[lbo-talk] lbo-talk] Wal-Mart

[Jim Westrich]

I once walked into a 24hour Wal-Mart superstore at 11:55 pm in central Maine (I
was hungry and this was the only thing open for miles).  I got a few snacks and
went to the cash register.  With just one person ahead of me in line, the
checkout person nicely explained to the first person in line that "the
computer" would be down for a few minutes.  No one actually closed the lines or
actually made any announcement, so I assumed it was a short term thing.  We
waited and waited--the workers were amazingly non-chalant about the situation,
only saying that all the (now previous) days receipt had to be fed into some
"central computer" somewhere.  Every few minutes someone would get disgusted
and loudly leave (with never an apology nor any formal reaction from any of the
Walmart workers).  Anyway I waited a full half hour (adding to the surrealness
of the scene was that I had just seen the Japanese movie "Eureka!" which to say
the least is a very powerful and long cinematic experience and it was still
residually playing tricks on my brain).

The most interesting thing was that while all of the Walmart workers seemed
liked really nice people and they all seemed like they wanted to apologize or
commiserate with the dozen or so people waiting but they oddly NEVER spoke of
it.  Worst of all, of course, was that no one gave me any idea how long it was
going to take-- my sadly naive assumption was that if it was going to be a while
they would let us know.  It was like being in dysfunctional family with no one
talking about a huge crisis as it happened.  I have no idea if the half hour
was "normal" for all 24 hour Walmarts or just those in far away Maine or if
this was an unusually slow day; but it was obvious that these people were
rather strictly trained to ignore any potential impatience.

No one questioned the wisdom of a business practice of inconveniencing a half
hours worth of customers either.

Jim

All the orange boxes are scattered.
We get to Safeway's supermarket in the rain.
And everybody feels so determined
Not to feel anyone else's pain.

(You know that) No one's making no commitments
To anybody but themselves,
Hidin' behind closed doorways,
Tryin' to get outside, outside of empty shells

     --Van Morrison

Quoting Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com>:


> Eugene Vilensky wrote:
>
> >On Fri, 3 Dec 2004 11:40:48 -0500, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
> >>
> >>  That, plus the intense centralization of Wal-Mart (store managers
> >>  have to get Bentonville's approval for changing the thermostat!),
> >>  should lift the hearts of those unreconstructed advocates of economic
> >>  planning.