Wal Mart: When The Chips Are Down

In college, when you're allowed and encouraged to find a cause and be passionate about it, it was ridiculously popular to insult Wal Mart.

Because Wal Mart is a cancer in American society or haven't you heard? It took away all sorts of American jobs, ruined the main streets in Small Town USA, creates eyesores in towns, and supplies a handy place to get robbed raped or murdered in their parking lots.

I hopped on it, said no to Wal Mart and started doing my grocery shopping at Winn Dixie. The prices were higher but I thought I was doing good.

To an extent I still think was doing good, but I've mellowed out about all sorts of stuff in these last five or six years and now my thinking has shifted a bit in a variety of places, but Wal Mart is an important one.

I don't like to go to Wal Mart because it's not convenient to drive to VS Target. But when the chips are down and there's not a lot of money in the bank account, I will go to Wal Mart. You can't beat the prices.

Imagine (this one won't be too hard) that it's toward the end of the month and you have enough money in your bank account to get whatever you've budgeted for but you aren't exactly swimming in cash. Then you get a flat tire. Or something like that happens.

This happened to me early this month. My wife was driving back from a doctor's appointment and the tire went flat. She made it to the parking lot of a Tires Plus. Tires Plus charged us over 90.00 to replace the tire (the tire did need replacing) and it was their cheapest "we offer no warranty on this tire" tire.

But just last week the same thing happened on a different tire (the car needs new tires if you haven't gathered) and I took it to Wal Mart where the tire was 50.00 and you could get all sorts of warranties on it. The total with installation and everything came to something like 72.00.

I'm not insulting Tires Plus or anything, but times are tough. Too tough for me to go someplace that's more expensive just because I don't personally like Wal Mart.

And when I was looking through Wal Mart I found all SORTS of cool stuff. Stuff that would make me go back.

Here's an idea: Maybe Wal Mart should dedicate a section of the store to American-made products that don't have drastic reductions in prices that eventually lead to the manufacturer dying off due to lack of profit. Ask the manufacturer what price they would charge for the product, put the product on the shelf at that price.

Because face it: People are going to go to Wal Mart. Even when it just doesn't make any sense, like when you're only doing yourself and your country harm to do so, people are going to go. So offer some of America to them there too. I'm willing to bet that even at "high" prices that things would sell if they marketed it right.