Wal Mart cuts prices again

[poindexter]

http://www.latimes.com/business/nationworld/wire/ats-ap_business10nov04,1,1392797.story?coll=la-wires-business

42-inch HD plasma TVs, slashed to $1,294 from $1,794; the Polaroid LCD HDTVs, reduced to $997, from $1,297; and Cingular C139 prepaid phones, marked down to $19.97 from $29.98.

 

[2muchcoffeeman]

Also slashes their poorly-paid employees' benefits and work hours.

 

[novelist_wannabe]

ugh

 

[JR]

They're desperate. They're forecasting zero sales growth in November, coming off a dismal October with only .5 percent growth in October.

Also, their strategy of going "upmarket", particularly in the women's fashion category, has been far less than successful.

If you're a retailer, slashing prices is the easy way to move **** out of the store. But you end up slashing your profit margins as well.

 

[HeinekenMan]

I don't do Wal-Mart. Their deli section sucks eggs. They never offer deals on their grocery products, which means that I can shop the ads and buy cheaper elsewhere. Sure, they do ad match, but if I'm going to pay $3 for a gallon of milk, I'd rather go to the store that employs friendly workers who have most of their teeth. Plus, their vendors almost never offer deals. And there are a lot of vendors in a grocery store. I worked in one, and most of the branded pizzas, chips, soda products, water, beer, bread and so on are brought into the store. I can buy that stuff for a better price at other stores, where vendor items are on sale. Wal-Mart needs to start offering specials on those kinds of items to draw customers.

I've seen two stories in the past year where reporters bought the same list of common items from several stores. Target beat Wal-Mart on price in both of them. So I go to Target for my household items, and I buy groceries at Publix. Not everyone has a great store like Publix, of course.

As for the electronics, I can't really offer much input. It's a one-time purchase sort of situation. They might get some holiday traffic by slashing their prices on TVs, but that traffic is going to be at home eating a ham sandwich made with Publix deli meats the following Christmas.

 

[fever_dog]

publix is da bomb. i miss it.

 

[imjustagirl2]

With my hours, Wal-Mart is just the easiest (and cheapest) option. No Publix. Neighborhood grocery closes at 9 or 10.

Viva la Wal-Mart!

 

[JR]

Never shop at Wal-Mart. Never.

 

[imjustagirl2]

Never shop at Wal-Mart. Never.

JR, you know I love you, so I'm going to ask for a clarification before I jump your ****.

Are you saying YOU never shop at Wal-Mart? Or are you deigning yourself high priest of shopping and trying to spread your word to make us all think it means more than what we've come to learn from our own experiences?

 

[JR]

IJAG, I never shop at Wal-Mart. (Well, the occasional decal for my car, maybe.

It's just a personal line in the sand thing.

 

[Herbert Anchovy]

I very much miss Publix's fried chicken.

I bought a vacuum cleaner at Wal-Mart for $49 two weeks ago. It was my first visit to Wal-Mart Darwin's Waiting Room in two or three years.

 

[imjustagirl2]

Ah, you crazy Canadians and your decals.

 

[HeinekenMan]

I very much miss Publix's fried chicken.

I bought a vacuum cleaner at Wal-Mart for $49 two weeks ago. It was my first visit to Wal-Mart Darwin's Waiting Room in two or three years.

I've never tried the fried chicken from Publix. Someone was raving over their subs. I tried one and didn't care much for it. But they're deli lunch meats are spectacular. I buy the BBQ-basted breast of chicken, which is oh so tasty and almost fat-free. It's the only grocery store I've visited where I can get a cannoli from the bakery. They also prepare their own dough, so that you can snag some and have almost instant homemade pizza. Their produce section rocks. I'm the kind of guy who pays for convenience, and the diced onions are awesome. I just open the container and dump the whole tub into whatever I'm cooking. I also like their fresh sliced fruit.

I have to tell you, I worked at Wal-Mart for three months during my college days, and that was enough to scare the hell out of me. It was a new store, and two weeks after it opened a guy walked up to me and ordered me to work in the little in-store fast-food place. Apparently, they couldn't find anyone else to cover breaks, so they handed the baton to me and another fella. I didn't know the menu or how to prepare ANYTHING. I had absolutely no training. I had been stocking shelves in the frozen foods department. It was the same situation with the other guy. We were completely clueless. We might as well have been rebuilding engines.

We had a little folder with printed instructions. We managed to fry a few things. That experiment lasted about 30 minutes, and I quit a few days later.

