Trying to repair an image that has gone downhill since Sam died. Illegal immigrant hiring practices (okay, it was a third party), poor benefits and forced free overtime for workers, contributing mightily to the Chinese/American trade deficit and bringing about the revolution to transfer it offshore in the first place, etc. Wal-Mart has been credited with destroying many a main street, lowering standards of living, and for deceptive and anti-competetive business tactics like pricing competitors out of a market and then lifting prices up drastically once they are gone.

My local WM has just redone their floorplan and put in new flooring and signage to make it look more stylish and sleek and open. To some degree it's effective, but to me it seems like whitewash on a rotting house of policy. I'm pretty much forced to shop there at least some of the time, but I try to buy stuff from other local smaller merchants when I can. If I do shop there, I try not to buy anything not made in the US. I never make any major purchases there; say over $150 for any single item. If they bring back the "Buy American" campaign from the late 80's, then maybe they have truly changed. Otherwise, they are trying to raise their damaged image out of the gutter with a new facade without really changing the core issues.

And I adamantly refuse to use their "self-service" checkouts - for starters they are annoyingly slow and secondly, they invariably force me to wait while some shift manager comes over and resets the thing for items that can't leave without their say-so or because of equipment failure. This is a pure profit thing for them since they don't have to pay anyone to ring up your goods. I don't see prices lowering because of it either. I'm really an opponent of their upcoming RFID revolution as well. And this is coming from a guy who loves and works with technology, so I've read and thought about it a lot.

The sad thing is that they have an opportunity to do some real good with their stores and their seemingly very motivated workforce. They could lead retail in a clear, environmentally and socially responsible manner and I'm pretty sure that any lost profits up front would be made up for in volume that returns from the disillusioned like myself. I don't understand why companies bow to Wall Street pressure. If any institution in our country is more myopic than the short-sighted almighty dollar seeking damn the consequences Wall Street, you'll have to clue me in. <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />