This could be a hoax or a really sick joke. I do not want to believe that any supervisor at Walmart could possibly be so brain dead as to purposely put the company in the path of yet another multi-million dollar lawsuit. But it is what it is. From The Advocate: Back in March, 18-year-old [...]

I’ve been thinking a lot about job numbers and the Great Recession and wish that we had a number that measure not jobs, but wage hours in the economy. Right now we’re comparing a $25/hour engineering job to an $8/hour Walmart job and calling them equal. That isn’t helpful. [Update@0947 But this is: ...a national [...]

One refuge of the innumerate is the tired phrase: there are lies, damn lies and statistics. The headline reads: What Illinois Can Learn from Texas About Wal-Mart and offers a dramatic chart reporting: Employment: Texas vs. Illinois, Jan. 1995 to Apr. 2010. You might expect a story about comparisons of public economic policy in Texas [...]

On Saturday I wrote about reports that Mike Duke told the Walmart faithful that the company would hire 500,000 workers over the next five years. I was not impressed because the reports were ambiguous as to whether the were replaced or new jobs. This morning I found the pre-speech transcript of Duke’s remarks. While I [...]

If you were to do a search of phrases on The Writing On The Wal, I would expect that no phrase has been repeated more times — specially by me — than cheap plastic crap from China. Well, guess what, the run may be going dark. Economists are suggesting that the the flow of cheap [...]

I read the headlines this morning about Walmart CEO Mike Duke’s statement at the annual meeting that Walmart: plans to hire a half-million employees over the next five years. Sounds good, doesn’t it? Think about what Duke said and what it means, however. Half-a-million employees over five years is 100,000 per year, for a company [...]

Bob kindly offered either Jonathan or I his guest ticket to the annual Walmart meeting in Bentonville next week. I’m in finals and couldn’t accept the offer. But thousands of workers will make the trip and chanting will be part of the festivities at some point. Just exactly what they chant I don’t know, but [...]

I started working discount retail in high school and continued through college. Then, it was the standard rule that you did not approach or attempt to apprehend shoplifters. It wasn’t your job and the store had professionals they paid to do the dirty work. None of that has changed, yet zealous workers still try to [...]

A 17-year-old asks the question: How does it work? What’s he’s referring to is getting ahead at Walmart, a job, he writes that: I like it a lot despite what people are saying about wal-mart. He asks a good question, but the lone response is better. First thing you want to do is go into [...]

Years ago I instituted the Great Walmart Toothpaste Buycott because I recognize that there are financial realities involved for many people who shop at Walmart. Because they are pawns in a greater economic scheme, they need low prices just to get by. Take Melissa Pilakowski for instance: Wal-Mart: a necessary evil in my life. In [...]

Walmart has not learned the lesson that that every politician ignores at their peril: it isn’t nice to fool with people who belong to AARP. A greeter fired, he suspected, because at $12 hour he was a wage liability to the store. He was handed a load of crap concerning unemployment benefits by the management [...]

Lest someone assume that I, and The Onion, are mocking the now unemployed people who used to work for the Walmart corporation, read carefully. Mocking satire can be tricky to write, but the people at The Onion have a long history of getting it right. Retail giant Wal-Mart has announced in recent weeks that, effective [...]

I worked discount retail through high school and college and I moved a lot of heavy materials, most often lots of 32-pound cases of paint, on a regular basis. I managed to stay healthy and uninjured. The Las Vegas Badger isn’t quite so fortunate. Today, I had to downstack over 9,000 pounds of groceries so [...]

There is a management shake-up at Walmart with the creation of three regional fiefdoms in the United States, each with its own president and management structure. The presidents are: Raul Vazquez, West Rosalind Brewer, South; and Hank Mullany, North. From Reuters: Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is consolidating some U.S. operations and dividing the country into three [...]

Slacker victim humor is a sub-sub-genre that must have some fans somewhere, I’m just not one of them. We’re supposed to get this kind of snipe hunt debasement out of our systems in early adolescence. Some people take longer than others. Perhaps Joe Peacock can get a job working for Paul Rust. Jeff Hess: Have [...]