Comments on: WalMart is Evil

By: Medros

Medros — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 20:02:08 +0000

Hey Jen,

I am just getting caught up on the last few episodes of your NaPodPoMo effort. I wanted to give my thoughts on this. First, WalMart shouldn’t have to assume that their customers are potentially so cheap they would kill for deals. Second, their customers should put more value on human life than they did. Complaining cause the store is closing because of a death? That is pretty fucking heartless. I have no doubt that the store manager made some mistakes, but those people in line made the fatal one.

By: Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 04:14:22 +0000

Jen, you articulated this story so well. I could truly feel your passion and emotion about this horrible, horrible situation, and I totally agree. When I heard about this on the news here I was in total disbelief.

We don’t have WalMart here, but I am familiar with them. They featured in an episode of South Park where they opened up, their operations caused all the small businesses in Main Street to go broke, the citizens of South Park started to change for the worse – shopping for discounts at 2am, and such. To break WalMart they had to find the “soul” of WalMart and look into it – and the soul of WalMart was a mirror. I thought that was quite meaningful.

Here in Australia we use the term “Black Friday” to refer to any Friday 13th – and is associated with bad luck.

I’m catching up here after the big month with all the Erkpod people, now finally getting onto listening to shows by the Hyper Nonesense and Wasting Time crews. I’ve started with 29 and 30 of your shows, if this is the quality – then I am definitely looking forward to your November 1 thru 28, and your weekly shows.

Thanks.. Ben (aka “BJ the Research Guy” aka @tangararama)

By: Nathan Lott

Nathan Lott — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 19:02:04 +0000

Thank you for this show. I’m going to try my best to avoid WalMart this Christmas and hopefully from now on. I’ve already done most of my shopping online which I tried to do every year for the past 3 or 4 years. It is absolutely terrible what happened. Not just Walmart, but all of those people who trampled the poor guy should be ashamed of themselves. I wanted to share this link with you from another blog rant about the subject: http://dontgetmestarted-lindasharp.typepad.com/dont_get_me_started_with_/2008/11/truly-a-black-f.html

By: richrd jeffries

richrd jeffries — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 06:58:04 +0000

First , the show was right on and I am sure people that have to work Black Friday will agree with you. I worked that day in a Fail City location at 3 AM. There was only about 100 people waiting outside our location and we had a private security guard working the door with about 8 workers keeping the people in check. Walmart and Best Buy, in the same mall I was in had way more customers in line and no body got hurt. I can say from experience, that workers are expendable and the retailers don’t care until something bad happens. Walmart will get sued and settle out of court for an undisclosed amount. All this to save some money on a TV when most of the people in these lines should not be there pissing away money on toys instead of food.

By: Erk @ the Erk Pod

Erk @ the Erk Pod — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 03:05:53 +0000

Hey Jen

Well said. I couldn’t agree with you more about the attitude of Wal Mart in this case.

It is pretty bad when they have to think about having Police or security (or both) at the opening of a store on such an occasion.

When we leave home for work, we expect to be able to go home at the end of the day. Certain occupations such as Police officers, Firefighters etc know what can happen to them when things go pear shaped and that they may die (and don’t get paid enough!) but a retail worker? Screw that!

By: Dave Calderbank

Dave Calderbank — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 17:36:13 +0000

I have agoraphobia, that’s an extreme fear of places like WalMart. Most people would call that irrational, but after hearing a story like that, I’m the one with a disorder? Yeah right.