"You can't find a decent job anywhere."

Mike Peters comments on the story of the Canton, Ohio, Wal-Mart whose employees are holding a food drive for each other.

Clay Bennett has also weighed in on the topic.

The drive, according to the company, was started by "associates" (nobody has "employees" anymore) not for the ongoing needs of their fellow workers, but, rather, to provide Thanksgiving dinners to those few individuals who have had some kind of spectacular misfortune recently.

A distinction without a difference.

First of all, it's appalling enough that the story can quote someone who has been working there for five years and is currently earning $9.30 an hour, and it's almost (but not quite) funny to hear another "associate" defending -- defending -- the company by explaining that "You can't find a decent job anywhere."

Apparently not. I think that's the point, though.

Look, I understand that Walmart is a corporation and not a privately owned department store where kindly old Mr. Mart could quietly decide to make a discreet donation to help a particular employee through a rough spot.

But setting up a mechanism whereby employees can have money taken from their paychecks to go into a fund for each other is pretty damned insulting, unless, I suppose, you are pledging at least a five-to-one match from Bentonville.

And if it were just Wal*Mart whose employees were on Wel*Fare, we could throw up a picket line and get it stopped. But this is the new economy, this is what you get when you create an economy based not on productivity but on stock prices.

Not only are the pay scales between the front-line workers and the fat cats in Arkansas way out of whack, but the idea of employees chipping in to feed each other is only the tip of the iceberg.

We're all chipping in to feed these poor people who, after five years, are only earning $9.30 an hour, and who are often limited to part-time so they don't ruin the balance sheet by qualifying for benefits.

Why aren't the people who bitch over someone buying a birthday cake for their kid with their EBT card outraged over having to pay higher taxes so these bloodsuckers can avoid paying decent wages?

Why won't the whiners who complain about welfare recipients refusing to work admit that their heroes in the one percent have gotten there on the backs of the working poor and that their taxes are subsidizing it?

What makes the internal food drive story so compelling and valid is, in part, that it isn't just the Walmart in Canton, Ohio, and it isn't just Walmart overall.

And, in part, it's how freaking and totally unnecessary a drive to provide a Thanksgiving dinner would have been a decade or so ago when companies routinely gave their employees a free turkey at Thanksgiving and another one at Christmas.

And, in part, because you know damn well the Walton family will have the servants bring them hot chocolate so they can watch "A Christmas Carol" as part of their own holiday celebration, without the slightest hint of irony, much less pang of guilt.

“You’ll want all day to-morrow, I suppose?” said Scrooge.
“If quite convenient, sir.”
“It’s not convenient,” said Scrooge, “and it’s not fair. If I was to stop half-a-crown for it, you’d think yourself ill-used, I’ll be bound?”
The clerk smiled faintly.
“And yet,” said Scrooge, “you don’t think me ill-used, when I pay a day’s wages for no work.”
The clerk observed that it was only once a year.
“A poor excuse for picking a man’s pocket every twenty-fifth of December!” said Scrooge, buttoning his great-coat to the chin. “But I suppose you must have the whole day. Be here all the earlier next morning.” 

Of course, in the days of free turkeys, the stores were closed on Thanksgiving as well as Christmas as well as Memorial Day and Veterans Day and the Fourth of July, and any Scrooge who begrudged it had the decency to keep his "squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous" opinions to himself.

Now, I have a certain sympathy for the fact that, if everyone else is open on the holidays, you face a competitive disadvantage by remaining closed. 

But there is no more money to be extracted from consumers by opening one or two or five extra days a year. Again, this isn't just about Walmart. Shame on them all.

Now let's get back to that goddam turkey.

At a paper where I worked, they had gone from physically handing out your choice of ham or turkey to giving $25 gift certificates to a grocery store so you could get your own choice of dinner goodies. This worked out very well for single guys like me, since even a small turkey was a ridiculous amount of meat to have all at once, but I could put together a pretty nice spread with the coupon.

For another type of business, this would have meant spending cash, and I think the Waltons could afford it, given that the kindly local business owners they've since put out of business could always afford it.

But for the newspaper, it was done as a swap, so the grocery store would simply get free ad space, not cash. And, while a beancounter can certainly figure out the cost -- as opposed to the price -- of a color page, it's not like you can run an odd number of pages anyway. We were going to print the page, with or without a free ad on it.

However, after we were purchased by Lee Enterprises -- curse their "squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous" souls -- and a good five years before the crash, the Thanksgiving and Christmas coupons ended.

And, to add insult to injury, the publisher said she might bring it back if we all pitched in and hit our goals. 

In other words, it was our fault we weren't getting the damn coupons anymore.

Because we all have to do more with less.

But mostly because you can't find a decent job anywhere.

Which is what they're counting on.

Comments

[Lost in A**2]

Franklin-Covey and Chick-Fil-A both closed on Sundays. It's been a while since I've seen either store, so I can't speak to their current practices.

For the rest, "Preach it, Brother!"

[Mary in Ohio]

I have heard (so I don't know that its true) that things were different when Sam Walton himself was alive. The stores closed on holidays, for one thing.

That was long ago & far away.