How sick is this?

Parent Cafe
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<p>This morning I attended a ribbon cutting in one of the communities that my newspaper covers. That in itself is not exceptional - new businesses open a couple of times of month, and the local Chamber of Commerce sponsors a ribbon-cutting for each. The mayor or one of the city council members usually attends, its over in five minutes, and I take a picture and run a brief news piece.</p>

<p>What made it different today was that the business was the community’s first Wal-Mart.</p>

<p>Not only the mayor was there - the whole city council, the city manager, the police and fire chiefs, the city engineer, the entire board of the Chamber, even the president of the local community college - anybody who is anybody in the community.</p>

<p>The ceremony opened with a prayer, at which a local pastor thanked God for bestowing his blessings on the community by bringing it a Wal-Mart and asking that he continue to bless Wal-Mart and make it thrive and be successful - all in the name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.</p>

<p>Then there was the presenting of the colors by the local American Legion post (no I am NOT making this up - PM me if you want a picture) and the singing of the National Anthem.</p>

<p>Then after a long address by the store manager, at which he thanked everyone under creation, and a mercifully shorter address by the regional manager, the mayor spoke. He talked about how long the community had waited for its Wal-Mart, how the local politicians had never lost faith that the store would happen (he didn’t mention the fact that they bent over backwards, changed zoning rules, and spent a ton of taxpayer money) - and then he invoked the name of the deceased ex-mayor under whom the planning for the store began and promised us that “Ray is looking down today with a big smile and saying ‘See, I told you to keep the faith.’”</p>

<p>Then there was the Wal-Mart cheer by the assembled associates, followed by the cutting of the ribbon by the deceased ex-mayor’s widow.</p>

<p>Finally the store opened for business. There must have been 200 people eagerly waiting, shopping carts at the ready, desperate to be among the first to spend their money. I was almost run over by the shopping carts as I made my way out of the store - which I did as quickly as I could, because I didn’t think it would look very good for the publisher of the local newspaper to throw up all over the nice clean new floor.</p>

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<p>Well I bet I know what mini would say.</p>

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<p>Did you happen to get the reactions of any of the long-time small business shopkeepers in your community? Hopefully there are many in your area, as there are in mine, who prefer to continue doing business with people who actually know their names, will help them find the items they’re looking for, and keep the “downtown” alive and vibrant. We can’t swing a cat up here without hitting a big box store of some type and the downtown areas in most communities are really becoming eyesores.</p>

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<p>We don’t have a Walmart in Seattle & while I do for instance buy gas from international companies, I try & keep the bulk of my spending to local businesses so the money stays local. ( I also consider Nordstroms & Costco- * local* :wink: )</p>

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<p>annasdad, maybe this is the news article you should write ! I’ll bet you’re not the only one interested in how much taxpayer money and tax breaks were given in order to have the honor of having WalMart create more unemployment in your area.</p>

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<p>Sad sign of the times.</p>

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<p>I’m glad to see someone is getting a Wal-Mart, in my wholly-owned union subsidiary, err, I mean city, we will not get one for a while.</p>

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<p>I’ve been getting reactions for the last five years. Unfortunately (for a newspaper guy) they’re all off the record, as the downtown merchants don’t want to antagonize their customers, who are all eager to be able to send their money to Fayetteville.</p>

<p>I give the downtown hardware store a year. The drug store, maybe two. The bars - they’ll survive.</p>

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<p>I’ve been writing those articles for the last five years. Nobody cares. The community has been eagerly awaiting what the flacks continue to tell the community is “your Wal-Mart.” I got there 45 minutes early this morning to cover the story - which was 1.5 hours before the store was to be open for business. There were already two or three dozen eager shoppers waiting by the store entrance.</p>

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<p>Shopped at a Walmart ONCE,and never again…</p>

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<p>Everything is cheap cheap… that is why so popular…</p>

<p>Walmart should be renamed to Chinamart and so it goes with our deficit…</p>

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<p>I shop at Walmart occasionally. I have a number of very modest income (or unemployed) extended family who are thrilled to be able to go to Walmart and buy their kids new jeans and sneakers instead of getting them from Goodwill. Walmart has done a great deal – arguably more than may well-meaning social programs – toward lifting the self esteem of the very poor in this society. I spent much of my childhood and adolescence in a very low income rural area of the country where we were held captive to the local stores. They were extremely expensive and the inventory was dismal. There is really not that much charm in that business model if you look at it objectively. Walmart mostly offends the sensibilities of the educated class that thinks shopping local means organic and sustainable instead of stale, overpriced and limited.</p>

