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Wal-Mart

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wal-mart

Man Bitten By Rattlesnake At Wal-Mart

The AP reports that a man was bitten by a snake inside the garden center at Wal-Mart in Pembroke Pines, FL. The unidentified 42-year-old man was taken to the hospital and received antivenin for the pygmy rattler bite. Fortunately, these bites are rarely fatal. This is not the first time that a pygmy rattler has attacked a Wal-Mart customer.

Man bitten by snake in garden center [AP] (Thanks to Lee!)

9:23 PM on Sun Jul 6 2008
By Jay Slatkin
1,691 views, 23 comments

wal-mart

Judge Orders Wal-Mart To Pay $6.5 Million For Violating Labor Laws

The AP reports that in a class-action lawsuit, a Minnesota judge ordered that Wal-Mart pay $6.5 million in compensatory damages for violating state labor laws 2-million times. Violations were incurred when the company reduced break time for employees and "willfully" allowed them to work off the clock. Other infractions include the failure to keep time records and denying employees time for meal breaks. Details, inside... More »

8:36 AM on Wed Jul 2 2008
By Jay Slatkin
4,354 views, 77 comments

Wal-Mart is cutting down its inventory (fewer clothing styles) and remodeling its older stores (lower shelves and clearer signage) to spur more shopping. [Reuters]

23 comments

Wal-Mart has launched a personal finance website at walmart.com/savemore. It offers tips and saving advice, while also pushing Wal-Mart's own money services and weekly specials. [Wal-Mart]

10 comments

worst company in america

Round 41: Wal-Mart vs Citibank

This is Round 41 in our Worst Company in America contest, Wal-Mart vs Citibank!Here's what readers said in previous rounds about why they hate these two companies...

More »

12:00 PM on Mon May 19 2008
By Ben Popken
4,176 views, 38 comments

shipping problems

Amazon Screws Up Mother's Day Order

When Amazon works, it's a great example of what man and machine can do together to make shopping easier. When it doesn't work, you're stuck with a higher-priced camera from Wal-Mart and a second camera you thought was canceled shipped from Amazon, with a refund taking 3-5 days to go through. More »

12:00 PM on Sun May 11 2008
By Chris Walters
2,886 views, 18 comments

food

Wal-Mart Selling More Peanut Butter And Spaghetti, People Eating Pet Food Not Far Off?

Wal-Mart reports a significant uptick in peanut butter and spaghetti sales. A retail consultant says the last time this happened was in the stagflation 70's, and it represents close to the bottom of consumer food purchase downgrading (the slope goes from red meat to pig meat to chicken to pasta, and then PB&J). "It hasn't gotten to human food mixed with pet food yet, but it is certainly headed in that direction," he says. That sounds both disgusting and sensationalist. How does pet food even taste? Well, according to an NBC intern, "It honestly didn't taste too bad! They had three different types and all were like a thick soup. Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't order it at a restaurant, but I've tasted worse. I imagine they'd love it in prison."

Recession Diet Just One Way to Tighten Belt [NYT]

11:55 AM on Thu May 1 2008
By Ben Popken
3,277 views, 54 comments

Latest by MissCellania: Potatoes. Cornbread. Beans. I know people who survive on this diet all their lives, with garden vegetables in the summer. No need to eat pet food. more »

fines

Sears, Best Buy, Wal-Mart And Others Fined For Not Warning Consumers About Analog Obsolescence

The FCC handed out a whole basketful of fines to electronics retailers today: $1.1 million for Sears and Kmart; $992,000 for Wal-Mart; $712,000 for Circuit City; and amounts between $168,000-384,000 for Target, Best Buy, CompUSA, and Fry's Electronics. What made Christmas come so early? They were all failing to warn consumers that analog-only TVs and tuners will stop working on their own when the digital switchover comes next year. More »

6:40 PM on Thu Apr 10 2008
By Chris Walters
5,800 views, 52 comments

wal-mart

Wal-Mart's Katrina Heroism: "Above All, Do The Right Thing," CEO Told Managers Before Katrina Struck

A paper written by Steven Horwitz, an Austrian-school economist (we're still not quite sure what that means, other than it's considered slightly controversial), recounts Wal-Mart's relief efforts after Hurricane Katrina (PDF) and points out that private businesses, along with the Coast Guard, did far more than any "official" government agency in providing immediate, on-the-ground assistance to victims. His argument is that something as complex as a relief effort is more efficient when it's decentralized and involves private businesses. Horwitz has also, separately, supported the idea that Wal-Mart should win the Nobel Peace Price. Hey, we told you his school of economics was controversial. More »

10:14 AM on Wed Apr 2 2008
By Chris Walters
5,662 views, 89 comments

Latest by ViperBorg: @skitzogreg: Screw the little mom and pop stores, huh? I mean, seriously, who wants that kind of individual attention when shopping, right? more »

rankings

Latest ACSI Survey Is Out: You Really Like Dollar General

The American Customer Satisfaction Index has released its latest scores of retail businesses, so we thought we'd take a look at the department store rankings by constructing a handy graph. When it comes to customer satisfaction, apparently Dollar General is doing something right—and Wal-Mart, as usual, is doing lots of things wrong. More »

