An Open Letter to Wal-Mart:

Mailed to:

Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. Bentonville, Arkansas, USA 72716-8611

September 25, 2006

Dear Wal-Mart:

I have taken up space in these pages defending you against the demented charges of the liberal cancer. Whether you were aware of my efforts, I don’t know. I saw that it was beneath you to reply to those lumpen, as it would have been to thank me for horsewhipping them. You have real work to do. As for them, they may carry on their witch hunts against the successful. I shall stand by you on principle.

Or so I thought. Today I took a trip to the South Shore of Montréal to exchange my Ontario driver’s license for a Québec one. Next to what you would call the DMV, shone the aluminum siding of one of your outlets. In the parking lot, associates in Québecois true blue vests tapped their cigarettes into the ashtrays provided. They were so focused on their next challenge that their faces looked almost blank. Just like you, they have work to do. I hadn’t planned to, but I decided to go in, elbows out, and hunt for bargains. You see, I’d never actually visited one of your stores.

I expected a wide selection of lowish to moderate quality goods at unbeatable prices. Even your rabid detractors grant you that much. So I set out in search of toothpaste, cleaning products, breakfast cereal, pens, etc. OK, so you don’t carry Allenbury’s soap, or the Pentel pens I like, or my brand of garbage bags, or a few other things. I guess it wasn’t my day. You’d get that stuff in for me next month. But what really got me was that among the stuff you did have, your prices were higher than my neighbourhood markets (Segal’s and Sakaris).

Now, the fame of Segal’s may not have spread quite as far as Bentonville. Those who know Segal’s Grocery know that it’s a special place—the prices are phenomenal and it’s deservedly famous. But these guys have to pay St. Laurent rent, and they have one zillionth the floor space of a Wal-Mart, and they have a skeleton staff, and they’re killing you. Sakaris prices are more normal, but I found comparisons not in your favour. Thirty cents more for a box of Cheerios means something to a coupon-clipping Scot. Everywhere I turned in Wal-Mart, everything was comically shoddy or overpriced. There was almost noone else there. The muzak was awful. I stopped humming. The muzak stopped. There was no muzak. I had to get out.

Asphyxiating, I grabbed a family-sized bottle of Pine-Sol and checked out. Back in the lot, I read the label: Poison, Do Not Swallow. Why had I bought this product I’d never bought before? I had floor cleaner at home. I sweated freely. The grizzled Wal-Mart associates, puffing away, looked me over. They seemed to say, Well bub, are you gonna do it? We all used to teach like you. But none of us had the guts to do it.

Curses and derision on you Wal-Mart, and bad luck to you. Your prices aren’t the lowest. You’re a sham and a shame. You suck. You have no reason to exist. You’re the thing that should not be. You're a fleck of sand in God's eye. You’re a symptom of the post-modern whatchamacallit. You’re stealing my oxygen. You killed Socrates. You make my students play violent video games. You make people like me into incoherent, ranting liberals.

Sirs: I don’t intend to take my business to Wal-Mart any longer.

Yours very truly,

DT