Walmart Holds A Food Drive For Its Own Employees

[Gravekeeper]

Seriously.

Pay a livable wage? Nah. Have your non-starving employees buy food for your starving employees. Bonus: The food inevitably will be purchased in Walmart and the money go right back into company coffers.

[draco664]

I have no words. Just, nothing.

[Greenday]

Holy crap what a disgrace.

[Crazedclerkthe2nd]

Consider the cost of providing a small amount of food to these employees would be LESS than pocket change for a massive company like Wal-Mart.

[DGoddess]

Good Grief!!! How utterly classless of them.

Not to mention the example it sets for the rest of the retailer world.

[Titi]

I thought the same things you guys did until I got injured (on the job but was not getting paid yet) and I was called in. I thought it was some BS to fire me, but it was a Thanksgiving basket due to my hardship with the the injury. They also gave the baskets to Team Members who were injured off the job and were struggling. I gave my basket to family where the Team Member was involved in a car accident and broke his neck, they lost all 3 of his incomes. After that I told everyone what it was for and we made a record basket the next year for that family.

[Duelist925]

I thought the same things you guys did until I got injured (on the job but was not getting paid yet) and I was called in. I thought it was some BS to fire me, but it was a Thanksgiving basket due to my hardship with the the injury. They also gave the baskets to Team Members who were injured off the job and were struggling. I gave my basket to family where the Team Member was involved in a car accident and broke his neck, they lost all 3 of his incomes. After that I told everyone what it was for and we made a record basket the next year for that family.

I would think there's a key difference: In your example, the baskets went to team members who were suffering, financially, due to injury (Medical bills and lost wages), as opposed to...just not being paid enough.

[s_stabeler]

I thought the same things you guys did until I got injured (on the job but was not getting paid yet) and I was called in. I thought it was some BS to fire me, but it was a Thanksgiving basket due to my hardship with the the injury. They also gave the baskets to Team Members who were injured off the job and were struggling. I gave my basket to family where the Team Member was involved in a car accident and broke his neck, they lost all 3 of his incomes. After that I told everyone what it was for and we made a record basket the next year for that family.

there is a difference. In your case, the baskets are for people who had lost income due to injury, and are paid for either by the company or ( more likely in my mind) your co-workers. In this case, Walmart is organising a food drive because ti doesn't pay enough money for it's employees to afford food.

[ebonyknight]

That's the thing I don't get about people and Walmart. I was on the hate Walmart bandwagon at the turn of the century, before it was "fashionable". People would ask why and I would explain it to them. They still didn't get it.

Back then I was of the opinion that you should vote with your feet if you don't like them. Then I had people demonstrate to me that they LITERALLY had no other choice than to go there. There are a lot of rural areas where they move in, close down the competition and then drop their quality standards. I scoffed until people showed me maps of their towns, showing that there was literally NO where else to shop within 30 miles. Quite an eye opener. I was shown pictures of empty shelves and produce rotting. But people bought it as they had no choice. As these are in the boonies, no one pays attention as local officials are being compensated.

I never believed in unfair competition, until Walmart showed up on the scene.

Now they put up all of these commercials about how high quality their food is, how good a job and a career it can be and all this things to dispell "myths" about them. You never see Safeway do these commercials or Home Depot advertising what a great career you can have with them. Where there is smoke there is fire.

[mikoyan29]

Which of course means that someone will put the stop to this...can't have negative propaganda.

[violiav]

Now, sometimes the competition isn't that great. Up until I moved to Texas I'd never experienced Wal-Mart as a place to get produce or anything other than snack food. I lived deep, deep in the boonies for a bit. Like, I thought growing up that Lakeside and East County in San Diego were to boonies. I was wrong.
The closest town was Madisonville and they had a Wal-Mart, a place called Goodys (I think), and a Brookshire Brothers.
I tried Goodys first. It was....creepy. Dusty, flies buzzing around. Things looks like they had been on the shelves for awhile. The produce... something just wasn't right.
So I went to Wal-Mart. They had very little as far as Wal-Marts go. Hardly any snack stuff at all. They had lots of beer, but no ice cream. Weird.
Then I went to Brookshire Brothers. It fit more my idea of what a grocery store was. Brightly lit, clean, organized.

[Nyoibo]

Just watched Pann & Tellers Bullshit episode on Wal-Mart hate last night, there were sxome interesting points made, mind you this was back in 2005 I think, interestingly they went to Penns home town where a wal-mart had been denied plans to build there, the mom & pop stores had still closed, businesses were failing, in the next town over where there was a wal-mart those same types of stores were still going, the theory behind it was that wal-mart allows people to buy their staples at lower prices, while also employing some of the community, which gives them more monet to spend in the boutique stores.

Although I'm sure they would have ripped into them for this stunt though.

[Andara Bledin]

I've seen that episode, and I thought it was really actually kind of bizarre. I don't remember the details, but there were a couple of things that were flat out wrong, and it baffled me at the time that they'd air that.

[s_stabeler]

Just watched Pann & Tellers Bullshit episode on Wal-Mart hate last night, there were sxome interesting points made, mind you this was back in 2005 I think, interestingly they went to Penns home town where a wal-mart had been denied plans to build there, the mom & pop stores had still closed, businesses were failing, in the next town over where there was a wal-mart those same types of stores were still going, the theory behind it was that wal-mart allows people to buy their staples at lower prices, while also employing some of the community, which gives them more monet to spend in the boutique stores.

Although I'm sure they would have ripped into them for this stunt though.

it depends on what the mom and pop stores are selling. If they are selling staples, then they will lose custom to the Wal-mart. If they are selling something Wal-mart doesn't, then the effect may be neutral or positive.

[Lace Neil Singer]

Too bad the employees won't be able to enjoy their dinner, as they'll all be forced to work on Thanksgiving day anyway.