(Disclaimer - I wrote much of this after missing a dose of one of my medications, so if it seems a bit out of sorts, for me, please excuse.)
I'm certain that I will be taken to task for this revelation, but I have to get something off of my chest. Promise me that you won't tell anybody?
Okay...
<hr>
I shop at Wal*Mart.
<hr>
That's right - I shop at the Empire of American department stores; the Death Star whose lasers are trained on every Ma & Pa store in the nation, intent upon destroying their quaint, mid-20th Century planet
...and I don't feel one bit guilty about it.
Guess what, America - with rare exception, those "Ma & Pa Stores" everyone's so concerned about Wal*Mart driving out of their quaint American town were going out of business long before Wal*Mart started making its way into every city in the U.S.
I spent a lot of time growing up in "Small Town, U.S.A." (also known as Eleanor, WV), so I can speak with some authority on this matter. Granted, West Virginia isn't the "Real America" that is the Mid-West. God knows, for some reason they're more fucking important than the rest of us (despite fewer of them living in concentration, there).
Growing up, Eleanor had one shopping center, in which there was an IGA, a Rite Aid, a Benjamin Franklin's, and a Family Dollar. That was it, insofar as commerce was concerned. Next to that, there was a Tudor's Biscuit World, a Gino's Pizza, and a Dairy Queen.
In fact, the only "Mom & Pop" store in the area was Stoker's Grocery Store, owned by the family of one of my father's students. It was one of the only actual "Mom & Pop" stores I've ever had the pleasure of entering.
The store was connected to the family's house, with the storefront being accessible from a doorway just off the hallway from the living room to the bedrooms. My father once left me with the family for some reason or another, and their daughter took me into the store after closing to grab snacks, one evening.
It was to this store that I used to take whole Halloween buckets full of pennies and assorted other coins into the store (much to their employees' chagrin), to purchase the same products I would have purchased at the IGA, except Stoker's was closer.
<hr>
This really is one of the reasons why not only Wal*Mart, but every other large grocery chain, auto parts chain, electronics store, department store in America, has successfully overthrown the "Mom & Pop" structure - people want convenience, they want uniformity, and they want it cheaply.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news - but, those "Mom & Pop" businesses that Liberals swear are going out of business because of Wal*Mart actually did so because they just couldn't keep up with the times, consumer demands, and failed to update their business model.
After the 1960s in small towns all across America, kids stopped staying in their hometowns, and began branching out across the nation in search of better (or simply different) opportunities. As they did so, they took with them their particular regional food preferences, and as such, started expecting local grocers to carry produce and other foodstuffs that were not regionally viable. Since their local grocers didn't have consistent access to those foods, they started patronizing the chain grocery stores who could get access to those foods on a regular and consistent basis, and could do so for far less than their local grocer.
This, my friends, is how "Mom & Pop" businesses get run out of...well, business. People want things, they want them cheaply, and they want things that aren't locally made, grown, or produced. It's the sad truth about migrating populations - things aren't going to stay the same when new people move into town.
<hr>
Beyond simply food, Wal*Mart sells consumer electronics (when was the last time you, or anyone else you know, purchased a television or any other electronic device from a locally owned electronics store?), they sell auto parts, they sell cosmetics, they sell clothing, they sell pharmaceutical products, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera...
But, it's not just Wal*Mart.
When my Liberal friends attempt to brandish their Left-Wing Bona Fides at me by lampooning me for shopping at Wal*Mart, I tend not to point out the fact that they're sitting in their IKEA chair, at their IKEA desk, sipping their Starbucks Mocha, wearing their Lens Crafters hipster glasses, while ordering something off of Amazon on their MacBook.
How can we, as Liberal Americans, lambast others for shopping at Wal*Mart and destroying small businesses when we gladly shop on Amazon and drink our Starbucks coffee?
<hr>
When I first began working at Barney's Beaner in Westwood, Los Angeles, there was a Mystery Book Store across the street that I used to wander into on occasion to see if anything was interesting. About six months later, as I was walking to work from the parking garage, I noticed several printed sheets taped to the front windows stating that they were closing because they could "no longer compete with the Borders, Barnes & Nobels, and Amazons of the world!"
Basically, the owners of this bookstore were chastising their customer base for purchasing books from those retailers instead of them, expecting some sort of community guilt to be felt for the closure of such a local treasure.
I call bullshit.
I'd been in that store a number of times, and when I inquired about a few gay mystery novels I'd recently become interested in reading, I was told that they were a "family establishment," and couldn't be expected to carry such titles.
Well...excuse me, you cunt.
Maybe I'm wrong, but aren't the bases of many mystery novels grissly murders? I guess that's a family value you're more than willing to support. Perhaps you lost customers because you charged an arm and a leg for not just used, but virtually destroyed books, refused to carry specific genres of mystery books, and were a self-righteous cunt?
<hr>
The truth is that I enjoy shopping at Wal*Mart. It always provides me with fantastically trashy stories, and I enjoy nothing more than reveling in human misery. But, honestly - what's the big fucking deal? We all have been to blame for small businesses closing down in one respect or another, and to simply focus on Wal*Mart as the Devil is simply stupid.
No comments:
Post a Comment