previously.

~~~
Retric
I wonder how much Walmart adjusts working conditions to the local job market.
Things like high turnover have significant real costs and adjusting the the
local job market could save them massive amounts of money. There also seems to
be significant differences in the quality of the store depending on the local
economy.

EX: I walked though a Wallmart in Arlington VA that seemed to be struggling
where the Wallmart in Charles Town WV was thriving. I expect they lose out on
the "high end" items like HDTV's and high quality items when people have more
options and cash.

------
netcan
>> _Most of all, my coworkers wanted to avoid those “mom-and-pop” stores
beloved by social commentators_

I am suspicious of this writer & _his_ agenda & the possibility of confusing
the fun of slumming it with the fun of feeling trapped in minimum paying
jobs(mentioned here previously). But the above quote plays to my other
suspicions. It goes also for McDonalds, Nestle, Nike & any other pet hate
companies. They are under so much scrutiny, that they can't get away with what
a lot of the small companies can get away with.

