Users Trash Wal-Mart On Its Facebook Site 594
hhavensteincw writes "Only two weeks after Wal-Mart launched its latest foray into Web 2.0 land, Facebook users have hijacked a page aimed at selling back-to-school supplies to college kids to instead post rants about the company's labor practices. Of the 100-plus comments, none relates to dorm decorating as Wal-Mart had originally envisioned."
Another Example of G.I.F.T. (Score:3, Interesting)
Now if they had actually gone to their local Wal-Mart store and defaced that, I'd be more impressed.
I'd be even more impressed if they started hand-crafting their own dorm furniture from self-produced resources instead of just shopping at Target or Ikea instead.
On the larger problem, see today's New York Times article [nytimes.com] on China's (and soon, the world's) environmental problems.
Re:Funny how things like this work out. (Score:5, Interesting)
They might actually have a modicum of success of myspace, unlike Facebook . Facebook users are more socioeconomically advantaged [nytimes.com] than those on MySpace and tend to come from families who emphasize education and going to college, and who end up having higher income than their myspace counterparts.
Simply put, myspace users are more likely to shop at Wal-Mart than Facebook users.
Employer of Last Resort (Score:3, Interesting)
Walmart is an employer of last resort.
Employers of last resort tend to hire people who are already on the margins. Walmart is more likely to be drawing people from the welfare roles than say Sun Microsystems.
Since Walmart is an employer of last resort there will be a lot more movement between welfare roles and employment than in higher end companies. It is difficult to tell if Walmart is abusing the welfare system.
There are cases where Walmart has shown workers how to use the local welfare system. This appears to be abusive. However, these people are generally the marginalized people who the welfare system is intending to help. Even here it is difficult to say if Walmart is abusing the system. These people in the margins often only work at Walmart for a short spell. Learning about local public services is probably more valuable for them than becoming dependent on a job that they are unlikely to hold for a long period of time.
An employer of last resort will always have a greater give and take with the welfare system. It is a fallacy, however, to assume that companies that hire people off the welfare rolls are evil simply because their ex-employees are more likely to fall back onto the welfare rolls when the job is done.
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:In SF maybe, but not all over Cali (Score:3, Interesting)
Anecdotal, yes. But it's a fact.
You keep using these words (Score:5, Interesting)
And those would be the same Pen & Teller that think that arming students would end all school massacres [wikipedia.org]? They're funny magicians, not prophets.
Facebook is about rebelion (Score:3, Interesting)
Better source of Info? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Funny how things like this work out. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:So... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:I think Wal-Mart might believe its own propagan (Score:2, Interesting)
As far as the educated people go... I'll disagree with you there too. I'm finishing an honours degree with a scholarship for grad school in computer science and I love walmart, as do many of my university friends. From my observation, the largest concentration of walmart haters are arts students.
But I think that both of our opinions are going to be less accurate than the surveys that Wal-Mart, and any other large corp does/buys.
Fix me (Score:5, Interesting)
Wal-Mart's revolting nature comes on a gut level, and not a rational one. There are arguments against its existence for worker's rights reasons, for anti-globalization reasons, and for aesthetic reasons - but most people go looking for these reasons in the first place as a result of actual time spent in the store, and the feeling of sweaty, raw animal terror that the experience inspires in a person who has a choice to go elsewhere.
Should Wal-Mart be allowed to exist? Of course it should. It's a free market, baby, and they are PROVIDING. Jobs, cheap-ass crockery, optometry, etc. But that's no reason not to feel overwhelming pity for the people that are forced to shop and work there. It's a horrible place, but so is the overnight shift at a city hospital. You can't get rid of a place like that because it is ugly.
If anything, Wal-Mart does a public service for the impoverished of a community. It forces the middle-class to look at them -- under stark, neuron-scrambling fluorescents -- and see that they are neither institutionally lazy nor inhuman. They are falling apart, and the only people interested in helping are a corporation with a profit motive that panders to their every prejudice and weakness.
The first impulse is to trample that ant-hive. Find a reason to get rid of it. The ant-hive is the problem!
