People Strategies: Wal-Mart: Bane on society or efficient business?

Linda Bower is a speaker, executive coach and human performance improvement consultant in Rogersville.

Recently, I bought a little book from a grocery check-out counter display, "How Wal-Mart is Destroying America (and the World)," by Bill Quinn. Normally, I do not purchase business books from Price Chopper, this time I made an exception.

Having a gift for stepping in it, I shared my enthusiasm about finding the book with two people that I didn't remember were from Sam Walton's hometown, Bentonville, Ark.

However, it seems that even the most loyal people are admitting that Wal-Mart has strayed too far from Walton's original message of hometown, Midwestern values. They were adamant that Sam Walton would never have approved of what Wal-Mart has become.

It takes about two sentences into Quinn's book to see that he has a huge chip on his shoulder because Wal-Mart destroyed family businesses close to him. I feel for him, but his attitude gets in the way of his statistics and the larger message to us all.

For example, Quinn blames Walton for everything when he says, "Sam Walton's business principles laid the foundation for the ruthless corporation that has become the most feared retailer in American history."

I can't prove it, but I doubt that Walton made many of the decisions that govern what nearly one million people do. It sounds to me like his foundation was destroyed by corporate efficiency.

Quinn describes Wal-Mart as a company that:

"Got its start by building cheap, ugly, giant-size stores on the outskirts of small towns, and discounting prices so much that virtually every store in the once-proud downtown district had to close."

"Promised lots of new jobs to a small town not bothering to tell the city fathers that most would pay near-poverty wages, and some 40 percent of the associates' would work less than 40 hours."

"In the 1970s, promised that they would observe the century-old tradition of closing on Sundays then, the 1980s, hustled business during church hours and later stayed open 24 hours a day forcing ... competitors to do the same."

"Promised that alcoholic beverages would never be added to their worries and is now the largest retailer of spirits' in the United States."

"To gain the support of small-town newspapers, started off as a good advertiser then, once established, dropped virtually all newspaper advertising."

"To gain entrance to a new area, promised to become part and parcel' of small-town America is now its worst citizen."

According to an interview between Quinn and a former Wal-Mart manager, Wal-Mart's people strategies have evolved to keeping part-time employees to 28 hours per week. This way they can save money by not paying benefits. If a full-time employee quits, managers are instructed to hire two part-time employees.

Quinn says that, "On average, over 100 stores eventually go out of business in the area surrounding a (Wal-Mart)." Here's how the former Wal-Mart manager described what it's like to open a new store:

"We were instructed to go into a town to dominate! Dominate! Dominate! First job was to shop the competition. If we got into real warfare with Kmart or Target, we'd send our people over to their stores to buy as many of their sale items as we could and brought them back and sold the product for a little less. We even shopped the mom-and-pop hardware and drug stores. Our job was to destroy the competition, large and small, in every way we could. If a mom-and-pop store couldn't stay in business their problem."

Hey, I'm a capitalist with the best of them, but not at any cost. Before I read this book, I had already heard of Wal-Mart's practices. That was enough for me to decide not to shop at Wal-Mart unless I had tried every place else first, and I had to really want it.

I've even fought off my friends who swear by Sam's Club. Maybe they will read this article and stop bothering me about it.

I invite you to write your insights about how Wal-Mart treats its people, and how you feel about it as a consumer. Send comments to the Springfield Business Journal, People Strategies column, at sbj@sbj.net.

Are they greedy or great at getting rich?