Comments Related To: Allergic to Wal-Mart

Personally, I cannot stand Walmart. Unfortunately, in my area, most people cannot aford to shop elsewhere. The "super" store has drawn comsumers in with promises of low prices. Smaller stores are forced to raise prices or go out of business completely severely limiting choices of shopping venues.
The Walmart here DOES have organic foods... at a much higher price. Forget about a job if you are a rehabilitated felon.
Count on Walmart to choose what music and movies you may buy.
Plan on spending that extra 10 plus minutes in line... There are NEVER enough lines open.
Plain and simple, Walmart DOES NOT care about consumers, employees, or the environment. It exists soley for the all-mighty dollar.

Apparently you and Wal-Mart were never meant to get along. When your immune system tells you to get out, it's a strong sign, and you have no other choice but to listen to it.

Here in Iowa City Iowa, we are so fortunate to have not only an awesome co-op (New Pioneer Co-op) but also many food cooperatives comprised of groups of individuals who contract with local farmers for the freshest produce and even free-range meat products. There are many small businesses with local connections for other products and importers who work with small businesses in other countries to procure goods without child/unfair labor practices. This in the center of midwest US... it is a small respite from the rest of the state.

Yes, there is also a Walmart Super Store and it is doing well by trying to edge out other businesses. Luckily there is a large contingent of committed individuals to fight it!

I wish to add that Walmart has been on my do not shop list since 1989. The prices at other stores are competative and most times cheaper. I have spent about the same reguardless of where I shop.

But the thing I hate most are the people and their unhelpful attitude. When you are trying to locate something in the store, consider yourself lucky to find someone, and once you do consider yourself doubly lucky if they can answer your question.

The last time I was there I was run into from behind by a guy pushing an uncontrollable line of carts. That made me angry but the gift card I got from my boss could not be used elsewhere so there I was.

I looked for 10 minutes for the thing I came for with no luck, can't even remember what it was. So I learned how to get all the attention in an instant. I lit a cigarrette. Took less than 30 seconds and had 3 people there and by the time two minutes went by 15. I got my product and gave the balance to some lady in line with 8 children and she was in a wheelchair.

Haven't stepped foot there since.

That is the great thing about voting with our dollars - if you don't spend them at a certain store you have the most effectiveness! (and peace of mind as well!)

I was a person who hated Wal-Mart from the first time I saw one, but I have come to realize that very few things in life are completely black and white.

Yes, the store specializes in mediocre products.

Yes, they pay low wages and give poor benefits.

Yes, they drive competitors out of business.

But ...

The fact that their prices are 10-20 percent lower as a rule enables many people struggling with too little money to make that money go further. That's something that cannot be overestimated in these days of 70 percent of American families just getting by.

I don't shop at Wal-Mart, but I cannot condemn those who do.

I absolutely agree. At the end of the day, especially in this economy, people have to make ends meet, and Wal-Mart allows consumers to save some valuable change. If one can financially shop elsewhere, one should, but you can't belittle customers for trying to shop frugally.

Wally World (as my Dad calls it) sees only black and white, their applications are only on a computer, and ask questions about make it clear they only want busy-body tattle tales to work for them.
I live in a tourist town with people moving away from the area daily (I would too if I could afford to move) and yet Wal-Mart is building one of those super stores to I suppose replace the current store and the new store is across the street from a major chain grocery store.
I too avoid them if I can, but sometimes there is no choice.

As a young single mom long before it was cliche to eat organic, the way I afforded these foods was to work part time in the local Gentle Strength Co-op in Tempe Arizona. This gave me 'food at cost'. My girls were raised on things that looked and tasted like real food, nothing in bright colored packages with nothing nutritious inside. People thought I was crazy to spend extra on organic foods. I have two grown daughters with beautiful skin, no weight problems, one who eats & feeds her children totally organic foods, and the other one shops at off-the-Wallmart. (She does buy organics as well tho.) I'm 54 with the body of a well toned 30 something, not bragging, just giving my testimonial to a life of eating good versus a life of eating packaged crap for the masses.

Walmartization has never spoken as loud as it speaks now. With recession more and more people are forced to benefit from the low prices it offers.

One of the problems is people THINK they need all sorts of STUFF that they don't, and the expensive colorful packaging containing what would be considered non-foods a few decades ago is now the staple of most people's diet. Wal-mart offers all this cheaper.

Voting with our spending is the most powerful platform individuals have. Giving in to the mindset of needing unnecessary junk foods, and buying them is contributing to the very monster that is devouring our health of body, mind and quality of life.


Putting this crap into our bodies creates obesity in children and a party of other dis-eases. Our cave-man wired biology simply does not recognize these packaged items as food, then people take cheap supplements and the body doesn't recognize those 'vitamins' as food either, abosorbing the alleged benefits of these products does not happen and there is no nourishment. The body craves nourishment and the kids get soda and chips. HELLO PEOPLE, it's time to wake the f*** up and stop blindly buying into being one of the fear ridden animals in a herd. YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT. This is a true proverb, and most people eat several times a day the flesh of terrorized animals herded through the slaughterhouse. Any similarities?