by Timothy Rutt
It's no secret that we are not fans of Walmart -- we have used it in the past as an insult, a metaphor for a large corporation sweeping in to take over local markets (scroll down our "About" page for links to articles in other places where we've used that metaphor). Outside of being a metaphor, we dislike how Walmart treats its workers at home and abroad. So we freely do not patronize it.
But we're also not impressed with arguments (by the kind of folks who think income redistribution will cure all ills) that the family of Walmart founder Sam Walton has an incredible share of the nation's wealth. They do. So what? They didn't steal it with a ravening horde -- it was earned in the free market. You can argue about the details, but we don't have a problem with how they got their money -- providing products and services people freely pay for. That's what it's all about. We've never seen anyone forced at gunpoint to shop at Walmart.
We also look with sympathy at Walmart employees and customers. Never sneer at anyone who's working hard at a job, no matter what it is, and trying to provide. People usually patronize Walmart because it provides goods that they can afford, to stretch their dollars farther. We all make compromises in how we spend our money -- it's hard to bloviate about our greater virtue as we write on an Apple MacBook Pro that may have been made under horrific conditions in a Third World factory.
There's something else, unspoken, about much Walmart criticism. We once read about some activist theater group that was trying to organize a flash mob event in a Walmart -- they would all arrive separately, take a cart, and gradually form a long line of shopping carts that would wend its way through the store like some kind of model train. Not to buy anything -- keeping the carts empty and disrupting the day's business was the point. We wondered, why don't they do something like that in say, a Nordstrom's, or a Macy's? Those are pretty bourgeois stores, but nobody's flashmobbing them. There's also a website composed of pictures of people dressed bizarrely or in bad taste as they shop at Walmart. Why Walmart and not, say, the AM-PM? Well, because it's Walmart!
So we find many of the objections to Walmart contain more than a whiff of class contempt, sanctimonious superiority that "we're not like THEM."
THEM being the kind of people who shop at Walmart. THEM being your neighbors.
So we see no reason to mount the hustings to try and stop a Walmart Neighborhood Market in Altadena. Walmart so far is following all the rules, and as long as they continue, there's not much we can do about it.
But we do believe in voting with our dollars, we believe in awareness, and we believe in keeping informed.
Going to Walmart's corporate press page to read the press releases announcing new Neighborhood Markets opening around the country is an eye-glazing exercise. Pretty much the same boilerplate language is used in all of them, and why not? But something caught our eye:
There's a Walmart service where, instead of going to Walmart, Walmart can come to you. It's called "Site-to-Store": you can order something at Walmart.com website and pick it up, without shipping charges, at your nearest Walmart retail store. Well, some of the Walmart Neighborhood Market boilerplate press releases from around the country say:
The store will offer Site-to-Store services, a regular feature at other Walmart stores, but not typical for a Walmart Neighborhood Market.
About a half hour on Google turned up the following "not typical" Neighborhood Markets, which according to Walmart or independent shopping websites, all have Site-to-Store:
Wauwatosa WI; Arvada, Denver (2 stores), Centennial, and Littleton, CO; Lawrenceville, GA; Southlake, Plano, Garland, and Ft. Worth, TX; Hialeah, FL; Mesa and Tucson, AZ; Layton, UT; Mobile and Vestavia Hills, AL; Horn Lake, MI; Orlando and Coral Springs (two stores) FL; Las Vegas NV; Evansville, IN; Moore, OK, and all six stores in Oklahoma City; and Bentonville, AK, Walmart's corporate headquarters.
That's in just a half hour of research -- and we turned up so far that about one-sixth of Neighborhood Markets have the "not typical" Site-to-Store service, essentially putting a Walmart-on-demand in the grocery store itself.
Will the Altadena Neighborhood Market have Site-to-Store? We don't know -- as is "typical" so far with Walmart's corporate office, they haven't yet responded to our inquiries.
But here's another story: there was a building in Altadena that was vacant for a long time. It became a target of vandalism, homeless people moved in, the fire department was called multiple times because fires were being set in it. It was finally flattened. Today it's the Calavaras Crater on Lake Avenue between Ralphs and Eliot Middle School -- not exaclty an advertisement for Altadena's economic health.
So we think it's a plus that the building on Lincoln and Figueroa can be put to use, not merely serving as a target for vandals, graffiti "artists," and metal scavengers. It will create jobs, no doubt about it. Not everybody can afford the Farmer's Market -- which we love, but the prices can be intimidating. So people will shop at the Neighborhood Market, and we think it will do very well,
We also think that many of the stores that offer some of the same services will suffer. Some will close down. We also see money being removed from Altadena's local economy and shipped to Bentonville. And that we don't need.
We can only do what we can do. And what we will do personally is keep Walmart Neighborhood Market foods off our table, and keep our money in Altadena.
ADDENDUM: All Saints Episcopal Church, 132 N. Euclid Ave. in Pasadena across from City Hall, is having a "Walmart Teach-In" in their Guild Room tonight at 7 PM. The notice says, "Please join the Civic Engagement Ministry and Walmart workers for a discussion about how Walmart's business practices legitimize an economy that leads to economic inequality." For more information, contact Norma Sigmund at 626-583-2734 or nsigmund@allsaints-pas.org.
Note: we are closing down comments early and consolidating everything Walmart in daily threads for awhile. Saturday's is here.
