To Cart Walmart or not to Cart Walmart? That is the Question.

[norml]

I could go either way on this. I can see how it would hurt Walmart more than it would hurt it's workers. The workers will be kept busy no matter what. Walmart would just have to hire more workers to keep up with clearing the carts. It's going to be cluttered anyway. I don't see it as adding that much to the hazards of being in a Walmart during the shopping season. Still, it's not something I would do. I'd rather just avoid Walmart entirely.

[sweetheart]

1. cart cart cart

Study the capitalist feeling of desire and compulsion, fill the
cart with things you covet, greed for and always wanted. Fill the
cart with wars, SUV's, and 4 wheel bikes; fill it with chemical
weapons, nuclear weapons and medium artillery, fill it with a war in
iraq, 10000 boxes of lies, because lies are cheap!, and all the
republican disease. Then realize that you've "chosen" to have those
things in your cart, and to choose differently, just walk out of
walmart.

Cart Art Cart ART. Stack up carts in to massive pyramids overnight
in every walmart shop, that people come to believe aliens came from
the pyramid cult. Or, 1 walmart shopping cart, for every american
dead in the washington mall iraq war... 2400 shopping carts, or add
in the iraqi shopping carts too, and would you be able to drive your
4wd super truck around the washington mall without getting a dent
in your paintjob from all those damn carts. Art Cart cart art.

[norml]

3. I'm with you, however I'm reluctant to vote for anything I wouldn't do

myself.

[RebelOne]

2. It's a stupid prank and only harms the Walmart employees

who have to empty the carts and restock all that merchandise.

[Lefty48197]

5. They don't care, they're paid by the hour

More work = more hours = more money.

[QC]

8. You've obviously never worked retail. n/t

[Lefty48197]

33. Yes retail is some sort of magical industry that the rest of us don't

understand. I wish I were smart enough to figure out how the biggest corporation on planet earth will find the money to pay one worker 3 hours pay to empty a bunch of shopping carts. What will they do??? Oh my!

[TahitiNut]

34. Ad hominem

Irrelevant and fallacious.

[JackintheGreen]

10. Do you work hourly?

Do you have a family to get home to?

I've worked both hourly and salaried, but currently its hourly and
I FUCKING CARE!

Why should I have to spend more time away form better things for someone else's bullshit? Walmart screws its employees in so many other ways...you don't find it inconceivable that they can work around this by, say, requiring its employees clear 3-5 carts a day AFTER clocking out but BEFORE going home?

Of course that would be an coporo-evil thing to do but there are many many many many many many places that require that kind of thing on pain of suspension/dismissal. At-will employers like Wal-mart will abuse their employees in any way possible.

[Lefty48197]

32. A good manager will schedule and extra worker to empty all the carts

Walmart will have to raise the price of everything they sell by one penny. BFD.

[Zynx]

24. Yeah and their hours get cut the next week big time when payroll is blown.

I've seen it happen, particularly with the employees who may be less physically capable and possibly need the money most.

[Lefty48197]

31. Who's going to empty the carts, stock the shelves, greet the customers

and count the money, if they lay everybody off?

[BuyingThyme]

4. I do an exorbitant amount of carting already.

It doesn't happen often, and never at Wal-Mart, but when I find there's nobody willing to take my money, or the cash registers have otherwise been abandoned, I just leave the cart and walk. No big deal.

[Quixote1818]

7. I have done it when I realized I forgot my wallet at home. nt

[Zynx]

23. No offense, but sometimes there is a small staff there at a store

and they simply are being worked very hard by management on other things so to do that is a little bit nasty on your part. When I worked on registers I was sometimes one of only two people on registers that night and sometimes the other one would be on break and I would be temporarily away when times were slow getting more bags for the registers like my supervisor demanded. I wasn't slighting customers since I couldn't see any coming to the register at the time. I would quickly run back when I saw one coming. Doing that, particularly with a full cart, makes the night pretty nasty for the teenage night help that is forced to stay behind that night and clean it up.

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

6. Not

Though the idea is coming from good intention, I really don't see how it could possibly have any intended impact. If anything it seems it would just annoy the workers whom we already feel for.

Problem with the idea is actionability in masses. I would think it would take a heck of a lot of full carts per day in every Walmart to even catch wink of management. Realistically though, how many carts would it really be? One per store, per day? I see that already.

If someone is going to spend that much time at Walmart anyway, why not just pass out flyers in the parking lot or drop flyers into the carts instead.

But to each their own I guess.

[leftofthedial]

9. obsolutely cart them

turn their business model against them

if it becomes too awful to be a Wal Mart employee, then they'll either have to pay more, start treating employees better or go out of business.

[Nikia]

13. People work at Walmart for different reasons

Often though, they work there because it is the only job that they can get at all or to suite other criteria that is important to them like being day time work, in a realtively clean environment, or not involve intense heavy labor. As far as paying more, some of them pay a dollar or two more than other alternatives such as as fast food restaraunts but that isn't really a living wage either if you have a family.

[mcscajun]

19. This 'leave a full cart behind in the aisles' is total crap.

Those who've made arguments for it are working from a couple of false assumptions, the primary one being that it will make so much of an impact that management will hear of it and have to change their policies and how they treat their workers. It won't do that.

A basic principle of trade unionism is you don't attack other workers. Other workers aren't the enemy...owners are. Direct your anger and your actions toward them. Indirect action, targeting the workers to theoretically get to management, is NOT a progressive idea.

