This is wrong on so many levels, are we really talking about urbanism inside of a walmart?
Walmart didn’t kill the small town, it is the small town
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Re: Walmart didn’t kill the small town, it is the small town
#22It’s price and the ease the price enables. Low price demonstratably rules in everything from plane tickets to groceries to basic services to clothing as it enables a life of abundance and mental ease. A friend loves Walmart as it means he no longer has to maintain his lawnmower. He just throws it away and buys a new one annually at the start of the season. He can still mow his lawn while abandoning the need to mainta…
Is this satire?
Lawn equipment ain't complicated enough to maintain to justify throwing out every season. This is insane consumerism.
Re: Walmart didn’t kill the small town, it is the small town
#23The layout is entirely by design to feel like you’re strolling down “Main Street” Americana. I learned this decades ago when I worked for Walmart setting up stores and training folks. It was explicitly made clear to us this is what the layout was designed to elicit
I would be surprised if most people under 60 or even 50 know what strolling down “Main Street” means. In my 30+ years, I have never once strolled down a Main Street. I have always gone to big stores and malls (and now online shopping).
Ancedotal experience from a 35 yo here.
Growing up in Metro Detroit, there were "Main Streets" in most of the Cities/townships and IIRC it's a pretty common term. I'd argue most people under 60 and 50 know what "Main Street" means just to counter.
Re: Walmart didn’t kill the small town, it is the small town
#24The layout is entirely by design to feel like you’re strolling down “Main Street” Americana. I learned this decades ago when I worked for Walmart setting up stores and training folks. It was explicitly made clear to us this is what the layout was designed to elicit
I would be surprised if most people under 60 or even 50 know what strolling down “Main Street” means. In my 30+ years, I have never once strolled down a Main Street. I have always gone to big stores and malls (and now online shopping).
I still do it. There are many Americans who still do it daily. There's a certain charm and feel to walking down a commercial street in a small town instead of walking through a fluorescent lit generic corporate branded super store. Online shopping is inevitable. There are products you just don't find in local shops anymore. I think a good example of that is Radio Shack. When I was a kid, that's where you went for you electronics needs as a hobbyist. There were even a few locally owned electronics shops in the area. Now you get that off of Amazon.
Re: Walmart didn’t kill the small town, it is the small town
#25Author is delusional. A bunch of small stores close is nowhere near similar. I just want to go to one shop, get the stuff, and leave, not to go to 8 shops, pay 8 times, pack groceries 8 times and overall walk more edit: that is not to say opening big supermarkets is great, just that once they are there that's why people skip local stores and go to the big supermarket
Yeah. The 8 stores are far better. There's competition. There's variety. Employees can move around. I can get to know the shop owners. I can take a wonderful stroll. Instead. You get to enjoy one corporation, that does anything it wants, pays horribly, employees have no choice, you have no choice in what garbage you buy. And your downtown now consists of 8 banks. Yup. You're living the dream!
Walmart was the competition that lowered prices. Those 8 stores may have had more variety, but not lower prices.
Re: Walmart didn’t kill the small town, it is the small town
#26It’s price and the ease the price enables. Low price demonstratably rules in everything from plane tickets to groceries to basic services to clothing as it enables a life of abundance and mental ease. A friend loves Walmart as it means he no longer has to maintain his lawnmower. He just throws it away and buys a new one annually at the start of the season. He can still mow his lawn while abandoning the need to mainta…
Tangential: but I’d really like to call out what a life hack, lots of cheap socks are. I got the idea myself long ago, as a kid, from the South Park creators, as they demanded unlimited new socks while making the movie. Once a year I buy like a 50 pack on Amazon and it’s great. 10/10 would recommend.
Like this quote from Dumbledore, when he looks in the mirror that shows your deepest desire:
"What do you see when you look in the mirror?"
"I? I see myself holding a pair of thick, woolen socks."
"One can never have enough socks. Another Christmas has come and gone and I didn't get a single pair. People will insist on giving me books."
Re: Walmart didn’t kill the small town, it is the small town
#27The layout is entirely by design to feel like you’re strolling down “Main Street” Americana. I learned this decades ago when I worked for Walmart setting up stores and training folks. It was explicitly made clear to us this is what the layout was designed to elicit
I would be surprised if most people under 60 or even 50 know what strolling down “Main Street” means. In my 30+ years, I have never once strolled down a Main Street. I have always gone to big stores and malls (and now online shopping).
Sounds like you don't get out much. I'm 35, grew up in a sterile DC-area bedroom community and even I walked down main streets when I went 10 minutes down the road on shopping trips.
Then again there are a lot of cities/towns on the east coast that predate the car, so there's probably an increased concentration of "main streets".
Re: Walmart didn’t kill the small town, it is the small town
#28It’s price and the ease the price enables. Low price demonstratably rules in everything from plane tickets to groceries to basic services to clothing as it enables a life of abundance and mental ease. A friend loves Walmart as it means he no longer has to maintain his lawnmower. He just throws it away and buys a new one annually at the start of the season. He can still mow his lawn while abandoning the need to mainta…
Except that we should have more long lasting things and should not add to the garbage pile because of cheapness and laziness :( But money sure trumps environmentalist idealism.
Different topic: As a foreigner, really every visit to a Wallmart left me with a very strange feeling, because almost every employee had a zombie like appearance one or the other way, demotivated, sad or emotionless looking, slurping slowly through the shop.. like employees super abused or completely lost and aimless. Nowhere else, even in cheap fast foods or similar I got that, why?
Re: Walmart didn’t kill the small town, it is the small town
#29It’s price and the ease the price enables. Low price demonstratably rules in everything from plane tickets to groceries to basic services to clothing as it enables a life of abundance and mental ease. A friend loves Walmart as it means he no longer has to maintain his lawnmower. He just throws it away and buys a new one annually at the start of the season. He can still mow his lawn while abandoning the need to mainta…
This is your brain on consumerism.
Re: Walmart didn’t kill the small town, it is the small town
#30Author is delusional. A bunch of small stores close is nowhere near similar. I just want to go to one shop, get the stuff, and leave, not to go to 8 shops, pay 8 times, pack groceries 8 times and overall walk more edit: that is not to say opening big supermarkets is great, just that once they are there that's why people skip local stores and go to the big supermarket
Yeah. The 8 stores are far better. There's competition. There's variety. Employees can move around. I can get to know the shop owners. I can take a wonderful stroll. Instead. You get to enjoy one corporation, that does anything it wants, pays horribly, employees have no choice, you have no choice in what garbage you buy. And your downtown now consists of 8 banks. Yup. You're living the dream!
And from a typically American perspective one doesn’t have to walk. They’ll even provide motorized carts to use when you are buying gallons of cola.