Seinfeld quote responding to TheFreak. "It's a write-off for them." "How is it a write-off?" "They just write it off." "Write it off what?" "Jerry, all these big companies, they write off everything." "You don't even know what a write-off is." "Do you?" "No, I don't." "But they do. And they're the ones writing it off." "I wish I had the last twenty seconds of my life back." - Kramer and Jerry, in "The Package"
It's pretty unethical for Wal-Mart to compensate for their theft losses by reducing the bonuses of the $6/hr employees, particularly when many of the head honchos are billionaires. Couldn't they just consider theft an expected loss and take a little less in profits instead of forcibly extracting it from the bonuses of employees who could really use the extra money? Man, what a bunch of greedy ***** run that company. I should point out: I don't steal from anywhere. But, if I saw someone stealing from Wal-Mart, I'd probably just laugh.
I find my position on the ethics of this issue a bit strange. On one hand, I don't really find it appalling for anyone to do this. Maybe it's because the whole society seems to be trying to find ways to cheat. I mean, these Wal-Mart billionares didn't get the money they made by paying their employees fair wages. On the other hand, I would never do something like this. I don't know why, because I never think of myself as a moral person. Besides, with my college loan still half unpaid, this is definitely one of the ways to save a few bucks. Yet for some reason, I just can't bring myself to do it. It's like a moral chip inside my brain that I'm not aware of.
Apparently your working under the misconception that Wal-Mart is an ethical company. Keep an eye on the financial news and you'll see that about once a week a story will pop up about Wal-Mart being accused of something shady, whether it be limiting employee benefits or hiring contractors who use illegal laborers to clean their floors or asking store personnel to work off the clocks or using their unprecedented buying power to dictate costs that their suppliers give other retailers. Wal-Mart is the Evil Empire. But that doesn't make it right to steal from them.
to be fair (and that's difficult for me, because i do not like wal mart and refuse to shop there)...wal mart does good things too...and they're certainly not entirely to blame for the problems they "create." they have supported tons of non-profit groups who serve better causes...they employ LOTS of people (yes, at minimum wage, but do you think they'd all be rocket scientists if they weren't employed at wal mart??).. the one criticism that falls short for me is the argument that they kill mom and pop stores....no, we the consumer, kill mom and pop stores. if wal mart moved into a small town and everyone said, "screw you, wal mart..i'm still shopping at mom and pop" the effect would not be created. the bottom line is they offer a lower price, and people are sensitive to lower prices for the staple items they buy at places like wal mart.
Good post MadMax and everything you said is true. It really does start with us, the consumers. We are the ones who make Wal-Marts across the country successful and very profitable. You can't realy complain about them unless you take action, even if it's small start like MadMax refusing to buy there.
madMax- Good post Also Wal Mart is not great at anyting except low prices. If you want expertised in anything Wal Mart is not a good way to go (I'm sure some of their employyes are knowledgeable so don't want to say that) but if you want expertise you go to anotehr store. So if the consumer only wants the lowest price go to Wal Mart. But if they want to pay for some level of expertise (how do I cook this, how does this work, etc) then you get much more of that at specialty or mom and pop stores.
Large companies like a Walmart put aside in their yearly budget an amount of money for the sole purpose of theft. Of course they try not to tell anyone this. The whole argument about its ok to steal from big bad walmart but not ok to steal from mom and pop. its total bullsh*t. I used to steal from both to keep it even. Me and a friend were once on a road trip and we stole gas from Kilgore, TX al the way to Las Vegas, NV and we had 2 cars. Its mute that anyone here try and convince me its wrong.
Wal Mart scamming is as old as Wal Mart. I used to do it occasionally when I was younger. Now, I've grown some morals and refuse to do anything that resembles stealing. But I have this one jackass friend who steals mp3 players from there and tries to run a scam with them. See, there's some serious flaws in their merchandise returning procedures. You can go in there and buy something with a credit card but they'll give you cash back if you return it with the receipt. If you don't have a receipt for whatever item, they will give you store credit in the form of a Wal Mart card. So this guy pockets these $100 mp3 players and then returns them for a $100 Wal Mart card. Then he takes that and buys another $100 item with it. They give him a receipt for whatever it is and he then takes that item back, uses his receipt, and asks for cash back. So basically, he ends up stealing a hundred-dollar bill off the shelves and Wal Mart practically hands it to him. So the moral of the story is: For such a cunning, savvy business organization; you'd think they would have quite a few less holes in their product security department...but as we've seen in this thread, even folks with no criminal inclinations are able to find huge inadequacies. But anyway, Bobrek...I was a little offended by your "I hope you don't pass these morals onto your kids" comment. It was a little below the belt, and I do understand where you're coming from and kinda agree with you; but morals are just too individually subjective to take such a strong stance in regard to those that another person operates under. And they're not necessarily a product of nurture either. For instance, I came from a set of parents that had the same regard for dishonesty and stealing as you do, but I ended up going to prison for stealing and scamming. However, that's not to say my morals are the same as they were at age 17 when I was getting in that trouble. I learned better morals from personal experience even though I had known all along what other people had always preached to me were the best morals. But that's too much D&D material there. Just wanted to express that and get it off my chest. I didn't mean to add to the frustration that this thread obviously brings you, so I hope my comments here aren't the source of any hard feelings.