Would it cause more employee turnover? Maybe, maybe not; it depends how desperate the particular "associate" is and what other options they have (if any.) In the short term, what it would cause for certain is more employee misery. More turnover? Hell, Wal-Mart would love more employee turnover. The recently leaked Wal-Mart memo spelled out in detail how they don't want long term employees: they cost more while being no more productive (their words, not mine.)

Low-end retail workers have it tough enough already. Nobody with any ounce of compassion would deliberately act to make their days longer, harder, and more miserable.

[leftofthedial]

29. longer day is more pay

stocking is not the worst work Wal Mart requires of its employees

it's an attack on the company, not on the workers

[mcscajun]

30. "longer day is more pay..."

IF you get overtime. If you don't...it's just a longer, harder day.

Management in general has a lot of ways to make sure that doesn't happen; Wal-Mart management in particular. There have been numerous lawsuits regarding their Unpaid Overtime practices; despite all that, you can be certain much of those practices still go on.

[Inland]

11. delete

delete

[Nikia]

12. Have you read the arguements against it?

As far as being kept busy and getting paid, efficient stores keep people busy. I haven't worked retail. I worked at a fast food restaurant. Our manager was one of those efficient managers who won awards for efficiency. This meant that we usually did not have extra people standing around or to help during an unexpected rush.
There were times that were busy as expected, there were enough people there to quickly go through a mob of people who all worked for the same companies and had the same lunch break (It was located near a business park). Anytime that it slowed even a little bit, someone was sent out to clean tables and pick up trays. There might have been enough time to clean off a few tables in that time. There wasn't time to clean up major messes. Sometimes there were major messes though and that meant that was one less person to take orders or bag food. It made the the rest of us irritable as well as the customers who only had a half hour to get their food, eat, and get back to work.
During slow times, there may have been some down time. There were fewer people working. You might be the only one taking orders up front. When there were no customers, you went out and checked the dining room. You had to constantly watch to make sure there were no customers walking in. If there was a major mess, you had to worry about taking care of it quickly and making sure no one had come in the restaurant. It really was annoying when you had to keep going back to the mess between customers.
Needless to say, we hated anyone who would purposely make a major mess. We hated people who would leave their trash on their tables. We hated people who would pour condiments all over the table. We were paid poorly and often we ended up doing major aerobic workouts to do our jobs and being multiple places at the same time and weren't allowed to even drink water behind the counter. I imagine retail workers feel the same way.
As far as being cluttered, have you been in a Walmart lately. Even though it is already cluttered, making it worse, makes it worse.

[kansasblue]

14. money speaks, vote with your shoes, don't shop there. No carts

[DearAbby]

15. I too can go either way.

I dont like the idea of carting Walmart unless it is a one time protest. As stated in another thread. Would be planned event for one day at a couple high profile stores.

As an ongoing event, just to cart and leave, No.

[Walt Starr]

16. The best way to protest Wal-Mart is to never set foot in one. n/t

[Mz Pip]

17. Not shopping there

in the first place makes more sense to me. I don't have the time to shlep around a Wal Mart, filling up a cart only to leave.

I somehow doubt that this would have much impact on the store anyway.

Mz Pip
:dem:

[Orangepeel]

18. how many brazillian carts will it take?

that brazillian joke is the only thing posted more than this damn cart question


(yeah, yeah, I know. I'm responding to it.)

[mcscajun]

20. I've said it before, and I'll say it again. NO To "carting" Wal-Mart

A basic principle of trade unionism is you don't attack other workers. Other workers aren't the enemy...owners are. Direct your anger and your actions toward them. Indirect action, targeting the workers to theoretically get to management, is NOT a progressive idea.

Would it cause more employee turnover? Maybe, maybe not; it depends how desperate the particular "associate" is and what other options they have (if any.) In the short term, what it would cause for certain is more employee misery. More turnover? Hell, Wal-Mart would love more employee turnover. The recently leaked Wal-Mart memo spelled out in detail how they don't want long term employees: they cost more while being no more productive (their words, not mine.)

Low-end retail workers have it tough enough already. Nobody with any ounce of compassion would deliberately act to make their days longer, harder, and more miserable.

[Neil Lisst]

21. Vandalism is not activism

There are ways to express oneself that do not involve breaking the law.

[Zynx]

22. You are a fool if you think this hurts Walmart more than it hurts workers.

I've worked in retail. Not at Walmart, but I know quite a lot about this subject. This is at most an annoyance to management, but it is a real headache to the workers. Walmart will not hire more workers to deal with this. They will simply demand more producitivity out of their current workers. This is one of those things that is handled by the night crews at retail stores and they would simply have to stay longer and work harder and to compensate for that, Walmart managers would simply cut the hours of other store employees, and those are likely people who need that money most of all.

[norml]

27. I haven't voted yet.

I just thought that along with the poll question I'd present an argument for the less popular point of view.

[donheld]

25. If you have any compassion for the poor working class

You will NOT do this. I cannot express how much I hate this whole thing.

[norml]

28. I am the working poor.

And right now I need to get ready for work.

[Bill McBlueState]

26. It's slacktivism

"Slacktivism" is a word I first saw at snopes.com. It refers to "activism" that doesn't require any sacrifice on the part of the participant and in all likelihood won't do any good.

Leaving a cart full of crap in the aisle may help you feel like you're sticking it to the man because you're breaking the"rules" of shopping. But it isn't hard, doesn't put you at risk of anything, and doesn't really accomplish anything except to make more work for the employees.

To beat Wal-Mart, we're going to have to put it all on the line and engage in risky behavior, like picketing in front of stores and (for the brave) risking arrest. Leaving shopping carts in the aisles won't do it.