I have never felt completely comfortable shopping at Walmart. It has been suggested to me that my discomfort stems from the sheer size of the stores compared to the relatively smaller Zellers and Federated Co-op stores that were a fixture of my own childhood shopping landscape. But I don't think that is the reason.
Some of it stems from the way they moved into the Canadian marketplace. They bought out all the Kmarts across the country, shut them down, laid off the workers, then reopened under the Walmart banner. I remember telling people I would boycott Walmart as a result of that and their overly American, overly zealously capitalist philosophy. I remember people looking at me like I'd grown a third head and then telling me about all the bargains they'd gotten recently at Walmart.
Over time, my position softened and I have been guilty of stopping in and spending far too much on cosmetics, housewares, camping gear and the like. I usually leave feeling bewildered, anxious and more than little bit guilty. Seems I'm not alone in my spending habits, though most figures are for the US only, I believe.
They're opening another huge store not 10 minutes from my house. It seems to be about triple the size of the existing Laval Walmart store and the city is busy redoing all the roads and highways in the area to allow access to this shopping behemoth. Robert Greenwald gives me an idea of what is to come in my neighbourhood, though, and yes I'm worried. Not just for the traffic and noise and pollution, but also for the social implications for the small retailers down the street from me and for the family farms and greenhouses that operate near it. Fortune magazine has even written about these sorry aspects of the phenomenon and about the new documentary Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price coming out soon from Robert Greenwald.
Then I read this AlterNet article today about Walmart and while, yes, it is obviously slanted towards being completely negative, I found it refreshingly honest and definitely eye-opening. And guilt-inducing too, I admit.
So I'm renewing my old boycott and strengthening my resolve to avoid the new store's lure. Perhaps I can arrange one of the first Canadian Whirl-Mart protests?
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2 comments:
I think we have to keep in mind that Walmart was also a 'small fry' when they started. Had Kmart, Zellers, whoever been innovative and strived for efficiency the way Walmart did (and continues to do), maybe they'd still be in business.
Of course this opinion is coming from a business student ;)
Great blog. Cheers!
An excellent point actually - Business students should speak up one way or another on this :-)
I could argue that Zellers in particular didn't start to act like Target until Walmart came on the scene...and in the process of homogonizing theirselves, seem to have lost some of their Canadian "flair" somehow.
My sticking point with Walmart isn't just with the retail store, it is with the whole set of associated labour and societal practices that Walmart presents every time they open a store.
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