Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2005/06/08
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Sam Walton had a better idea, and his company employs common policies and common methods to provide a common service for the customers. I have never encountered anyone other than alert and helpful sales staff; I have never found anyone at WalMart to be offensive or short-minded on any issue. Sure, I have issues with their policies: they stock spin-casting stuff and not fly-fishing gear. They stock almost no Coleman gas-lanern or gas-stove gear. But they do have the best price in town on the.30-'06 rounds I need for my Argentine Mauser and the 20W-50 Castrol GTX my Audi uses or dog food and ... the list goes on. And the Super Walmart at Valleyview is the only locale in Roanoke, Virginia, which stocks frogs legs -- hell, when Food Lion is cutting their spread of meat and fish offerings, WalMart is expanding theirs, and the benificiary is the customer. (However, they still do not stock smoked herring, but that is a tale for a different day: I cannot even get my local fish store to round me up some.) I have yet to see a town damaged by the addition of a WalMart; many of my clients work at one of our local stores and they are all delighted to get a real job with a real pay-check and most of them get benefits which the Quickie-Mart at which they previously worked never provided. Yes, WalMart is a bastard to their own suppliers, as they demand annual price decreases but, in the end, this keeps the rate of inflation down and those suppliers who do not want to play with WalMart can simply refuse to do business with them. Yes, they do sell a lot of imported items made from what is essentially slave-labor factories (WalMart is the seventh-largest customer of Red China, and that puts it ahead of a lot of the rest of the world). So, when I go to WalMart, I pick and choose and generally only buy items of US origin -- and WalMart, unlike, say, Orvis, generally identifies the production point clearly. I rarely go to WalMart and that is mainly due to the flood of folks blocking access and egress. My wife is a committed WalMart shopper, however, and I often drop her at the door, find a parking spot on the far side of the lot, and read a book and listen to NPR. When she is finished, she will call me on her cell phone, and I will pick her up, after allowing her to stock her purchases in the trunk of the car. The world has beaten a door to the fellow who invented the better mouse-trap, and his name was Sam Walton. (For that matter, Sam's Club now stocks Zeiss Lens-Cleaning cloths, so those who insist on a cachet for authenticity can go there for that particular fix.) Marc msmall@aya.yale.edu Cha robh b?s fir gun ghr?s fir! NEW FAX NUMBER: +540-343-8505