“We absolutely understand how important this is. It is important for our associates, it is important for our customers and across the communities we serve,” says Judith McKenna, Walmart’s chief operating officer for the U.S. “We can do better.”Sure, they care, in a pig's eye, they do. I've heard rumblings that the local police department has toyed with slow-footing calls made by the local Wal-mart because of frustration over the amount of departmental resources being sucked up by them. Other retailers take crime control seriously, but Wal-mart has dumped it on the local communities. Just like they've dumped the societal costs of having low paid workers on everyone else.
In my town, one of the local discount grocery stores will sell food to charitable clubs holding fundraisers (cookouts, golf tourneys) at their cost. Another grocery store has shopper-club cards; the shoppers can designate local charities to receive a bit of love whenever they buy stuff. The only thing that Wal-mart does is let the Girl Scouts set up to sell cookies and lets the United Way set up donation kettles and bell-ringers for the holiday season. As far as I know, Wal-mart does fuck-all for the community and I'm pretty sure of that, because if they did anything, they'd be issuing press releases as though they had free paper.
If Wal-mart ever was a "good local citizen", that ended as soon as Sam Walton's body reached room temperature.
Here in my part of Ca. we have 'flex days' from the power company. That means they charge a lot more for power used between 10 am and 7 pm.
ReplyDeleteI don't mind conserving electricity so that we don't have 'brownouts' and stuff, that is reasonable.
Our local Wally's probably pays less for power than I do anyway, but they run their entire parking lot light system 24 hours a day.
It seem am conserving power for them to waste? WTF
"what a world"
w3ski
w3ski;
ReplyDeleteUntil the (Koch owned) corporation commission (which sets rules and rates for utilities) stepped in, we had a boom of solar covered parking areas being erected. Grocery stores, schools, etc were throwing 'em up as fast as possible to reap two benefits - reducing power costs, and making cars drivable after being parked outside for a while. Haven't seen a new one put up in a while, and as for being "The Valley of the Sun", we sure are lagging behind some more northern locals in promoting solar. If Wallyworld had put a little effort behind the solar covered parking, I'm sure the roll out would have continued, if not accelerated, due to their participation. As it is, people try to park near taller vehicles and the scraggly 'trees' which are few and far between, in a futile effort to not have to wear oven mitts while operating their vehicle after parking at the Walton Plantation.
" that ended as soon as Sam Walton's body reached room temperature. "
ReplyDeleteThe same might be said of IBM and the Watsons.