Sure I hate Wal-Mart because they are a huge crazy greedy corporation that has put thousands of Mom and Pop businesses out of business. And yes I hate them because they pay their employees who slave away in their stores next to nothing and they do their best to stop those same employees from unionizing. And of course I hate them for advertising that they buy American whenever possible but in reality if they can get the same item made in China for a penny less then they say "Screw America." Yes, I also hate Wal-Mart because Hillary Clinton was on their board of directors for many years.
But my hatred for them runs deeper than those things. In fact I hate Wal-Mart for three very specific reasons. And those reasons are:
1) A few years back my girlfriend had her identity stolen by someone who was able to obtain a number of credit cards in her name, which they promptly ran up huge balances on and never paid off. One of the cards they were able to get was a Wal-Mart Visa/Mastercard that was backed by Chase bank. They were so fucking greedy to get that credit card business they did not bother to check out the bogus address this person used on their fraudulent credit card application. We went through hell getting her credit cleaned up and Wal-Mart never said they were sorry or that they even did anything wrong.
2) I used to have a membership to Sam's Club that was sponsored through a previous employer. I would buy mostly Marlboro Lights by the carton and beer by the twelve pack there, although sometimes I would relent and I'd get a couple palettes of picante sauce, a truck load of Apples Jacks, and if I was feeling good, a solid metric ton of prime rib, geez, no wonder I had a fucking heart attack and quadruple bypass surgery huh? Anyway, one day the gf and I were shopping there and we bought shit load of stuff. I paid and the cashier handed me my receipt.
As we were walking out the employee at the door said, "Can I see your receipt?" I handed it to her and I admit I was tired and cranky when I said, "You can keep it." And we proceeded to walk out.
The employee shouted after me, "Sir! You need your receipt!"
In not too nice a tone I told her to keep it and we proceeded to load up the car with our purchases. I figured that my trip to Sam's was done.
But when we got home the phone was ringing. I answered it and the manager of that Sam's Club was on the line. He wanted to know why I had been so rude and why I did not want my receipt. I told him that I was rude because I had to pay to be a member of his store in the first place and then I paid to buy all that shit and I felt it was pretty shitty of them to station an employee by the door to try to make sure no one stole anything. I went on to say that I did not need the receipt because we had bought only food items and we would not need to return any of them. He got huffy with me after that so I hung up on him.
I put the whole mess behind me and I went on with my life. About a month later I received an envelope from the local Sam's Club. I opened it and inside was a check reimbursing me for my membership and a note saying that I was no longer welcome in their store.
3) One day last December my gf took a day off from work and since we had not been out to lunch together in quite sometime I took us out to a local Thai restaurant. We had a nice meal and then we decided to go browse in the Barnes and Noble that is next door to this Thai restaurant. As we were browsing we heard a huge explosion and then we heard rocks and debris hitting the roof of the store. We looked at one another and then we heard a louder explosion and even more rocks and debris hit the roof and the power went out in the store.
Not being the brightest light on the Christmas tree I ran out of the store to see what was happening. It turned out that they were building a Sam's Club just up the hill from the plaza where the Thai restaurant and the bookstore were located. They were blasting rock out in order to make the future parking lot area level.
The parking lot looked like a scene from Lebanon in the 1980's or what like most of Iraq looks like now. Cars were smashed and debris was everywhere. My gf's Toyota Corolla, which had just been worked on to the tune of over $1000 was hit badly in the blast. The windshield was smashed in, the drivers side door was smashed up and the dashboard was hanging by a thread. Glass was everywhere in the car and it looked like hell.
A few days later they totalled out the car and we began trying to get her money out of the insurance company of the construction company that Sam's Club had hired to do the blasting. Their insurance guy was a total dick so we went through her insurance company and we let them go through the agony of dealing with that dick wad.
Neither Sam's Club nor Wal-Mart apologized for wrecking so many cars and nearly killing us and all those other people.
And that is why I hate Wal-Mart.
