First off, let me apologize.  Many of you are readying yourselves for a weekend of shopping trips & holiday parties & I’m about to kill that egg-nog buzz you’ve been rocking since Tuesday. I’m about to go ape about something that’s been weighing on my mind like sex weighed on my mind when I was 15.  And when I was 22. And now.  Except that, well sex is a good thing & the expired can of worms I’m about to open, like that nasty rash you got after Spring Break in ’96, isn’t.

Enter Walmart, the offensive retail monolith, a company, who today hides it’s desperate greed with low, low prices & impossibly low quality.  The company wasn’t born that way.  It wasn’t born a money hungry, small-business assassin. Launched in 1962, Sam Walton opened the first Walmart in Arkansas after opening & closing a chain of failed variety stores. Walton quickly charted a new course & began growing Walmart’s business amid the nation’s growing desire for fast & cheap.

Sounds like the American Dream born amid the nuclear family.  Work hard & prosper, seemingly harmless enough.

Bully for Sam & his early success, however greed got in the way.  Once the brand went public & saw considerable growth in the 80s, stockholders took Walton’s business model evolving it from successful discount retailer to the monster we’re now left with. 96% of the nation’s population now lives within 20 miles of a Walmart store a business whose GDP at $421,000,000,000 is now higher than that of 170 nations. At $32,000,000,000, Walmart alone imports more goods from China than both Russia & Taiwan combined.  Even worse, their average full-time store employee makes just $13,650 whereas Walmart’s CEO, Michael Duke will make more than that in just one hour.

Even more offensive, the family Walton, now ranks #2 amid the richest families on the planet & donates just 2% of their wealth to individuals & organizations in need.

Sam Walton believed his secret to success came from simply giving the customer what they want.  In his autobiography Walton wrote, ”… if you think about it from the point of view of the customer, you want everything: a wide assortment of quality merchandise; the lowest possible prices; guaranteed satisfaction; friendly, knowledgeable service; convenient hours; and a pleasant shopping experience. You love it when a store exceeds your expectations, and you hate it when a store inconveniences you, gives you a hard time, or pretends you’re invisible.”

Sam Walton died in 1992, a man of many accomplishments.  My guess now, however, is that Mr. Walton 20 years later would be appalled by the company Walmart has become.

Walmart now (alongside the big-box retailers that litter the remaining  miles of cheap real estate in the United States) has no interest in giving customers what they want. If you believe otherwise, great. I have a Chinese-made Walmart bridge that goes from New York to London I’m ready to sell.

The cycle is frightening.

Walmart first opens a store & forces out small businesses from the surrounding area.  Many of those people who lose their jobs then have no other choice then to work for Walmart where they’ll make a margin of what they used to make forced to eat, sleep & consume all things Walmart.  As the single largest employer in the world, Walmart has no real consideration of it’s workforce or it’s customers. In fact, Walmart’s biggest concern is to keep their stockholders happy, wealthy investors who’ve inevitably never stepped foot into a Walmart store. They may be assholes, but they’re smart.  I mean who really wants to go to Walmart?

Even worse, their consumption of natural resources is staggering.  Imagine the fuel wasted alone to import $32,000,000,000 of inventory from China or the resources wasted to run their 50 bajillion square foot stores.  The company boasts of green initiatives, however it’s clear that there’s absolutely no real interest in saving the planet’s resources.  At best, these initiatives offer up generous tax breaks to the company & save them tons in operating costs & have no real effect in counterbalancing Walmart’s gluttonous waste of the planet’s remaining natural resources.

To help illustrate the egregious offenses of Walmart, I’m including an info-graphic drafted up by the Frugal Dad whose blog is definitely worth a peek. Scary facts yes, howevcer there are alternatives.  When I was a kid, my grandparents bought be used books for Christmas & taught us about considerate consumption. We didn’t bow to every fashion trend, we froze leftovers & today small businesses start up every day with a hope of making a difference & bucking the masses.

At the end of the day, however, it’s up to you to decide where you shop & while I have a hard time with it, one can’t blame the single mother working two jobs for wanting to get the best price on back to school supplies for her kids.  You can’t get mad at the Walmart cashier who has no other choice than to invest the bulk of his paycheck back into Walmart.

I blame Walmart.

Oh, and about that nasty rash you scored on Spring Break?  Sure, it sucked, but at least you could load up on antibiotics.

Sadly, Walmart’s still around.