11:27 AM on Thu Feb 21 2008
By Chris Walters
6,481 views, 39 comments

glitches

Wal-Mart Gift Card Servers Malfunctioning Day After Christmas

John wrote in yesterday to tell us, "I just got back from Wal-Mart trying to buy stuff with my gift cards, but the employees told me that they gift card servers were down across the country. I waited for about 15 minutes as cashiers and managers tried to get my gift card to go through and nothing occurred." More »

9:02 AM on Thu Dec 27 2007
By Chris Walters
2,476 views, 25 comments

signs

"Hoh Hoh" Says Wal-Mart

The War on Christmas has taken a sneaky left turn, with Coke and Wal-Mart mounting an entirely unanticipated attack on one of the world's most beloved phrases! A reader, Josh, was shopping and/or protesting in his local Wal-Mart recently when he saw this in-store display for soda. More »

8:34 PM on Mon Dec 17 2007
By Chris Walters
7,507 views, 46 comments

employee rights

OSHA Agrees To Investigate Wal-Mart Whistleblower Incident

The odds aren't in her favor—in recent years, only 16% of employees who filed complaints with the Labor Dept.'s Occupational Safety & Health Administration won—but OSHA has agreed to open an investigation into Chalace Lowry's claims that after she reported suspicious activities at her Wal-Mart headquarters job as she'd been trained to do, she was outed to her boss as the whistleblower, and when she asked to be moved to a new position she was told to look for one herself and that Wal-Mart would make no guarantees about her job security. More »

11:23 AM on Tue Nov 6 2007
By Chris Walters
2,377 views, 4 comments

Latest by DjDynasty: OSHA has no teeth where the Fortune 500 companies are concerned, but the small family owned companies fear OSHA complaints, and get them quite often! more »

recalls

CPSC Tells Companies, "Don't Recall Products On Your Own"

A CPSC spokeswoman said this week that Wal-Mart's independent recall of lead-tainted toy animals on October 19th was all well and good, but that they should have included more information that consumers need in order to act quickly—including how many products were sold, when they were sold and at what other retailers, and the name of the manufacturer. Said the spokeswoman, "We are not big fans of when companies handle recall announcements independently of the agency. It can cause confusion and doesn't always provide consumers with the information they need." More »

8:36 PM on Wed Oct 31 2007
By Chris Walters
950 views, 3 comments

Latest by Rectilinear Propagation: But Wal-Mart still won't provide more information on the recalled toys... Why not? You've already recalled them, what's the point Wal-mart? I don't expect them to say which other retailers were selling them (unless they're owned by the same parent company) more »

loss prevention

Wal-Mart Employee Fired For Stopping Punch-Happy Shoplifter

Up until last week, Victoria Smith was a Customer Service Manager with at a Wal-Mart in New York. Then she intercepted a shoplifter, released her to the wild (as is legally required), and then got punched in the face when the shoplifter snapped and ran back into the store. Three days later, she was fired for touching the customer. More »

10:00 AM on Fri Oct 19 2007
By Chris Walters
7,497 views, 62 comments

ethics

Wal-Mart Whistleblower Finally Has New Job (At Wal-Mart), But Says Ordeal Was Harrowing

When Chalace Lowry reported her suspicions that her boss was possibly engaged in insider trading, it set off a four-month-long ordeal where she was questioned repeatedly by various departments within the company, outed to her boss as the snitch, and—when she subsequently requested a transfer—told she had 60-90 days to find a new position on her own or get out—not the most supportive response from a company that only a few months earlier sent her to a training seminar on corporate ethics. More »

1:34 PM on Thu Oct 18 2007
By Chris Walters
3,824 views, 12 comments

Latest by n/a: Doesnt anyone learn from those blackmarket videos and ones that have carmello anthony in them, its called Dont snitch unless ya want a new breathing hole, sheesh when will silly americans learn. more »

isp competition

Wal-Mart Will Now Sell Satellite Broadband Internet Access

Today, Wal-Mart announced that it will start re-selling HughesNet satellite broadband Internet access, starting at 700Kbps for $59.99 a month, through 2,800 of its stores "including locations throughout most of rural America where terrestrial broadband services, such as cable and DSL, are often not available." To help spur initial sign-ups, Wal-Mart will give new customers $100 RFID-enabled "ExpressPay" cards to use while shopping at the retailer. More »

9:49 AM on Tue Oct 9 2007
By Chris Walters
1,871 views, 13 comments

bad attitudes

Wal-Mart's Employee Morale, Customer Service At All-Time Low

Business Week sent a couple of its own "secret shoppers" to some Wal-Mart stores to see how their new customer service initiative was faring, and found that the employees they spoke with not only didn't care, but really wanted customers to know this. Said one employee, "If Wal-Mart doesn't care for me, why should I care? There was this horrible smell in the store the last two days from some overnight spill. They did nothing about it. It got so bad that on the second day the fire department came by and we all had to wear masks." More »

11:57 AM on Tue Oct 2 2007
By Chris Walters
6,582 views, 52 comments

Latest by n/a: Our local wal-mart is notorious for long check-out lanes. First they wait until at least 5 people are in every line (2 are open!) and then they call for help. That help then makes it's way slowly to the front, more »

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