 

[Herbert Anchovy]

Heinie,

I worked as a "courtesy clerk" (or common garden variety bag boy) when I was 16. I don't know how to put into words how much it sucked. Wound up quitting after six weeks and without notice, which I remember really infuriating my mother. I called to tell the manager I was a goner, and he said, "OK, you realize this will upset your references." Right. Like anyone in their proper freakin' mind would ever list having been a bag boy on a future job application.

Do try the Publix chicken sometime. Goes great with a 12-pack.

 

[HeinekenMan]

Do try the Publix chicken sometime. Goes great with a 12-pack.

You don't know how great chicken and beer sound right now. I haven't eaten more than about 1,500 calories any day for the past month. And my fat intake has been at 25 grams or less per day and usually hovers around 15 grams.

The wife and I have lost 30 pounds in about a month. Unfortunately, we both have a long way to go. If I lose 120, I'll be satisfied. So I'm one-fourth of the way there. This reality is that I'd still be considered overweight by about 30 pounds.

 

[kingcreole]

I hardly ever shop at Wal-Mart now. Dillion's grocery prices are for the most part equal or cheaper (milk $1.99 compared to $2.66 at Wal-Mart). And then there's the heaven of grocery stores: Aldi.

 

[Herbert Anchovy]

HeinekenMan, good work, you'll make it. I wish you could sell me 10-15 pounds. I'm drinking all the ****ty beer and eating all the bad Halloween candy I can. No luck. I weighed myself while I was at the vet's office last week (hey, the scale was conveniently placed). Still too skinny.

 

[Ben_Hecht]

Aldi IS cheap. But if you've ever weakened to the extent that you can't live without isolated,
specific brand names, lotsa luck.

 

[HeinekenMan]

HeinekenMan, good work, you'll make it. I wish you could sell me 10-15 pounds. I'm drinking all the ****ty beer and eating all the bad Halloween candy I can. No luck. I weighed myself while I was at the vet's office last week (hey, the scale was conveniently placed). Still too skinny.

If you can't gain weight, I'm not sure that I can help you. The key seems to be pizza. Eat it as often as possible. And you really should be eating late at night, preferably something high in fat and calories.

 

[BYH]

Heinie,

I worked as a "courtesy clerk" (or common garden variety bag boy) when I was 16. I don't know how to put into words how much it sucked. Wound up quitting after six weeks and without notice, which I remember really infuriating my mother. I called to tell the manager I was a goner, and he said, "OK, you realize this will upset your references." Right. Like anyone in their proper freakin' mind would ever list having been a bag boy on a future job application.

Sounds familiar. I worked at KMart as a "runner," which was the modern term for low-paid jack of all trades and master of none, in the summer of 1990. Need someone to operate the cash register up front? Get the runner! Need someone to clean up a pile of puke in aisle six? Get the runner! Need someone to chase down the knife-wielding shoplifter? Get the runner! (somehow avoided that, though we all heard the horror story of the guy who caught a shoplifter and was bitten as the shoplifter yelled "I HAVE AIDS!!!")

It re-defined the suck in so many ways. 12:30-9:30 on Saturdays, 10-6 on Sundays, plus several weekday nights from 5-9:30. The manager had been there nine years, which was six years longer than she was supposed to be there, and for all I know the old windbag is still there. If you weren't on the lifetime plan, she had no use for you. I went away to a summer journalism convention one week and got home Saturday at like 3 pm. I had a message waiting for me from the manager: "WHERE ARE YOU?" Uhh, I'm off until Sunday, sunshine.

And the personnel manager was the same way, and with the worst teeth I've ever seen to boot. She was married to the guy who ran the auto section. Apparently, newspapers aren't the only incestous employers.

I wanted to quit in the worst way in the middle of the summer but my mother wouldn't let me. Mom told me if I quit I'd be completely on my own...no car, no spending money, no nothing all summer long. So that made it really satisfying come the first Saturday of September, when I told her I couldn't balance working at KMart along with running cross country and my senior year studies. (wink wink) She told me it was OK if I quit. I never drove to the store so fast in my life. The personnel manager tried telling me how much I'd regret this and I was like OK whatever I will never see you again.

I was determined to not only never work in retail full-time as an adult, I was determined that I'd never do that again, anywhere, and that the next gig I had would pay me to write. I was right.

I bought a couple CDs with my last check (Bad Company's Holy Water was one of them) and, instead of hating life at KMart for nine hours, dozed on the bed during a cloudless early fall day as the CD played all afternoon long. Man, that was as good as it got.