<p>The real aversion to Walmart is aversion to the clientele, imo.</p>

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I bet people employed at Wal Mart are grateful to be employed. Many mom and pops in my area only employ family members. Not a great boon to the rest of the community.</p>

<p>I’m a Target woman, myself, by necessity of course, but I resent the fact that the unions keep Wal Mart out despite polls in the range of 90% of the public wanting one. It’s like the city council in the Bronx turned away shops at the armory because they weren’t guaranteeing certain wages above minimum. In the intervening three years, nothing has been built there at all, so no jobs at that inflated rate and no jobs at all. Also no tax revenue.</p>

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<p>We have several Walmarts in my area and I refuse to shop at them. I go to Target if I have to do it. Wal-Mart has had the power to not only put mom and pop out of business but the have driven many manufactures out of business. They refuse to carry the manufaturer products and the manufacturer goes out of business. </p>

<p>Only place Walmart employees can afford to shop is Walmart thus making it more of a company store.</p>

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<p>I admit I like Target but is there really much difference between it & Walmart?</p>

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<p>Not to mention their (Walmart) questionable business practices over the years. Google it.</p>

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<p>Thank goodness there is already a Target in the little town south of us, which means Walmart will be looking for a building lot elsewhere if they ever decide to come to my neck of the woods.</p>

<p>Annasdad, hardware stores can be pretty resilient: there is a hardware store in the abovementioned little town that is located less than a mile away from a very large and popular Home Depot. It has been like that for quite a while, and I doubt the local store will be going out of business any time soon because they stock stuff that HD does not bother to carry and offer great customer service. People who work at the HD point their customers to the competing business if HD does not have what the customers need.</p>

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<p>Wal-Mart has done more to help low-income and middle-income families than nearly anything the gov’t has tried to do. </p>

<p>*Walmart mostly offends the sensibilities of the educated class that thinks shopping local means organic and sustainable instead of stale, overpriced and limited.</p>

<p>The real aversion to Walmart is aversion to the clientele, imo.*</p>

<p>Exactly!</p>

<p>Thank goodness this community has been able to overcome the snobbishness of others. </p>

<p>**
Those who don’t want to shop there, don’t need to, but, they have no right to be upset or try to stop others from having that option.**</p>

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<p>I remember when Issaquah consisted of Front Street & not much else.</p>

<p>Its true the big stores have a lot of the same thing, but not a lot of the speciality items. I do like Home Depot better than Lowes though.
There is always Hardwicks , although I wanted to buy a push mower they had out in front of the store & they couldn’t find a price so they wouldn’t sell it to me.
[url=&lt;a href="http://www.ehardwicks.com/]HARDWICK’S"&gt;http://www.ehardwicks.com/]HARDWICK’S</a> New and Used Tools, Furniture and Hardware in Seattle, Washington<a href=“I%20see%20they%20are%20buying%20tools%20now,%20I%20don’t%20suppose%20I%20could%20get%20H%20to%20clean%20out%20one%20of%20his%20many%20rollaways”>/url</a></p>

<p>The real aversion to Walmart is aversion to the clientele, imo.
We may not have Walmart, but we have lots of Goodwill, Salvation Army, Value Village stores all around town that are not only recycling but saving people money.</p>

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<p>Cheap prices come at costs…like cheap wages,cheap products,and the destruction of jobs, whether local mom and pop businesses, or manufacturing jobs…Walmart ‘leans’ on it’s business partners to get the lowest possible costs…then these businesses cut employees wages or lay them off to keep Walmart’s business…be very careful in thinking that low prices are a good thing</p>

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<p>Before moving I shopped at a fourth generation mom&pop ethnic grocery that was less expensive than the chains. In my new locale those types of places don’t exist - so I shop the hoity-toity coop. Many of my rural neighbors can’t afford to shop the coop though they have the ability to raise most of their own food, so that helps. The problem, as I see it, is that once Walmart has shut down all the other businesses there is no disincentive on them to raise their prices to the absolute top of what the market will bear. IMHO this has already happened with Home Depot… and the selection there has deteriorated but all those hardware stores are gone. Same thing with Barnes and Noble vs small books shops. And my local video rental shop vs BlockBuster and now netflix. Who wants to guess what we are going to be paying for netflix a few years out?</p>

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<p>Wow - deliberately provocative? ;)</p>

<p>I may shop Walmart. I never shop Target because my gay friends and relatives refuse to do so.</p>

<p>I spend a lot of happy hours in Goodwill. There are a lot of fancy looking people hanging out in my Goodwill ;)</p>