dante0

Have you ever watched a group of people destroy someone's dream? I'm doing it right now...

The store I work at was the dream of an immigrant from the Netherlands who founded the store back in the 1930's, and his dream was based on making customers happy. One of the ways he made people happy was by a selling quality product. The other way was by treating his employees with dignity and respect. Make the employees happy, and they'll make the customers happy too. It was honestly a great place to work.

Fast forward to 2004, and you find that Wal-Mart has taken this old guy's idea and run with it. The founder isn't alive anymore, so his kids run the business (which now consists of 150+) stores. Instead of being happy with their little slice of the pie (which is rather large, all things considered), they want more pie.

So they hire a company to make them more profitable. Why you may ask (the answer isn't as obvious as it seems)? So they can open more 8-10 stores a year like Wal-Mart does, instead of the 2-3 stores a year that they used to open. This company that they hired seems to have a simple philosophy: if you want to make money like Wal-Mart, you need to become Wal-Mart. Keep in mind that the stores aren't really losing any money...they're just not making as much money as they want them to.

Here's some exampls of the "great" ideas this company has come up with to cut costs: disregard the employees' desire to unionize and refuse to negotiate contracts where unions exist, cook frozen pizzas instead of making them fresh, offer a substandard insurance package, and cut hours from an already decimated work schedule. You have no idea how many times I've heard, when discussing a new policy or procedure, "this is the way Wal-Mart does it."

So I wonder, as I sit here and bitch, how much does dignity and respect actually cost? It must be expensive, because that was pretty much the first policy to go.

I feel like a rat on a sinking ship.