<p>I rarely shop at Walmart. Our local store is hugh, well lit and clean. Unfortunately, it is always very crowded. I prefer Target.</p>
<p>In addition to Cabot’s Extra sharp cheddar, Walmart has significantly lower prices on the large Fage yogurt and the 1.75 liter Jack Daniel’s. There really are only a few items I purchase there, as the price differential between them and our local grocery stores is significant.</p>
<p>martharap, LUCKY! I WISH I could by my Jack Daniels at WalMart.</p>
<p>I refuse to shop at Walmart. I don’t like the way they treat their employees. I also don’t like what they do to local small businesses.</p>
<p>And you are expert on the matter? Most seem to be very happy to have the work. They hire people many others would not even consider.</p>
<p>Many Florida Dept of Corrections parole officers recommend to those they supervise under house arrest to go to Wal-Mart when they get their 4 hrs each week to leave confinement from their homes to shop for food and clothes and get haircuts and go to doctor, etc. The parole officers send them to Wal-Mart so they can do everything under one roof and save time and get back home in less than 4 hrs. The people of Wal-Mart you see in checkout line wearing pajama pants…many of them are wearing electronic ankle bracelets…the baggy pajama pants slide on and off easily wearing the state’s monitoring ankle bracelets!</p>
<p>lizard --</p>
<p>Maybe I misunderstood your post. A person can get a haircut and go to the doctor at Walmarts in Florida?</p>
<p>Walmart pays above minimum wage for starting pay which is better than similar alternatives (fast food, restaurant industry, mom and pop shops, etc.). And they have benefits. I agree that I hate to see the Mom and Pop shops run out the way they were initially, but now these shops are coming back. I think there’s room in the market for everyone.</p>
<p>aquamarinesea, they can here too. They can go to the clinic, pick up their prescriptions, go to the bank, get a haircut, go to the eye doctor, all while they’re getting their car fixed, putting their furniture on lay-away and picking up their bread and cheese.</p>
<p>Most Wal-Marts in Florida rent storerooms to tenants inside the stores. I’ve seen banks, optometrists, medical clinics, McDonalds restaurants, hairdressers, nail salons, etc., inside Wal-Mart stores in Florida. Most have full auto centers where you can get tires mounted. Wal-Mart seeks growth with profit…if they can make a buck legally renting storerooms to others, they will.</p>
<p>A few years ago I was checking out at a Wal-Mart register and I noticed a storeroom near front that had large floral arrangements lined up on shelves…I thought it was a funeral parlor! Turns out it was a florist shop, but it did have me thinking for a few minutes that they had crossed the appropriateness line with a funeral parlor in the Wal-Mart.</p>
<p>lizard --</p>
<p>Learned something new today. I think ours has a small McDonalds, a bank, and an optometrist. I would NEVER consider going to a Walmart doctor though.</p>
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<p>Could you get your work gym outfitted with a few in different weights and colors?</p>
<p>For me kettleballs falls into the category of not being able to do a lot of different exercises (it can be used for a lot of things but I probably wouldn’t use it in a lot of those ways) and I prefer to use things in that category at a gym as opposed to buying them for home use. Barbells, dumbbells, weight bench - I use those all the time so no problem spending for them but I don’t think that I could say the same for a kettleball.</p>
<p>aquamarinesea, they’re not “WalMart doctors” - it’s like those quick care clinics. They just rent space in a WalMart. They’re not usually meant to take the place of your GP, it’s really kind of meant for when you KNOW you have a throat infection, but you can’t get an appointment to see your GP.</p>
<p><strong>added</strong> rent space or PARTNERS with WalMart -</p>
<p>BTW, I do shop at WalMart. I buy my jeans there - they have a particular brand and style that fits me well. I buy some other commodity items there too and my wife likes to shop there. We go about once every two months.</p>
<p>We have a local grocery chain that undercuts WalMart prices and hires a lot of local high-school kids so there isn’t that big of an attraction for food shopping. We also have Trader Joes.</p>
<p>My husband does kettlebells regularly. But he uses (don’t laugh, now) large liquid detergent bottles filled with water. Recycling AND Fitness.</p>
<p>Yes, you can use get creative with fitness. You can use soup cans for small dumbbells. I suppose that someone could come up with a metal handle that attaches to dumbbells and make a kettleball for a few bucks.</p>
<p>I don’t shop at Walmart, but then I don’t shop at any of the big box stores. They are just a turn-off to me. </p>
<p>I’ve gone to Walmart when I visited my my mother-in-law. She lived in a small steel town in PA and Super Walmart was the only game in town. (All the downtown stores in the town had closed, leaving just the big box stores outside of town.) My MIL liked Walmart because her prescription drugs were cheaper than anywhere else in a 50-mile radius.</p>
<p>Some of you mention that you only have one or two other grocery stores in your town to choose from. We live in an area that offers many diverse grocery shopping alternatives. We have 11 major grocery chains within 10 miles of where we live. We also have numerous smaller ethnic grocery stores, organic food markets, etc. I love having so many choices. As I said in an earlier posting, I don’t think I could live in a rural area where Walmart is one of the only places to go shopping.</p>
<p>Having only a Walmart around for food would be an issue for me too. I am a vegetarian and trying to eat organic as much as possible (also my pets eat a lot of lettuce/bell peppers, which are very prone to absorbing pesticides, so for them I only buy organic). I love being able to go to Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s, not just to get organic choices but also tasty and easy vegetarian choices that I don’t have to cook but that still have a decent list of ingredients (no hydrogenated oils, artificial colors, etc.).</p>
<p>Won’t shop there on principal and do not shop in similarly run stores.</p>
<p>IMO they are supporting the working poor model. Consumers get dirt cheap prices, but in the end it hurts all of us and what isn’t paid at the register will be paid in taxes.</p>
<p>[Walmart’s</a> New Health Care Policy Shifts Burden To Medicaid, Obamacare](<a href=“HuffPost - Breaking News, U.S. and World News | HuffPost”>Walmart's New Health Care Policy Shifts Burden To Medicaid, Obamacare | HuffPost Impact)
Walmart’s New Health Care Policy Shifts Burden To Medicaid</p>
<p>Labor and health care experts portrayed Walmart’s decision to exclude workers from its medical plans as an attempt to limit costs while taking advantage of the national health care reform known as Obamacare. Among the key features of Obamacare is an expansion of Medicaid, the taxpayer-financed health insurance program for poor people. Many of the Walmart workers who might be dropped from the company’s health care plans earn so little that they would qualify for the expanded Medicaid program, these experts said.</p>
<p>“Walmart is effectively shifting the costs of paying for its employees onto the federal government with this new plan, which is one of the problems with the way the law is structured,” said Ken Jacobs, chairman of the Labor Research Center at the University of California, Berkeley.</p>
<p>Billet portrayed the growing corporate interest in separating out part-time workers as a reaction to another aspect of Obamacare – the new rules that require companies with at least 50 full-time workers to offer health coverage to all employees who work 30 or more hours a week or pay penalties.</p>
<p>Several employers in recent months, including Darden Restaurants, owner of Olive Garden and Red Lobster, and a New York-area Applebee’s franchise owner, said they are considering cutting employee hours to push more workers below the 30-hour threshold.</p>