But Wal-Mart is a challenge. Can we do better to provide for the bottom of society? If not, then Wal-Mart is better than nothing. I think we can do better. I think -- in the same way that Scientology is challenge to scale down the state protections for religion -- Wal-Mart is a challenge to improve the quality of life of impoverished America. It is the natural outgrowth of the system that we have created. It is a website under construction that says "FIX ME."
So shop Wal-Mart, think real hard about how to make it better, and SAVE.
Re:They should take it one step further (Score:5, Interesting)
my turn to bitch (Score:4, Interesting)
For such huge stores, they have many different sorts of products, but in each category usually very low selection. About the only well represented categories are clothing and snack foods. But even in the clothing it's fairly low. I haven't seen cotton shorts there at the one near my place, in a long time for instance.
I went looking for various things for the kitchen a couple weeks back. They had maybe 2-3 styles of plates, 2 styles of cups, etc. Barely any of the odds and ends [e.g. peeler, can opener, cheese grater, etc]. Then head over to home hardware. No real variety in the light bulbs, power strips, fuses, etc. Head over to the music dept, oh look 300 country albums and the top 20 from Sony/EMI/etc. Wow, wonders never cease to amaze me! I've walked out of dept stores many times this year alone empty handed. Not for lack of want, but just because they didn't have anything I needed. And I have to ask myself, for a store so big, how can they fail in this respect so miserably?
I like the concept of a dept store, where I don't have to drive around the city to get say towels, movies, dishes, some junk food, etc. It's simpler, faster, and environmentally friendlier. But I find myself increasingly having to shop around anyways.
Tom
Re:I don't get it (Score:2, Interesting)
Heck I made $8.50/hr at a gas station 12 years ago
Re:I work at Wal-Mart now. (Score:3, Interesting)
The company was one of the largest and most progressive in Canada. The unions wasn't really evil there and the company was pretty good too.
Re:I work at Wal-Mart now. (Score:5, Interesting)
As for promotions being handed out to friends, what happens in your store does not mean that it happens in all stores.
Another example of "what happens in your store does not happen in all stores": Remember your comment about management working "below their current rank", I've seen my store manager go outside and push carts numerous times when our store was low on carts. He started out in the company as a cart pusher, by the way. I've seen the front end assistant manager clean a bathroom. I've seen a grocery assistant manager mop the floor. Management expectations start with your store manager. One store manager is not a representative sample of all store managers.
Management (or anybody else) modifying the number of hours an associate works is a terminable offense. I am not salaried management, but I have the ability to edit an associate's time. If I modified an associate's time (either increased or decreased), I have no doubt in my mind that I would be terminated on the spot. There's a report that runs every Saturday morning called the "Time Clock Archive" that lists every associate's time and if that time was edited, it lists the name of the person who edited it. The information is also recorded in the SMART system under the program called "Electronic Time Adjustment" (select "Change/View Time Adjustment"). All associates are given access to the Electronic Time Adjustment automatically when hired.
The "Open Door Policy" is more than your local store management. Have you tried talking to your district manager? Your regional manager?
What Wal-Mart provided pamphlets? In my store, we're usually griping (under our breath) about the number of customers coming in to our store that do not have jobs and whip out their EBT cards- customers we are supporting with our tax dollars.
Re:They chose to work there. (Score:4, Interesting)
Don't like the wages? Take a few night courses and move up. Or just work somewhere else.
Y'see, something about this post bugs me. Most people in the lower salary brackets are less likely to move up to higher level salary brackets (i.e., earn better jobs). That's because they don't have the proper resources to make that kind of progress. I'm sure there are some cases where people can attend night classes and earn some sort of certification for their efforts, but that's the exception from the norm. Fortunate folks like to think things are simple all across the board - for all people rich and poor-, but when you're smart enough to the point where you have a college degree (and can comprehend the majority of the stuff on
One of the other problems people have is that they don't like to acknowledge this kind of social issue in today's society. [sarcasm]God forbid we ever acknowledge the plight of the poor and feel guilty about being so well-off. We might just feel a bit too uncomfortable to even turn on our television sets.[/sarcasm] People think that if they don't acknowledge these issues then the issues will go away. And even if they do have to read about it, they'll just cast it off with a simple no-bs remark "don't like such-and-such? don't give em' your business." If things were that simple, I would've stopped paying my taxes when we went to war with Iraq in 2003.
Re:This is *exactly* why (Score:2, Interesting)
You're assuming that their opinions are valid. Believe it or not, folks have two recourses concerning Wal Mart's hiring practices - one is HR and the other is not working for Wal Mart in the first place.
Defacing a Facebook site is absolutely inane and does not to support whatever 'argument' is being made in support of this opinion.
Re:They should take it one step further (Score:1, Interesting)
For a minute there, I was sure you were being sarcastic. But, sadly, I don't think you are. Ridiculous wages? Really? For people who work in factories? What about the CEO's?
Unions have power now? Since when?
"American unions are destroying their own member's jobs by making sure they cost more to the company than automation does, and that they are more annoying to have around than robots are."
So, wait, people want to be paid. There's something wrong with that? And by the way, they aren't giving contracts to robotics firms, that's too expensive. They're automating processes by using people over in China who's choices are so limited that they'll slave away for 12 hours a day making cheap crap.
And I can't leave this gem alone...
"Don't imagine for a minute that artificially high costs of labor have no effect upon the ability of a business to produce a quality product."
Don't imagine for a minute that artificially low wages of labor have no effect on the ability of a consumer to buy a quality product.
Re: I work at Wal-Mart now. (Score:1, Interesting)
It is easy to believe Wal-Mart has that policy, legal or otherwise. And that if it isn't legal it is de-facto.
Re:They should take it one step further (Score:3, Interesting)
That's a beautiful thought, but it doesn't work like that in practice. One of the reasons why is that there is usually not an unlimited supply of jobs that one is able to get. Do you really think anyone would go get at job at Walmart in the first place if there's something better? We all need some things to survive and to live a decent life (you only get one) and some people apparently have to work at Walmart to get those things, there's the gun.
But the you can't just magically declare "My labor is worth $100 an hour" and expect people to pay you that much when there's a ton of people doing the same exact thing for a lot less money. Walmart pays what they do because their employees accept it. It's as simple as that.
Ever herd of organized labour?
You capitalism haters are all the same. You'll go on and on bitching about capitalism, but you'll never propose anything better. It isn't perfect, but it beats the shit out of every other economic system that's been devised.
Pure capitalism is really something awful. I'd propose a mixed economy just like what the US have right now (but with a better mix), though I guess I can't really be placed in the group of capitalism haters.
Re:Quite wrong! (Score:4, Interesting)
What next? You want to tell us about lean production (where Toyota is world leader, bar none)? Total quality management (which was laughed out by everybody, except by the Japanese, who listended very carefully and then went to implement it)? Innovation, like Hybrids (not feasible and too expensive for most, except for some Japanese companies)?
Next you will reason that over-motorized GM junk is unsellable in the rest of the world due to gas guzzling, quality problems and overall borishness, while we all no that's a French conspiracy to hurt America.
Re:This is *exactly* why (Score:3, Interesting)
This may not be entirely Walmart's doing. I previously worked for a large US retailer with a presence in Canada and we also had to maintain a separate Canadian based web presence.
There were issues associated with language requirements (parts of Canada require French) that meant the entire site had to be properly multi-lingual. Canada has much stronger personal privacy laws than the US so the site had to be careful what personal data it captured (for marketing purposes if not for sales) and more specifically how much it is allowed to transfer over the border.
Then there is the issue of fulfillment. It is not always as simple as placing an order and having it shipped. If the purchase is shipped across national boundaries a whole host of other regulations kick in, so at least the retailer I worked for would only source a much smaller set of products as they had to rely on local third parties to actually do the fulfillment.
Eventually, if the market is strong enough for a solid web presence, companies like Walmart will invest in the infrastructure and effort needed to match what is available in the US.
This is by no means restricted to Canada. US retailers face the same problems everywhere they try to go global. Unlike the US, much of the rest of the world places restrictions on foreigner ownership and US businesses usually have to partner with a local business to gain a foothold, so local laws must be adhered too.